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Pennsylvania lawmakers need to update the century-old Election Code to fix the most labor-intensive processes and make the voting experience as uniform as possible, the state’s top election official says.
Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schimdt made the comments during a conversation moderated by Votebeat reporter Carter Walker at an event at Dickinson College. The event was hosted by Keep Our Republic, a nonpartisan nonprofit whose mission is strengthening elections.
Schmidt addressed challenges that surfaced during the 2024 election, the changes he believes should be made to Pennsylvania’s election laws, and the security resources he hopes the federal government will continue to offer.
Below are highlights of the conversation, edited for brevity and clarity. (Watch the full conversation on Keep Our Republic’s Facebook page.)
Walker: What were you most worried about ahead of the 2024 election, and what most surprised you on Election Day and the weeks after?
Schmidt: It's been interesting looking back at all the things we spent so much time discussing in forums, and so much time preparing for with our attorneys and all the rest, for what could possibly interfere with the tabulation of election results, certification of the election at the county level, at the state level. That was definitely one thing that we did not, at the end of the day, encounter. There was concern about county commissioners refusing to certify election results even without any evidence of voter fraud or election irregularities or anything else like that. But I am not saying that with any amount of regret. It’s important for us to prepare for every possible scenario that we might encounter.
At the end of the day, the 2024 election in Pennsylvania, I believe, went pretty smoothly. We had a couple of issues. One was in Cambria County as you know, another sort of the typical issues one encounters on election morning. … There's just so many things that occur and it's really a matter of being as prepared as you can …. But I think we prepared for a lot more trouble than we encountered in terms of election administration.
Walker: In 2024, we saw bomb threats, poll workers acting outside of their authority, a deficit of experienced election officials, and what you mentioned on Cambria County. What lessons did you take away from these and other challenges about how we can harden our elections against future outside threats and make sure citizens trust the integrity of the process?
Schmidt: When you're heading into an election, there's the things you mitigate against occurring, and then there's the things you can't prevent from occurring but you are prepared for. That's one reason why [Gov. Josh Shapiro’s] administration set up the Election Threats Task Force in advance of the election, essentially copying a system that had been in place less formally under the Wolf administration. … Fortunately, we worked with our federal partners, including [the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency]. They were very helpful in making sure that we were aware of threats targeting our cybersecurity infrastructure, our physical security, security of our voters, security of our polling places, the security of our election workers both at the precinct and the county level. So we were very grateful for the resources that CISA provided in the 2024 election, and whether it is CISA or some other entity, I’m hopeful that will continue in the future.
Walker: What impacts will the layoffs and program pauses at CISA have on election officials’ access to security resources and information?
Schmidt: All the changes with CISA and all the rest have all happened so recently. It's a little difficult, as of yet, to assess the impact that might or might not have [on] the current and future election cycles. But one thing I know is that every state can't do this on their own. Idaho can't do this on its own. Pennsylvania can't do this on its own — providing an assessment of global threats seeking to undermine confidence in elections or disrupt the process of voting. No state has the sort of global perspective on international threats to our election infrastructure that our federal partners do. So I am hopeful that once it all gets sorted out in the new administration, our states and our counties can continue to rely on those partners.
Walker: What problems do counties face from having an Election Code that was written nearly 100 years ago? What needs to be updated and how can we make sure election administrators are part of that conversation?
Schmidt: It's been a frustration in the past when laws get passed and the people actually responsible for implementing those laws and administering those elections really never have their voice heard in the crafting of legislation. That obviously leads to problems down the road. … How do you allow for some degree of flexibility — because counties face different challenges — to make sure that counties can serve their voters best? But also, how can you make sure that you're strengthening confidence in the system so all voters are treated equally and a ballot is not counted in one county that is counted in a different county? I think that does harm to the system.
So you want to make sure you have uniformity in terms of how voters are treated, in terms of their accessibility as best you can, and certainly in terms of what ballots are counted and not counted. … At the end of the day, it really comes down to the legislature really confronting many of these challenges that are evident to everyone, whether it is precanvassing or our time-consuming, labor-intensive version of early voting in Pennsylvania, or other issues. We really need the legislature to fully engage and to resolve unresolved issues from Act 77 and bring about greater uniformity in the application of our Election Code.
Editor’s note: precanvassing means allowing counties to begin processing ballots ahead of Election Day. Act 77 is the law that allowed no-excuse mail voting.
Walker: Would giving the Department of State more authority to set the rules, like other states do, be a way to achieve more uniformity?
Schmidt: In my experience, and speaking with legislators as well, it's one of those things that everybody likes in theory but may not necessarily be willing … to provide the secretary of state with greater authority.
Walker: Last year we saw media organizations try to combat misinformation through pre-bunking, election officials doing so through transparency, and state officials such as yourself through the use of their bully pulpit, like your August letter to X CEO Elon Musk. Out of all the strategies to push back on untrue or misleading information, what was most effective?
Schmidt: I think there's a couple. One was to prioritize local sources of news over national sources of news. People may believe what they hear on MSNBC or may believe what they hear on Fox. But generally, most people believe what they hear on 6ABC [in Philadelphia] — the people who are talking about a big high school football game or talking about the weather that's coming tomorrow… When I was in a county, making sure to have time to sit down with local news reporters, to be available to them to talk about how the voters in that county should have confidence in their election directors and the elections being so well run. …
Different states and different counties have taken different approaches to election misinformation and disinformation. Like [former Maricopa County Recorder] Stephen Richer in Arizona, day and night, 24 hours a day — I have no idea how he slept — but he fought with everybody all the time. And by fought I mean corrected things that they said that were untrue. … Some other states completely ignore election misinformation and disinformation altogether and just sort of let it play out.
What we tried to do was closely keep an eye on it to see what was getting traction and see what was becoming viral so that we could communicate in a parallel structure, whether it's through interviews or through social media pages — we have a fact check page our communications department put together … — to make sure that we were sharing the truth parallel to whatever lies that we were encountering related to elections. Whether that is the right approach or not, whether there is a right way to do it or not, I don't know. That's the path we chose.
Walker: With the improvement that we saw in counties’ ability to count mail ballots, do you think we still need precanvassing?
Schmidt: I do. At the end of the day, in this election just like any other election, it always comes down to how close the election is before you know who won and who lost and by how much. … Just because counties have gotten better at it — and they have — that doesn't mean that that’s the way you should do it. It's a tremendous strain for our county partners. They shouldn't have to be working through the night, night after night, to process mail-in ballots. There are better ways to do it that other states do, red states and blue states. There's nothing partisan about it at all. It's never been an issue with precanvassing and any other state that I'm aware of.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the location of the event.
Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.
