Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.Pennsylvania’s latest effort to upgrade its two-decade-old voter registration system has already cost nearly $1.4 million, according to records obtained by Votebeat and Spotlight PA. Officials hope the updated system will be ready for the 2027 elections. However, the state isn’t saying much about where the project stands.That’s a departure for the Pennsylvania Department of State. This is the second time the department has attempted to update the aging Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, or SURE system. During the last project — which was canceled in late 2023 due to what the department said was the inability of the previous contractor to meet timetables and standards — a detailed timeline was available online as part of the public contract. It showed specific dates for each project milestone. The new contract does not contain a similar outline. This time around, the Department of State has declined to share the project’s specific timeline, monthly progress reports, or reports of any issues that may have arisen so far. The department said these records reflect internal deliberations of the agency and releasing them could pose a security risk.Pennsylvania officials announced last March that the Department of State had signed a $10.6 million contract with Louisiana-based technology company Civix to upgrade the SURE system.SURE is a statewide database that is central to running elections. Counties use it to register voters and maintain their records, print pollbooks, process mail ballot applications, and carry out other administrative functions.The current system was built in the early 2000s and wasn’t designed to handle the way elections are run now, particularly with mail voting. According to local election officials, it is also sometimes prone to crashes.The upgrade is intended to address these issues, as well as to integrate the system with other tools such as the state’s lobbying disclosure system and campaign finance database, which have also faced complaints for not being user-friendly.At a budget hearing in the state House last month, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt received questions from lawmakers about the status of the project, but he didn’t provide much insight into where the project stood. “We put out a [request for proposals] and less than a year ago signed it with a new vendor, and we’ve been working with that vendor, informed by our county partners, on a replacement system,” Schmidt said in response to one such question.In response to questions about the project, Amy Gulli, a spokesperson for the Department of State, said so far the department has been “gathering requirements” for the project’s five aspects: voter registration, election administration preparation, election management, election night reporting, and campaign finance and lobbying disclosure. Once that is completed, data from the current system will be converted and brought into the new version.She added that the department is working closely with counties on the project to ensure that the system functions well for them once it is in full operation.County election directors who spoke with Votebeat and Spotlight PA didn’t have any more insight on where the project stands.As for a timeline, Gulli said the department does not want to prioritize meeting a deadline over delivering a high-quality system, but that ideally the system will launch for counties to use in next year’s municipal election.“As Secretary Schmidt has said before, as a former county election official, he would never launch a new system to be used for the first time in a presidential election,” Gulli said.Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.
