Officials in Harrisburg are very pleased with the state’s new online voter registration system.
Its implementation has gone off without a hitch so far, with almost 5,000 PA residents registering to vote online in less than a week since the system’s launch.
“We were confident that Pennsylvanians would welcome online voter registration,” Secretary of State Pedro Cortes said in a statement announcing the reaching of the small milestone. “The numbers in the first days bear witness to what we predicted – that the online application will soon become the preferred option for eligible citizens who wish to register or make changes in their registration.”
PA is the 23rd state in the country to implement an online voter registration system and offers the application in English and Spanish.
“Online voter registration is about making the voting experience more convenient and more accessible,” Governor Wolf when register.votesPA.com was launched on Aug 27. “It is about giving citizens an easier way to exercise their right to vote and establishing a clearer connection between the political system and the citizens.”
Wolf’s efforts to expand voting access are a far cry from the GOP attempt to institute voter ID laws not so long ago and its success would be a victory for him.
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Registrations for June and July averaged about 20,000 voters each month. This is slightly higher than the 15,000 per month average of the preceding 12 months. There might have been a slight bump due to special elections.
Registrations for August (as of the Sunday night dump, that didn’t include Monday 31st), were just under 19,000.
So, the 5,000 appears to be a significant percentage of registrations, and the final August number should be a bit better.
However, it’s unclear how much of this is an increase vs a shift of people going online instead.