Pennsylvania voter rolls are lacking in accuracy when compared to the NCOA (National Change of Address) database.

CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, PENNSYLVANIA, UNITED STATES, October 21, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Audit The Vote PA (ATVPA) ran the 09/05/2022 Pennsylvania Full Voter Export (FVE) through the United States Postal Service’s (USPS) National Change of Address Service (NCOA) on 09/09/2022 in an effort to ascertain and identify whether Pennsylvania and its 67 counties have adequately completed their PA Title 25 § 1901 yearly required list maintenance, which is necessary to be in compliance with 52 U.S.C. § 20507.

As of the 10/17/2022 Pennsylvania FVE, Audit The Vote PA (ATVPA) has identified 241,677 registrations that are currently registered on the Pennsylvania voter rolls that are tied to a person whom the USPS NCOA has indicated as having changed their address and no longer living in Pennsylvania.

Of the 241,677 registrations, 113,323, or roughly 47%, are still “Active” on the 10/17/2022 FVE. Within these results, there are active registrations with move dates going back to August of 2017 that appear to be unaddressed. In Pennsylvania, when a voter registration status is marked as “Inactive”, that elector must provide a residency affirmation to vote.

The data shows that 22,103 voters (9%) of the 241,677 registrations that have cast at least one vote in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania after indicating to the USPS NCOA service that they’ve moved. Of these votes, 72% were cast more than a month after the individual left Pennsylvania and 24% cast a vote more than a year after leaving Pennsylvania.

Analyzing the numbers of OOS moves by county illustrates that the majority of these moves originate from counties closely following their population rankings.

Philadelphia County alone makes up roughly one-fifth of all OOS registrations, with 44,173 OOS registrations. To put this into perspective, 29 counties in Pennsylvania have fewer registered voters than Philadelphia has OOS registrations on their rolls.

Following population ranking, Allegheny County comes in second with 28,826 OOS registrations, followed by Montgomery (14,917), Chester (13,562), and Delaware (12,780) counties.

Surprisingly, Pike County has the highest percentage of OOS registrations on its rolls compared to its total registration count, making up 4.79% of its voter roll, followed by Philadelphia (4.15%), Centre (3.73%), York (3.2%) and Chester (3.57%).

On the opposite end of the spectrum are Juniata (0.74%), Fulton (0.77%), Indiana (1.01%), and Sullivan (1.03%) counties. Thirty-five of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties’ voter rolls consist of 2% or fewer OOS registrations.

Conclustion:
Given the data presented above and the responses from counties, ATVPA concludes that most counties in Pennsylvania take their list maintenance and election activities very seriously and act professionally when presented with potential voter registration issues. These counties that
follow the law and take their maintenance activities seriously, are currently being disenfranchised by those counties that choose to treat portions of the law as optional while reading into law text that isn’t written. These counties make up the majority of the identified
OOS registrations and have the largest share of those registrations that are still active.

These counties are the same counties that have fought all attempts over the last year+ to address or resolve registration issues brought to them by their constituents. The inability of these counties to demonstrate whether they had previously taken the required actions around these registrations shows they were either entirely unaware of the moves or lacked the required record-keeping around these maintenance activities. Their approach to performing the list maintenance activities required by law, seems wholly insufficient to satisfy the requirements of PA Title 25 § 1901 and other election laws.

The constituents in these counties feel that the county has failed to provide transparency or confidence around the way they maintain their voter rolls and administer their elections. This lack of confidence is amplified by the major issues many of these counties have had around their handling of elections over the last several years, which has lead to many stories that have made national news.

It is ATVPA’s hope that this report serves as a needed wake up call to Pennsylvania’s State & County Governments and its residents about the need to sufficiently adhere to election law, perform legally-required list maintenance activities, and to work with their constituents to create transparency and confidence in Pennsylvania elections.

See the full report here:
www.auditthevotepa.com/reports-media

Toni L. Shuppe
Audit The Vote PA
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