This article is made possible through Spotlight PA’s collaboration with Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting. Sign up for Votebeat's free newsletters here.
Two and a half years into Pennsylvania’s new program to register more voters, rural counties have seen some of the biggest gains, a Votebeat and Spotlight PA analysis has found.
In September 2023, Gov. Josh Shapiro announced that Pennsylvania would join the more than 20 other states that offer automatic voter registration. Under Pennsylvania's version of AVR, eligible but unregistered voters who get a new driver’s license or ID card at PennDOT facilities are automatically led through the process to join the voter rolls unless they opt out. Previously, these prospective voters had to opt in to register at PennDOT facilities.
State data suggests that the program has achieved its goal of registering more voters, including some who may not have registered otherwise. However, Votebeat and Spotlight PA’s analysis found that these new voters are less likely to actually vote than their counterparts who registered by other means.
Experts who have studied AVR programs say that result is not uncommon.
“It puts people on the voter rolls when they don’t have to put a lot of effort into it, and so they may not even kind of remember that they’ve been registered,” said Eric McGhee, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California who has analyzed AVR systems in other states.
AVR has registered thousands of voters in rural Pennsylvania
According to data from the Department of State, as of March 24, 353,275 people had registered to vote through the program since its start in September 2023. By comparison, 228,230 people registered to vote at PennDOT facilities during a comparable period of time (September 17, 2019, to March 22, 2022) under the previous opt-in system.
That 353,275 number represents 8.1% of the estimated number of eligible but unregistered voters the state had when the program began. The state’s data also shows that a plurality of those new registrants, roughly 37%, are independent or third-party voters, with the remainder nearly evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. But it gives no insight into where these new voters are located in the state or if they are actually voting.
Votebeat and Spotlight PA analyzed the distribution and turnout rates of voters registered though AVR by grouping voters who have registered since September 2023 by county and method of registration.
The analysis showed that while urban counties have gained more total AVR-registered voters, rural counties have seen the biggest gains proportionally. Looking at the number of new voters registered through AVR as a share of the estimated number of eligible but unregistered voters the counties had when the program began, eight of the top 10 counties are rural.
For example, Pike County, in Northeastern Pennsylvania, had 43,257 registered voters as of the third week of September 2023, when AVR made its debut, out of an estimated eligible voting population of 59,690 that year — meaning more than 16,000 county residents were eligible but unregistered. According to state data, more than 4,400 people have registered to vote through AVR in Pike County since then, or 27% of the eligible but unregistered population.
Research on AVR in other states has also shown that the program gives rural areas the biggest boosts. Charles Stewart, a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies elections, said that’s because rural residents are more likely to need a driver’s license and thus to interact with their state’s department of motor vehicles.
Getting registered does not always translate to voting
But registering to vote and actually going to the polls or requesting a mail ballot are two separate things. Votebeat and Spotlight PA’s analysis shows that those registered through AVR are voting less frequently than their peers who registered through other means.
Turnout for AVR voters across the 2024 general election and 2023 and 2025 municipal elections was 32.6%. By contrast, turnout for those who have registered online since September 2023 was 46.7% in those same elections, and the turnout rate for all new registrants since then was 39.9%. In the 2024 presidential election specifically, AVR voters had a 65.5% turnout rate, compared to 82.8% for voters who registered online and 73.5% for all new registrants combined.
McGhee said some voters who get registered through AVR might otherwise register on their own and be motivated to vote, but many of them likely wouldn’t, especially compared to someone who took the time to go online or in person and fill out a form.
“They've taken the initiative,” he said. “They’ve decided, ‘I’d like to be registered to vote, and I want to vote.’”
Stewart noted that, as a battleground state, Pennsylvania already sees robust and highly motivated voter registration campaigns from political parties and candidates, and likely many of those getting registered through AVR are people who have avoided responding to those outreaches.
On the negative side, both McGhee and Stewart raised the prospect that AVR could mistakenly register noncitizens if data isn’t managed properly, since noncitizens can obtain drivers licenses or ID cards in many states, including Pennsylvania.
Such an issue has occurred in Pennsylvania before. In 2017, Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt — who is now the secretary of the commonwealth — discovered that some noncitizens had been mistakenly allowed to register through PennDOT’s previous opt-in system. After the revelation, PennDOT revised its process for voter registration so that if a driver’s file to indicate they were a noncitizen, they would be prevented from ever interacting with the voter registration screens.
Stewart also mentioned the potential administrative burden that could result from having voters on the rolls who rarely or never vote. Administrators may have to spend money sending notices to voters who aren’t actually interested in being voters.
But Thad Hall, the election director in Western Pennsylvania’s Mercer County, said that cost is negligible. He also said he hasn’t heard complaints from any voters asking why they are registered when they don’t remember doing so.
“It doesn’t make my job harder. It doesn’t make my job easier. It’s just another set of forms we're going through,” he said. “We like people registering and we like people updating their registration, so anything that makes it easier for us to keep our rolls clean and get people on who need to be on and people off who need to be off, great.”
Thomas Wilburn, Senior Data Editor for Chalkbeat, contributed to this report.
Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.