Brennan Center for Justice

Pennsylvania currently has the Electronic Registration at DMVs component of Voter Registration Modernization in place. Pennsylvania also has electronic pollbooks in at least one county.

The excerpt below was adapted from an appendix to the 2010 report Voter Registration in a Digital Age.

Background
In 1995 Pennsylvania’s Department of Transportation (PennDOT) took the bold step of introducing a fully computerized system into its offices. Visitors may now use programs at self-service computer terminals to apply for a driver’s license or I.D. card, change their address, and conduct other business. From the beginning these programs have also included question that allow users to indicate a desire to register to vote, or to update an existing registration.  Paper forms that include voter registration questions are also still available, but customers rarely use them.

PennDOT typically printed registration requests and provided them to county election officials in hard copy until 2003, when a few county offices began accepting registration data through the new Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors (SURE). Other counties followed once this approach proved successful, and all had done so by the end of 2005.

Outcomes
Voter Registration.  Pennsylvania has been processing a very large number of motor vehicle registrations for many years. Between 2001 and 2008 the state received an average of over a million of these registrations annually, a total equivalent to over 10 percent of its voting-age citizen population. Full automation does not appear to have impacted these registration rates.

Efficiency.  State election officials report that electronic applications from PennDOT are more accurate than paper, and quicker to process. They also note that the new system allows them to trace the history of any transaction from the time it is first submitted at a PennDOT office. On the debit side, they find that visitors who are not yet registered sometimes mistakenly submit address updates (rather than a new registration); county officials must then attempt to contact these people in order to obtain the full range of information they require to make a new registration.

Track Record & Future Plans
Officials report no notable problems with the automated system. They are currently considering adopting online registration as well.

How Paperless Registration Works in Pennsylvania
For Visitors.  When a person is doing business with PennDOT through a self-service computer terminal, the application program displays a question asking if she is registered to vote. It then asks whether she would like to register, if her answer was no; if it was yes, the program asks whether she would like to make changes to the address, telephone number, or party preference listed in her registration.

If the visitor agrees to begin a registration transaction, the program asks whether she is an eligible U.S. citizen and Pennsylvania resident.9 It then poses a series of questions about her party preference and county of residence—and, if applicable, the name, address, and year of any previous registration. After she has answered these questions, the visitor reviews her responses, confirms that they are correct, and again affirms her eligibility to register.

If a registered voter is updating her address with PennDOT, the program specifically queries whether it should apply the update to her voter registration as well. Individuals who use PennDOT’s online change-of-address service may also update an existing voter registration.13 Finally, people can mail in paper application forms that include questions about voter registration. These paper forms are also available in PennDOT offices, as noted above, but people rarely prefer them to the computer terminals.

For Motor Vehicle and Election Officials.  Several times each week the PennDOT system batches all the applications it has received, along with their digitized signatures, and post them to an FTP site maintained by the SURE system. The system then sorts and directs applications to local election offices based on the county each user has entered. If no county is given, the SURE system will automatically assign one that corresponds to the applicant’s zip code.

County officials process applications from PennDOT in the same way they would any others, first running a duplicate check and assigning a precinct. The county system automatically attempts to verify each application against PennDOT records, and officials then decide whether to accept it. If they do, the statewide voter registration system automatically checks the application against a list of deceased residents.

In the past, Pennsylvania has considered the following VRM-related legislation:

• Election Day Registration. Provides for Election Day Registration. (G.A. 652)
• Election Day Registration. This bill would establish Election Day Registration. (S. 652)