Keystone Today

The state House passed legislation this week that requires information from the Election Registration Information Center (ERIC) to be used to remove deceased voters from the voter rolls. The legislation was passed with both Republican and Democrat votes.

State Rep. Seth Grove (R-York), chairman of the State Government Committee and one of the sponsors of the bill, said that the legislation will help increase voter confidence in the election process.

“This bill moves us toward regaining their confidence,” Grove, a champion of election reform in the House, said in a statement. “Our bipartisan bill not only makes sure Pennsylvania’s voter rolls are kept up-to-date, more so than what they are now, it also eliminates many misconceptions of the large amounts of the dead rising to vote again.”

Grove worked with Democrat Scott Conklin (Centre) on the legislation. Conklin is minority chairman of the committee.

Both said that the legislation would help keep voter rolls updated using ERIC, a nonprofit that assists states in maintaining accurate voter rolls, as an additional source.

Last April, a public interest law firm specializing in voter integrity, Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), reached a settlement with the Department of State to remove deceased voters from rolls.

Before PILF filed its lawsuit against the Department, it presented it with the names of at least 21,000 deceased registrants who were still on the Pennsylvania voter rolls less than a month before the 2020 presidential election.

In a statement, PILF noted that data that 9,212 of the deceased registrants had been dead for at least five years, 1,990 had been dead for at least 10 years, and 197 had been dead for at least 20 years. In addition, PILF noted in a release that hundreds of registrants showed post-death voting credits for the 2016 elections, the 2018 elections, or both.

“This marks an important victory for the integrity of elections in Pennsylvania,” PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said at the time. “The Commonwealth’s failure to remove deceased registrants created a vast opportunity for voter fraud and abuse. It is important to not have dead voters active on the rolls for 5, 10, or even 20 years. This settlement fixes that.”