The Pennsylvania Department of State (DOS) announced that it has signed a $10.6 million contract with Louisiana-based Civix to upgrade its election management system.

The technology company will work with DOS to replace the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, commonly known as the SURE system, that has been in use in the Commonwealth since 2003.

The new system will be implemented in phases and will ultimately provide a streamlined, one-stop-shop elections administration experience for the Department, county elections boards, candidates, political committees, and lobbyists.

According to Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, the replacement for SURE has been a long time coming.

“The SURE system has served us well and will continue to for a little bit longer,” said Schmidt. “But it has struggled with the changes in election administration that we’ve seen, especially over the past five years. It was designed to handle a relatively small number of absentee ballots, but in 2020, half of our votes were cast by mail, and that has certainly been a challenge. It has required significant upgrades and adaptations along the way and, over time, gets to be expensive.

“Imagine having an iPhone from 2003,” he continued. “It doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. It doesn’t mean it’s not reliable. It’s just more of a challenge to work with. And our counties deserve the best election administration system that we can provide.”

Schmidt said that there were lessons learned from the Department’s failed venture to replace SURE earlier in the decade. The department canceled a contract in 2023 with KNOWiNK after concluding that the company could not meet the timeline and contractual standards, according to an email sent to counties at the time.

“We have brought on a chief modernization officer and project manager to make sure that this whole process moves without any unnecessary starts and stops along the way,” said Schmidt, a former Philadelphia City Commissioner for elections. “We listened to our counties on the front end of the procurement process, sat down with them, brought them into the conversation, because they are our customers. They are the people who interface with the SURE system every day. We wanted to make sure that we are delivering a product that is really what they want.”

Schmidt indicated that the new system will be more user friendly, not only to counties for voter registration, but also for campaign finance reporting and lobbying disclosure. The goal is to increase overall transparency.

“You want to make it as searchable as possible so that it is user friendly,” said the Secretary. “But more importantly to the public, who has a right to have access to any public information.”

The new system will take over the responsibilities of the Department’s current election night returns website which includes rolling results from counties after the polls close on each election night, providing voters, candidates, and members of the media with comprehensive unofficial election results. Visitors to the site can customize their searches, receive timely updates, view results on mobile devices, use a location-based service through the “My County” link to instantly bring up their county’s election returns, and connect to each county’s election results website.

“Civix is proud to partner with Pennsylvania to implement a scalable, secure, and adaptable system that meets the evolving needs of voters, election officials, and the public,” said Phillip Braithwaite, CEO of Civix. “We are committed to delivering innovative, future-ready solutions that enhance transparency, efficiency, and accessibility in election administration and ethics oversight. As more states recognize the need to modernize their election systems, Civix is proud to be the trusted partner leading this transformation, and we commend the Commonwealth for embracing a modern, integrated approach.”

Although there are three years until the next presidential election, Schmidt says he is aware that time is fleeting and that the finished project has to be delivered sooner than later.

“It’s important to pay attention to the timeline for every deliverable along the way, because before you know it, days can become weeks, and weeks can become months,” he said. “That sets you behind. The first deliverable from the vendor will be a timeline that will help guide us along the way and make sure that we are on track.”

Is there a hard and fast deadline for completion and implementation?

“It is always risky to say when something will be done or not,” Schmidt said. “But having run elections, you don’t want to introduce a new system in the most difficult election cycle. That’s why I’m determined to complete all of this in advance of 2028 so that our county elections directors will have some experience with it prior to that challenging cycle.”

“All 67 counties want this project to succeed – we want a new voter registration system that can move this state and the counties into 21st century election administration,” said Lycoming County Director of Elections and Registration Forrest Lehman.

Schmidt also expressed guarded optimism that the General Assembly is willing to tackle some of the issues that have been raised in recent election cycles, especially around early voting.

“I would say there are encouraging signs,” he shared. “The (2024) election went very smoothly in Pennsylvania, so I feel like the temperature is a lot lower. So I’m hopeful that legislators will be more open to addressing commonsense bipartisan solutions to some of the challenges our county election directors and voters face.

“One of them is that we have early voting in every way except by name. It is the most complicated and most time-consuming method of doing so. It’s clear that there’s an interest in early voting in Pennsylvania. I think that’s evident by the long lines that we saw.”

The current process involves applying for a mail ballot at the local county elections office, waiting 15 minutes for approval, before receiving a ballot to complete. This taxes an understaffed office and takes office workers away from other election preparation work.

“Voters show up and they get frustrated,” said Schmidt. “Because they think it’s really voting where they walk in, cast your vote, and they’re out of there in two minutes.”

After 22 years with the SURE system, Schmidt acknowledges that the time has come to make the change for the citizens of Pennsylvania.

“It’s really about modernizing the process to provide our counties with the best voter registration and mail-in ballot application system that we can that will help them better serve their voters.”