No one should be shocked that Pennsylvania’s Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors ( SURE ) system went down for about 90 minutes Thursday morning. The condition has known this for decades because of the state’s computer program, which accounts for the majority of state election activities.
Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt described the Positive program as a vote membership database that state board of votes” all day long” on” The Dom Giordano Show” on Philadelphia’s WPHT talk radio.
When citizens register, request a poll, are sent a ballot, or voting, every shift is marked in the Positive System. More than 9 million Pennsylvania people, every man registered to vote, have information in the SURE System.
” We had an interruption for about 90 minutes that prevented many regions from connecting to it earlier this morning, but it has since been again up,” Schmidt said. ” It was like 9: 45 to 11: 15 this night. Citizens who registered to vote by email, whether in person or by mail, are also eligible to do so. It did n’t prevent any of that”.
The SURE System has experienced issues for a while.
As I reported for The Epoch Times, in December 2019, Pennsylvania’s then-Auditor General Eugene DePasquale ( who is now running for attorney general ) wrote a withering, 192-page statement that found “internal control faults in the SURE System related to type and maintenance of voting records. The audit revealed examples of potential inaccuracies, which the report said should be sent to counties to be investigated”.
DePasquale’s report said his office could not , “assess the accuracy of the records maintained in the system” and “was unable to review security protocols of the system” because the Department of State “refused to cooperate with the investigation”.
The report’s authors recommended maintaining the voter rolls to prevent duplicate voter registrations and deceased voters, as well as 50 changes to State Department policies.
In light of what the report uncovered, DePasquale was “unable to establish with any degree of reasonable assurance that the SURE System is secure and that Pennsylvania voter registration records are complete, accurate, and in compliance with applicable laws, regulations, and related guidelines”.
Finally, the state decided to do something about it.
The Pennsylvania Department of State signed a$ 10 million contract on Dec. 28, 2020, with BPro, a South Dakota company, to create the SUREVote system to replace the SURE System. Less than two months later, BPro made the announcement that it had been acquired by a business called KNOWiNK, and that the new business would take over the contract that would continue until December 2024. (KNOWiNK is the creator of electronic voter lists that many people sign when casting ballots. )
While waiting for the replacement to be built, complaints about SURE continued.
In a report released in May 2021, the Pennsylvania House stated that the SURE System could not meet the demands of the mail-in voting system and the needs of the counties.
That report detailed issues with SURE that were discovered during hearings with county election workers.
Snyder County Commissioners and Board of Elections chairman Joseph Kantz addressed the committee about time being lost” when the SURE system is down.” It takes a while for the system to restart,” causing the processing of thousands of ballots to take longer.”
The report stated that Kantz also described the issues he encounters when the SURE system pulls alternate addresses. The system causes a mail-in ballot to be sent to the incorrect address when it is pulled from an alternate address.
County election workers said they were eager to begin implementing an improved system at the time.
However, the Department of State abruptly terminated that contract in December 2023, claiming that the work was in progress and that it was unsure whether the company would uphold the terms of the contract. By then, the state had paid$ 3.6 million to BPro and KNOWiNK, but had nothing to show for it.
There was not enough time to undergo the bidding process, choose a new contractor, and build a new system, so, nearly five years after DePasquale blew the whistle on the faulty SURE system, Pennsylvania is still using it in the 2024 election.  ,
The Department of State did not respond to inquiries regarding this story.
Beth Brelje covers The Federalist’s elections coverage. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.