Lawmakers want answers on Pa. noncitizen voters

Two Pennsylvania state lawmakers are making a disputed claim in a long-running, and possibly futile, effort by elections officials to determine how many non-U.S. citizens had registered to vote over the years.

On Tuesday, the lawmakers, Republican state Reps. Daryl Metcalfe and Garth Everett, issued a statement saying there had been confirmation that 11,198 foreign nationals had illegally registered to vote in Pennsylvania.

But that is not what state election officials said.

The Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees elections, first reported in July that it had identified 11,198 registered voters with some indicator they may not

have been a citizen. The department did not give a specific period of time for when those people registered, but said it searched every record in its database. All the names turned up in a search of the state driver license database; Pennsylvania allows residents to register to vote while

getting their license, and election officials reported a flaw in that system in 2016. That’s not where it ends. As a follow-up, the agency reached out to everyone on the list, and 1,915 responded they are eligible to vote, the state said. That could reflect the fact that some had become citizens after they got a driver’s license, either before or after they registered to vote. About 300 canceled their registration.

The department then forwarded

the rest, about 8,700 registrations, to county election offices to track down because they had undeliverable addresses or didn’t respond. Those registrations came from 64 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, according to state data.

Of that number, about 2,550 were in the process of being removed from voter rolls by the counties, a process that is required after someone does not vote for a certain period of time and does not respond to efforts to contact them.

Douglas Hill, the executive director of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, said counties have tried since then to contact the rest, but no data are available on what they found.

The total number of questioned registrations represented only a little more than one-tenth of 1 percent of the nearly 8.5 million people registered to vote in Pennsylvania.

WHAT STARTED THIS LINE OF INQUIRY?

In the fall of 2016, during a legislative hearing on the integrity of the state’s voting systems, then-Secretary of State Pedro Cortes, a Democrat, acknowledged someone who is not a citizen “may inadvertently register” while getting or updating a driver’s license.

The registration problem stemmed from electronic touch screens in state driver’s license centers that were programmed to give users the option to register to vote while getting new or updated licenses. The system showed noncitizens the voter registration option, even though they had already provided information showing that they were not citizens, officials said.

Election officials said the glitch had existed since the start of the state’s motor voter system, which was first authorized in 1995.