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For years, if you wanted to pass a new election law in Pennsylvania, you were out of luck. The fact that Democrats and Republicans had split control of Harrisburg meant it was very difficult to agree on any changes.
But that may change as a result of last week’s election, when Democrats won full control of state government — the Senate, House, and governor’s office — for the first time in decades.
“There were two things on the ballot last Tuesday: the economy and democracy,” said Democratic state Rep. Izzy Smith-Wade-El. “So I think elections are going to be a top priority.”
Leaders of the fledgling trifecta are remaining tight-lipped about what their focus will be. Spokespeople for House Majority Leader Matt Bradford and current Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa declined to make the legislators available for interviews, referring instead to a statement from Gov. Josh Shapiro last week that the trifecta’s legislative agenda would be released soon.
Elections may not be the new government’s first priority. At a recent press conference, Shapiro specifically mentioned funding mass transit, raising the minimum wage, codifying abortion rights in the state constitution, building more housing, and offering survivors of child sexual abuse for whom the legal window has closed an opportunity to sue their abusers.
But election policy is one of the issues Democrats have consistently expressed interest in over the past few years, and they have sent strong signals about how they want to change it.
Early voting, preregistration, and more
Last year, state House Speaker Joanna McClinton, a Democrat who is expected to remain in that role, was the prime sponsor of an omnibus election bill that passed the lower chamber but died in the state Senate.
That bill would have created true early in-person voting, replacing the current cumbersome process of having voters request and fill out a mail ballot in person at the county elections office. It also would have mandated at least two mail ballot drop boxes in every county, required counties to adopt electronic pollbooks by 2027, and given counties more time to prepare mail ballots for counting before Election Day, a change counties have been clamoring for for years.
Democrats also recently sponsored a bill, which passed the state House with bipartisan support, to open up Pennsylvania’s primary elections to unaffiliated voters. And in a recent interview with Votebeat and Spotlight PA, Costa indicated an interest in allowing young people who will be 18 by Election Day to preregister to vote, and allowing eligible voters to register on Election Day. Pennsylvania already preregisters 17-year-olds, but some advocates have said that should be moved back to 16 years of age, as is the case in other states.
Shapiro mentioned many of those policies when he first ran for governor as well, and his staffers say they remain of interest.
Shapiro and Democratic Sen. Maria Collett, who will take over as her chamber’s majority leader next session, also said they are open to having Pennsylvania join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which aims to circumvent the Electoral College and elect the presidential candidate who wins the most votes nationwide.
Democratic state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, who sits on the House State Government Committee and also serves as the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, said Democrats’ main priority since the election has been deciding what they can do to “put more money in people’s pockets,” which echoes recent comments from the governor.
But Kenyatta agreed with Smith-Wade-El that, in part, concerns over democracy drove voters to the polls. He said Democrats’ wins were a reaction to gerrymandering in other states and the Trump administration’s efforts to interfere in elections, and so election law changes will be a “top five” priority for Democrats in the next session.
Kenyatta specifically mentioned preregistering young voters and early voting, among other reforms, as ways Democrats can increase trust and participation in elections.
“[These] are a host of things that I think have broad support among the people of Pennsylvania and that we should be able to move expeditiously here in a new session,” he said.
One issue that may not come up is expanding voter ID requirements. Pennsylvania currently has voters present ID only when voting for the first time at a new polling place. While stricter voter ID measures are popular with a majority of Pennsylvanians, and some House Democrats have voted for such a policy in the recent past, the voter ID push was primarily seen as a bargaining chip in sessions when Republicans controlled the state Senate.
In recent years, Republicans refused to consider any election legislation if it wasn’t accompanied by an amendment enshrining stricter voter ID rules in the state constitution. Democrats never agreed.
Now that Republican votes will not be necessary to pass new legislation, Democrats have so far not mentioned voter ID as part of their 2027-2028 agenda.
Make things easier, not more complicated, counties say
New voting rules can sometimes create new issues. When the Pennsylvania legislature passed Act 77, the 2019 law that authorized no-excuse mail voting, it didn’t consider some of the measure’s logistical implications.
For instance, the law didn’t give election administrators time before Election Day to prepare mail ballots for counting, a process known as precanvassing. That led to severely delayed results in 2020.
Act 77 also lacked clearly defined rules for allowing voters to fix issues with their mail ballots.
The measure borrowed much of its language from an older law governing absentee ballots, a more restrictive mail voting method that requires an excuse. That law required voters to write the date on the return envelope. In the past if voters forgot, county election directors often simply called them — an informal form of ballot curing.
But after no-excuse mail voting substantially increased the number of ballots with these errors, they became highly scrutinized because there were potentially enough of them to sway election outcomes. Whether to accept them, reject them, or allow voters to fix their mistakes became points of serious contention.
Many of these issues have had to be worked out in the courts, rather than by the legislature, as a result of the impasse in Harrisburg.
Fresh off these experiences, counties have their own election legislation priorities, which the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania adopted as part of its official platform over the summer. They revolve around making the process smoother and more efficient.
A unified government may make the association’s goals easier to attain.
“Divided government was challenging whenever it came to negotiations or understanding priorities between the different caucuses,” Kyle Kopko, executive director of CCAP, said. “That makes sense given that there are ideological differences and they are members of different parties, but we at least have some more certainty, I think going into the next legislature.”
One of election directors’ top priorities is more time to precanvass mail ballots. Because counties currently cannot open ballot envelopes and prepare the ballots for counting before Election Day, it creates a strain on their resources. Counties have had to buy new equipment, hire large numbers of temporary staff, and effectively manage two elections — one by mail, and one in person — on Election Day in order to process ballots quickly enough that conspiracy theories don’t start spreading.
Democratic state Rep. Scott Conklin said giving counties more time to process mail ballots is something he and his colleagues have been focused on for years. He said he is already preparing to reintroduce a bill on the subject when the new session starts.
County election officials are also remaining watchful, hoping to prevent the kinds of pitfalls they saw after the last big election law change.
Laura Anna, the Venango County election director noted that any new voting rules would require more resources.
“Funding is always an issue as we add more and more service, like on-demand voting,” she said. “You end up needing more manpower, and obviously [upgrading] aging equipment.”
Thad Hall, the election director for Mercer County, said the legislature also needs to consider the differences between counties and make sure processes are clearly defined when writing new laws.
As an example, he said McClinton’s 2025 bill was light on specifics as to how precanvassing was to be conducted. He also said that legislation’s requirement to empty drop boxes daily didn’t consider the limited resources at many counties’ disposal. By Hall’s calculation, 29 counties have two or fewer full-time staffers in their election office, which means needing to empty drop boxes would divert a significant amount of their manpower in the already strenuous weeks leading up to the election.
“That just puts stress on people. It opens up the possibility we will have Election Day errors,” he said.
The legislature, Hall said, needs to look to other states as examples and consult with local election officials.
But he is optimistic that will happen. He said he met McClinton at an event before she introduced her bill and she gave him her contact information. He later reached out to tell her that antiquated language in state law was causing an issue with the way voter registration records are transferred between counties. When McClinton’s bill was introduced, Hall was pleased to see that it contained a fix for the issue.
Hall said he doesn’t know for sure that inclusion was because of his outreach, but the episode gave him confidence in McClinton. “I think that she is understanding that there are needs in elections that [she] and her staff are not aware of, and from everything I have seen she is amenable to addressing those issues.”
Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.
