Harrisburg, Pennsylvania – March 31, 2025 – Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (“RITE”), a non-profit organization that supports litigation to protect election security and integrity, today filed a motion for summary judgment in its case seeking to restore common sense to how Pennsylvania verifies the identity of those registering to vote. RITE requested Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court strike down a 2018 Department of State directive which purports to force county election officials to register individuals even when they provide identifying information on their applications that does not match corresponding information found in official government databases.
That directive, which instructed local officials to ignore discrepancies in information such as driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers, contradicts state law, which requires that information provided on registration applications be complete and consistent. It also amounts to an unlawful rulemaking.
“Pennsylvania law requires county commissioners … to review new voter registration applications for completeness and consistency before accepting them,” read the original suit, which was filed on behalf of a member of the Potter County Board of Elections on November 4, 2024. “This, in turn, requires commissioners to use accessible databases to evaluate whether the driver’s license numbers or the last four digits of social security numbers supplied on the application match the name of the applicant.”
Even with this requirement in state law, the Department of State twice erroneously informed county commissioners – once in 2006 and again in 2018 – that the law demanded the opposite, and ordered elections officials to register individuals even when their identifying information did not match.
“It’s madness to ask officials to crosscheck an individual’s identifying information on voter registration forms with official databases and when that information doesn’t match demand local officials accept the registration,” said RITE Spokesman Tim Murtaugh. “Inaccurate voter registrations are at the root of many of our election integrity and administration problems and they need to be fixed. RITE’s suit seeks to restore sanity and integrity to Pennsylvania’s registration system and we are confident the court will agree that the Department of State’s directive is unlawful.”
RITE is seeking immediate court intervention to strike down the directive, restore election officials’ ability to verify voters’ identity, and prevent fraudulent or duplicate registrations from undermining election integrity.
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