{"id":178075,"date":"2026-04-28T09:38:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T09:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/178075\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T09:38:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T09:38:07","slug":"pennsylvania-has-spent-1-4-million-updating-sure-voter-registration-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/178075\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania has spent $1.4 million updating SURE voter registration system"},"content":{"rendered":"

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania\u2019s free newsletter here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Pennsylvania\u2019s latest effort to upgrade its two-decade-old voter registration system has already cost nearly $1.4 million, according to records obtained by Votebeat and Spotlight PA. Officials hope the updated system will be ready for the 2027 elections. However, the state isn\u2019t saying much about where the project stands.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a departure for the Pennsylvania Department of State. This is the second time the department has attempted to update the aging Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, or SURE system. <\/p>\n

During the last project \u2014 which was canceled in late 2023 due to what the department said was the inability of the previous contractor to meet timetables and standards \u2014 a detailed timeline was available online as part of the public contract<\/a>. It showed specific dates for each project milestone. The new contract <\/a>does not contain a similar outline. <\/p>\n

This time around, the Department of State has declined to share the project\u2019s specific timeline, monthly progress reports, or reports of any issues that may have arisen so far. <\/p>\n

The department said these records reflect internal deliberations of the agency and releasing them could pose a security risk.<\/p>\n

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Pennsylvania officials announced last March that the Department of State had signed a $10.6 million contract<\/a> with Louisiana-based technology company Civix to upgrade the SURE system.<\/p>\n

SURE is a statewide database that is central to running elections. Counties use it to register voters and maintain their records, print pollbooks, process mail ballot applications, and carry out other administrative functions.<\/p>\n

The current system was built in the early 2000s and wasn\u2019t designed to handle the way elections are run now, particularly with mail voting. According to local election officials, it is also sometimes prone to crashes.<\/p>\n

The upgrade is intended to address these issues, as well as to integrate the system with other tools such as the state\u2019s lobbying disclosure system and campaign finance database, which have also faced complaints for not being user-friendly.<\/p>\n

At a budget hearing<\/a> in the state House last month, Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt received questions from lawmakers about the status of the project, but he didn\u2019t provide much insight into where the project stood. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe put out a [request for proposals] and less than a year ago signed it with a new vendor, and we\u2019ve been working with that vendor, informed by our county partners, on a replacement system,\u201d Schmidt said in response to one such question.<\/p>\n

In response to questions about the project, Amy Gulli, a spokesperson for the Department of State, said so far the department has been \u201cgathering requirements\u201d for the project\u2019s five aspects: voter registration, election administration preparation, election management, election night reporting, and campaign finance and lobbying disclosure. Once that is completed, data from the current system will be converted and brought into the new version.<\/p>\n

She added that the department is working closely with counties on the project to ensure that the system functions well for them once it is in full operation.<\/p>\n

County election directors who spoke with Votebeat and Spotlight PA didn\u2019t have any more insight on where the project stands.<\/p>\n

As for a timeline, Gulli said the department does not want to prioritize meeting a deadline over delivering a high-quality system, but that ideally the system will launch for counties to use in next year\u2019s municipal election.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Secretary Schmidt has said before, as a former county election official, he would never launch a new system to be used for the first time in a presidential election,\u201d Gulli said.<\/p>\n

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[16473,37,539,28,30,29,19865,85],"class_list":["post-178075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-capitol","tag-harrisburg","tag-pa","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-pennsylvania-secretary-of-state-al-schmidt","tag-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}