State picks vendor for new voter registration system
Current SURE system has history of slow connections, crashes
The Pennsylvania Department of State has chosen a Louisiana-based tech company to create a new voter registration management system that will replace an aging network plagued by slow and failed connections.
Civix, a software and services company that specializes in public sector work, was awarded a $10.6 million contract for the job that will also include consolidating election night vote totals and campaign finance and lobbying registration records and reports into one system.
“Right now, those are all entirely sort of independent entities,” Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said in an interview with Armchair Lehigh Valley Wednesday, when the state announced the contract with Civix. “This will help integrate them all in a way that I think will be much more user-friendly and transparent and serve the public and our county partners well.”
Pennsylvania has been using a 22-year-old management system for its Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, also known as SURE.
While Pennsylvania counties maintain their own voter registration records, federal law requires states to ensure the data is held in a centralized system that is secure and ensures accuracy.
Civix will do the work in phases. Schmidt said he hopes the system will be completed by 2028, but said it won’t be put into action for the first time in a presidential election year. Ideally the new system would be used before then.
“It's very important to me,” he said, “that we not roll out a system or introduce a new system at the same time as counties are running a presidential general election, with all the challenges that come along with that, with the avalanche of voter registration applications and mail-in ballot applications and all the rest.”
Schmidt said the timeline will be set by Civix when it submits its detailed plan.
Current SURE system
Each county election office maintains its voter rolls through SURE. Under the system, each new voter who meets eligibility requirements is given a unique registration number. Election offices have instant access to the data so they can add, modify or delete information should a voter move, change party registration or die.
The data also is used to create poll books for voting precincts and track mail-in ballots from request to receipt at election offices. The system tracks if voters cast ballots but not how they voted.
The system is not connected to the internet. Instead, counties sign in via dedicated computers.
While ongoing upgrades have been made over the years, counties have complained about SURE for years.
“Counties routinely experience technical difficulties with the SURE system, including slow speeds or even full system crashes that make it impossible to process voter registrations and ballot applications in a timely fashion, unnecessarily increasing county workloads,” according to a 2021 report from the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania.
Mail-in voting, which was used for the first time in 2020, further strained the system.
Previous contract canceled
In December 2020, when Democrat Tom Wolf was governor, the Department of State signed a nearly $10.7 million contract for a new system with BPro Inc., an election software vendor from South Dakota. The end date of the contract was Dec. 27, 2024.
Two months after the signing, KNOWiNK, an election software company based in Missouri, announced it had acquired BPro.
When Schmidt came on board in the Department of State in early 2023, first as acting secretary, he said it was clear that the new SURE was behind schedule.
The deadline for completion had been pushed back “multiple times,” according to the Department of State.
Schmidt previously said that it was a mutual decision with KNOWiNK to end the contract. He said the state was able to claw back the $720,000 that the state paid to KNOWiNK in 2023. KNOWiNK did not respond to an email seeking comment.
He said the Department of State did not recover the approximate $1.7 million that had been spent by the Wolf administration.
Meanwhile, upgrades were implemented to the existing SURE in the last two years to help election offices deal with the expanded work that happens in a presidential election year.
The upgrades included new computers with updated software that improved connectivity and the ability to handle high volumes of data.
“The SURE system has served us very well,” Schmidt said Wednesday. “I don't want to leave you with the impression that the SURE system is unreliable. We took some really important steps in 2023 and in early 2024 to replace every county's hardware, to upgrade every county’s connectivity to the current SURE system so that it would be reliable when they are processing a significant volume of voter registration and mail-in ballot applications.”
Counties had input into the process that led to the selection of Civix, he said.
In addition to the voter registry, Schmidt said the Department of State felt it was time to upgrade other systems connected to elections, including the real-time reporting of election night results.
Civix was among seven companies that had submitted proposals that were first requested in May.
Schmidt said the Department of State will use money previously allocated for the project and funding in the current budget to pay for the Civix contract.
He said his department has hired a chief modernization officer to make sure the project stays on track.
Civix has election system contracts with more than 20 states, including Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Texas and Connecticut.
Civix CEO Phillip Braithwaite said in the state’s press release that he was proud to be partnering with Pennsylvania.
“We are committed to delivering innovative, future-ready solutions that enhance transparency, efficiency, and accessibility in election administration and ethics oversight.”