Pennsylvania gets online voter registration

As of last Thursday, Pennsylvania residents can now do one more thing on their laptops and smartphones — register to vote.

After realizing a 2002 voter registration amendment already gave them approval, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and Secretary of State Pedro Cortes announced last week that Pennsylvania could begin registering voters online. Wolf and Cortes previously thought approving online legislation would require additional legislation.

Pennsylvania joins 22 other states that already offer online voter registration. The new online registration form makes it easier for voters to register — and makes it more likely they’ll register in the first place, according to Wanda Murren, spokesperson for Cortes.

As of Wednesday afternoon, 4,859 people had already registered to vote through the new online form, which went live 10 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 27, Murren said. About two-thirds of those who have registered online since last week are new voters, Murren said.

“Everyone expects this to be welcomed by young people,” Murren said.

According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, online voter registration typically costs states approximately $240,000 to build and implement, but the savings and increase in voting participation quickly offset the startup cost. In Colorado, for example, voter registration increased 13 percent from 2008 to 2012 after the state introduced online registration.

A little more than eight million Pennsylvanians are currently registered to vote.

Murren said she expects that number to increase now that voters don’t need to fill out a physical copy of the form, drop it off at their local county building and field phone calls from staff to fix any mistakes they may have made. The online system will help prevent errors, Murren said, as it will not allow voters to submit incomplete forms. If they wish, Pennsylvanians can still register in person.

Murren said the online system will also save time and resources in county clerks offices, where staff members manually enter voting registration data into a computer system.

Pennsylvania State Sen. Lloyd Smucker (R-Lancaster) had introduced a bill in January to allow online registration, but the bill died in the House State Government Committee, according to Smucker’s spokesperson Diane McNaughton.

The Senator still got his wish though, as Cortes’ and Wolf’s staff later found a clause in a 2002 act amending a Pennsylvania voter registration statute that gave the Governor and the Secretary of State the power to put voter registration forms online.

The act, in part, said, “nothing … shall prohibit the design and use of an electronic voter registration application.”

At Pitt, it is part of Student Government Board Governmental Relations Chair Pat Corelli’s job to raise student voting activity, and with the new online system in place, he can help register more students in less time, he said.

To take the hassle out of filling out a physical voter registration form and dropping it off at the county office,  SGB previously told students to drop completed forms in the mail rooms around Litchfield Towers, where Corelli and other members of the governmental relations committee would collect them and drive them to the county office.

Corelli said the governmental relations committee will market the online registration to students through a public service announcement on televisions around campus. Corelli said the committee will also hold registration drives where they will register students one by one on laptops.

Though he wasn’t sure of an exact number, Corelli said SGB registered around 40 students last year. Corelli said he expects online registration and the upcoming 2016 election to increase student participation this year.

Because Corelli also works closely with Oakwatch, a branch of the Oakland Planning and Development Corporation, and Pittsburgh City Council as part of his role as chairman, he hopes students will register so they can have a voice in local leadership.

“When we don’t vote, it becomes a problem because we don’t have a seat at the table, especially with local government,” Corelli said. “We want students to have a voice when it comes to City Council and OPDC.”

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story said Gov. Wolf and Secretary Cortes used a 2002 voting rights act amendment to put voter registration forms online. Wolf and Cortes used a 2002 voter registration amendment. This story has been updated to reflect this change.