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Department of State defends 22% voter-registration appropriation increase; explains accounting, on-demand forms and automatic registration benefits
Summary
Budget witnesses told lawmakers the voter-registration line increase reflects internal accounting of personnel costs and expanded on-demand mail registration and storage; the department said automatic voter registration improves accuracy and speed but could not quantify dollar savings.
A lawmaker asked why the governor’s budget included a roughly 22% increase for the Department of State’s voter-registration appropriation. Budget director Kim Mattis and Secretary Al Schmidt told the committee the rise largely reflects how staff time is charged internally and new operational costs for sending voter-registration forms on demand.
“...in the time after such a large election, it is normal for us to see an uptick in charges for staff charging time to that particular appropriation,” Kim Mattis said during questioning about the line-item increase. Mattis also described a recent initiative to let counties and individuals request voter-registration forms through an online portal; the department must stock, ship and store those forms, and Mattis said there is an approximate $44,000 expense related to making forms available and covering storage costs.
On automatic voter registration (AVR), Secretary Al Schmidt said the department sees efficiency and accuracy benefits — electronic registration avoids the extra processing time of paper forms — but he declined to quantify the taxpayer-dollar savings. “I wouldn’t be able to identify exactly how many taxpayer dollars are saved through that,” Schmidt said, adding that electronic registrations are processed faster and more accurately.
Several lawmakers raised concerns after constituents reported apparent mismatches between vehicle registration and voter rolls. Representative Devanzo described households that said they lost their local precinct registration after transferring vehicle ownership to a family member elsewhere. Schmidt replied that AVR is tied to driver’s-license transactions and that “no voter registration is moved without the consent of the voter.” He offered to follow up and review constituent cases where the department could not identify how the transfer occurred.
The department also told the committee that earlier PennDOT-driven issues that once allowed some noncitizens to see voter-registration prompts were fixed in prior years; Schmidt said noncitizens now do not interface with the AVR registration prompt. “Non citizens do not in any way interface with the voter registration system thanks to those changes,” Schmidt said.
Ending: Lawmakers pressed for clearer public outreach about the annual reporting and voter-registration processes; the department said it will continue outreach, provide information on websites and work with county partners to reduce confusion.
