Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt said Monday that turnover among experienced election officials in Pennsylvania counties is a “serious concern” ahead of the 2024 election. Schmidt said about 70 senior directors or people who reported directly to them have left, often meaning significant changes within the same county.
“When new election administrators come in — and I was one for 10 years — they are more likely to make mistakes in the execution of their very complex, very important and highly scrutinized duties, especially in an environment where any mistake, no matter how innocent, is so easily interpreted as intentional, malicious and intended to change the outcome of an election,” Schmidt said.
In 2020, Schmidt, who publicly rejected allegations of election fraud in Philadelphia, became a target of attack by former President Donald Trump. Schmidt testified before a House of Representatives committee on January 6, 2022, that he received graphic and specific threats against himself and his family after Trump tweeted about him in the days following the 2020 election.
In his speech Monday at the Pennsylvania Press Club’s monthly luncheon in downtown Harrisburg, Schmidt said such threats were a up-to-date phenomenon last year.
“I don’t know of any election director who, prior to 2020, was actually subject to death threats or anything like that,” he said, adding that this likely played a role in the election directors being detained.
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Schmidt said Monday that he had tried to meet in person with election officials in each of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties to see how the State Department can lend a hand — or not hinder — them.
“I know a lot about running elections in Philadelphia,” Schmidt said. “I don’t know anything about running elections in Elk County. I don’t know anything about running elections in Allegheny County, or I didn’t.”
Before becoming Secretary of the Commonwealth in 2023, Schmidt was president and CEO of the nonprofit good-government organization Committee of Seventy, after serving 10 years as a Philadelphia city commissioner. Part of his role as commissioner included serving on the three-member Board of Elections.
The Shapiro administration has been trying to streamline Pennsylvania’s voting process, Schmidt said, which has included upgrading county equipment and communications for the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors (SURE), Pennsylvania’s voter registration system. The equipment upgrade was completed last week, Schmidt said, while the communications portion is ongoing.
Shapiro’s executive order to make voter registration automatic at PennDOT centers has resulted in a 45% augment in voter registration activity, Schmidt said. It’s not just up-to-date voters, he added, but updates to addresses or party affiliations will lend a hand with voter roll accuracy.
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He also added that about the same number of people registered as Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Unaffiliated or other.
Shapiro’s proposed 2024-25 budget includes $5 million for voter education, Schmidt said, as well as funding for support positions for election directors and voter roll analysis. Any guidance issued to county election officials will be available on the DOS website, he said, barring any last-minute court decisions the state may have to comply with.
Schmidt declined to speculate on when the Third District Court might issue a ruling on mail-in ballots; on February 20, the court heard arguments on whether undated mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania can be counted. However, he noted that the state redesigned its mail-in ballots this year to try to minimize the risk of voters making mistakes.
“It’s terrible that we’re standing there with ballots cast by eligible registered voters who made a serious mistake when casting their ballot and it couldn’t be counted,” he said.
Pennsylvania changes the look of its absentee ballots for the 2024 election.
Asked what he learned from his time as Philadelphia city commissioner in 2020, Schmidt said he “takes the trust and stability of our election process for granted,” adding that he has always taken any allegations of voter fraud or election irregularities, even complicated ones, very seriously.
“Some are hard to investigate because there’s not a truckload of ballots being smuggled in by organized crime figures from South Philly or anything else that some of these stories were about in 2020,” he said. “But I think you always have to take these things seriously and investigate them, but give them time before you draw any conclusions about whether they have any basis in fact or not.”
Spreading accusations before they’re verified could ultimately have an impact on voter confidence, he added. “I can’t measure that, but I do believe it’s detrimental to voter turnout when people keep saying the election is rigged, or ‘your vote doesn’t matter,’ and so on. I think we all have a huge responsibility to make sure we’re all telling the truth about the election.”
Schmidt added that he is in constant contact with federal officials and state police to ensure that any threats against election administrators, “any attempts to hinder them from doing the important work that our entire system of government as a representative democracy relies on,” are taken seriously.
He choked up for a moment as he recounted his experiences with threats while trying to do his job in 2020. “I was able to continue working at the Pennsylvania Convention Center without a break or sleep for days while threats were being made to my family,” Schmidt said. “It’s important that election directors do what they can, and that our law enforcement partners do their jobs as well.”
