State improves election data transparency, with more upgrades to come

• Jordan Wilkie/WITF
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  As the democracy reporter for WITF, I will cover any kind of story that has to do with how we govern ourselves. That will include doing a lot of election coverage about how to access the ballot, how public officials administer elections, the technology used to run and secure elections, and the laws that govern it all.
  
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 PA Senate

Secretary of State Al Schmidt responds to questions from Senator Vincent Hughes, D-Philadelphia, about the administration of Donald Trump cutting back on federal resources aimed at blocking foreign interference in elections.

Pennsylvania’s election data is easier to access and interpret than it’s ever been, with more changes in the works to improve transparency, the state’s top election administrator said last week. 

The state has sold the ability to download bulk data on every voter in the state for $20, including vote history, party registration, voter age and more, but the files are convoluted and hard to handle. Downloading the statewide voter registration file and gaining any meaningful insight from it requires computer programming savvy and knowledge of county-by-county election administration. 

To make it easier for people to understand the data, the Department of State rolled out new data dashboards in late May. One covers 2024 general election vote history and registration. The other shows data on mail-in ballots. 

The department said it plans to post similar data interfaces for future elections. The information is also available for direct download and comes with an extensive data dictionary. 

This is part of a push by Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration to make elections more transparent, according to Secretary of State Al Schmidt. 

“ I think that’s important information that should be shared with voters, with campaigns, with journalists, with whomever, for any reason or no reason at all beyond idle curiosity,” Schmidt said. “That’s the point of transparency.” 

Schmidt, who leads the office overseeing statewide elections, started looking at election data as a private citizen in Philadelphia. He then became a city commissioner and helped run Philadelphia’s elections. In each of these roles, he has been frustrated with the state’s election data. 

“ When I started at the Department of State, it wasn’t accessible to me any more than it was accessible to anybody else,” he said. “Now that we have it in this format, it is accessible to me and it should be to every Pennsylvanian.”

To improve the department’s data offerings, Schmidt repurposed an empty position to hire an expert with a PhD in statistics. Schmidt says she has been vital to making the data more accessible to him and to the public.

But her work alone can only go so far. The state is also months into a years-long update to the antiquated software used for tracking voter information. The new voter registration interface should be ready for use in 2027, Schmidt previously said. 

The highest priorities include making it easier for counties to manage information on their ends, and providing  the public with easy-to-query data, he said.

Some information held by the state, like drivers license or Social Security numbers, can’t be shared.

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