Pa. breaks past 9M voters at deadline for registration

HARRISBURG — Monday was the last day in Pennsylvania to register to vote in the Nov. 3 election in which the presidential battleground state is playing a central role in the contest between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.

Voter registration in Pennsylvania has already hit a record high in this cycle.

The number of state voters has passed 9 million, state elections official said Monday. That includes more than 4.2 million Democrats, more than 3.5 million Republicans, just over 895,000 independents and about 407,000 voters registered with another party.

Democrats hold a substantial registration edge, but Republicans have narrowed the gap by about 200,000 from 2016’s presidential election to about 700,000 now, thanks in part to Democratic party-switchers.

State data also shows that, through Sept. 10, about 200,000 more Democrats than Republicans who did not vote in 2016 have since canceled their registration.

That happened either due to requesting cancellation, dying, moving out of state, being successfully challenged as ineligible or not responding to voter list maintenance notices.

In 2016, voter registration was just over 8.7 million and 6.1 million people voted. Thanks to Pennsylvania’s year-old law that greatly expanded mail-in voting, many more people are voting earlier.

As of Friday, just over 683,000 ballots had been returned, three-quarters of them by Democrats, according to state data.