Pa. election chief: state elections are 'safe and secure'

Apr. 17—HARRISBURG — Less than a week remains until in-person voting opens for Pennsylvania's primary election, and Commonwealth Secretary Al Schmidt stressed Wednesday that state elections are "free, fair, safe and secure."

Amid a visit to elections officials in Blair and Cambria counties, Schmidt gave his third in a series of online daily updates ahead of Tuesday's primary — this one about election security.

The updates are available at www.pacast.com and on the Department of State's Facebook page.

Unfounded allegations of potential widespread voter fraud persist following the 2020 presidential election. Legislative Republicans continue to pursue legal changes they say would make elections more secure such as eliminating ballot drop boxes, using anti-fraud ballot paper and instituting universal voter ID at all elections.

Some Democrats in the General Assembly have found some common ground with Republicans on election security, at least in terms of talking points, on potential risks to cybersecurity. Aside from that, they've maintained a position that elections are secure and have instead focused on ensuring voter access and defending mail-in voting, insisting that any perceived loss of election integrity is due to baseless claims of fraud.

In his update Wednesday, Schmidt said the Department of State maintains a year-round focus on election security. He spoke of continuous training including tabletop exercises designed to simulate potential real-life risks to elections and how state and local government could respond.

He also spoke of the Pennsylvania Election Threats Task Force, an ad hoc group of governmental agencies and law enforcement from the federal, state and local levels led by Schmidt himself. Formed out of a prior initiative begun in 2018, Schmidt said the task force is meeting regularly to mitigate unspecified threats to elections, protect voters from intimidation and provide "accurate, trusted election information."

Lastly, Schmidt touched on election systems and election audits.

He spoke of the election machine upgrades in all 67 counties since 2020 that include a voter-verifiable paper record of all ballots cast, and how counties test these systems ahead of each election.

Schmidt endured critiques by Republicans earlier this year about canceled plans — plans made before the Shapiro Administration took hold — to replace Pennsylvania's Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors system for maintaining voter rolls.

Simply put, he has said the timing was poor since it would have coincided with this year's presidential election cycle. A replacement system will be pursued in the future, he has said, but until then all counties have since had hardware or software as well as connectivity upgrades to support SURE.

On Wednesday, Schmidt stressed how two audits are conducted to ensure the accuracy of elections. There is a statistical recount of ballots by each county along with a risk-limiting audit used to confirm election outcomes and detect errors.

"RLAs can confirm that voting systems tabulated paper ballots accurately and accurately enough that a full hand count would produce the same outcome," Schmidt said.