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HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s Motor Voter system “works as intended,” but needs some improvements to avoid human error, an audit released Friday by the state’s auditor general found. The Motor Voter system is a program established by federal law that allows potential voters to register when acquiring a driver’s license.
Over nearly two years, the Pennsylvania Auditor General queried more than 200,000 voter applications from PennDOT and flagged 58 as potentially belonging to noncitizens. A closer examination found just one was an actual noncitizen who had been allowed to apply to vote — a result of human error, not the Motor Voter system itself.
The noncitizen notified PennDOT of the error themself, and it was corrected before they left the PennDOT facility, PennDOT said. The person is not registered to vote.
DeFoor said the issue was a result of “human error” in which a PennDOT employee left blank the field that would have flagged the individual as a noncitizen, allowing them to fill out a voter registration application. DeFoor said after the noncitizen was identified by the audit, PennDOT notified the Department of State about the error.
“Pennsylvanians need to know that the Motor Voter process works, but the internal controls and security protocols around it must improve,” DeFoor said in a statement.
DeFoor recommended changes to strengthen the Motor Voter process, including allowing PennDOT to void applications when errors occur, and recommending that PennDOT follow up with the Pennsylvania Department of State to ensure the one noncitizen was not registered to vote.
A spokesperson for PennDOT said the one noncitizen identified by the audit represented a 0.0% error rate.
“The error was immediately addressed, and the driver record was corrected before the customer even left the center,” Alexis Campbell, press secretary for PennDOT, said. “Ultimately, the audit confirms that PennDOT was and remains in compliance with both state and federal elections regulations.”
Campbell said the individual “is not” registered to vote in Pennsylvania but didn’t immediately respond to a follow-up question about if they had been registered at some point as a result of the error. The Department of State did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the voter’s registration status.
Another 57 voter registration applications were initially flagged as needing further review of the applicants’ citizenship status, but those were all determined to be from actual citizens and were flagged because of a mistake in the way PennDOT initially searched its records for the audit.
DeFoor stressed that the audit, which he said was requested by state legislators, was not intended to serve as an examination of the state’s voter roll system or a specific search for noncitizen voting. Instead, it served as a limited examination of the mechanics of the Motor Voter system, including how the system ensures noncitizens do not apply to register.
The audit follows concerns expressed by Republicans after Gov. Josh Shapiro in 2023 switched the state’s Motor Voter program from an opt-in model — where prospective voters obtaining a new driver’s license or ID card must affirmatively choose to register to vote — to an opt-out model where voters would automatically fill out an application unless they requested not to.
Those registration applications then go to counties for final approval.
Some Republicans expressed concern at the time that the switch could mistakenly register ineligible voters, since legally present noncitizens are eligible for driver’s licenses in Pennsylvania. They cited a previous issue with the program, revealed in 2017, in which a glitch in the system allowed noncitizens to register.
After the error was revealed, state officials said it was fixed by changing PennDOTs system to allow noncitizens to be specifically flagged by PennDOT staff. Those noncitizens would then be prevented from accessing the voter registration pages within the system.
In September 2024, DeFoor, a Republican, announced he was going to audit the program, a move the conservative Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus applauded and said it had requested. DeFoor’s audit covered a six month period between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2024.
DeFoor was also running for reelection at the time, and PennDOT Secretary Michael Carroll accused DeFoor of “politicizing his office” by “furthering the disproven myth that non-citizens are registering or voting,” but said that PennDOT would comply.
Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.