What Security Measures Does Pennsylvania Take To
protect ballots?
Pennsylvania follows national best practices to strengthen its voting systems and ensure that every election in the Commonwealth is accurate and secure.
Secure Machines
Pennsylvania only uses approved, certified voting machines that are not connected to the internet. The machines are selected by each county, and certified by the state. These machines are publicly tested routinely ahead of each election to ensure they will provide accurate results.
No. There is no evidence that voting machine tampering has affected the results of any election in Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania always conducts routine testing and maintenance on its voting machines, and voting machines are not connected to the internet.
In the weeks after the 2020 election, there was a small but notable attempt to improperly inspect one county’s voting machines. Individuals associated with Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign allegedly tampered with voting machines in Fulton County, Pennsylvania and improperly allowed a third party to access their election database and take hard and thumb drive images.
The machines involved in this incident have been decertified and replaced. They have not been used since the 2020 general election.
Chain-of-Custody
Ballots in Pennsylvania are subject to strict “chain of custody” requirements, which means that election officials are legally required to monitor and track all ballots from the moment they are cast – no matter how they were cast – through each stage of the process.
County election officials and their staff regularly collect absentee and mail-in ballots from secure drop boxes and securely transfer them to the county election board or the ballot counting facility. Completed mail-in or absentee ballots mailed by voters to their county election board are securely stored until they are processed and tabulated. Afterwards, they are stored in a secure facility for at least 22 months, as required by law.
Ballots voted in person at polling places are transferred to secure containers, safely transported to the county election board, and stored for at least 22 months.
