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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2023 - 2024
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | September 27, 2023 05:18 PM |
|---|---|
| From: | Representative Russ Diamond |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Addressing Deceased Individuals and Other Voter Roll Maintenance (former HB143) |
| Over the past few years, articles have been written and lawsuits have been filed over Pennsylvania’s inability to remove deceased individuals from our voter rolls. Even though we have processes in place to address such issues, they are inefficient and not regularly adhered to. In law, the time elapsed between when a voter passes away until they are removed from the voter rolls can be up to three months or longer. This can lead to potential voter fraud, inaccurate voter turnout reports, and questions surrounding the integrity of the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors (SURE) system. To address this issue, I will be introducing legislation to require the Department of Health and the Department of State to work together to streamline this process. Specifically, it will amend Title 25 to mandate a monthly report of the names of deceased individuals to be removed from the SURE system. This legislation was modeled after a similar reporting procedure prescribed by my HB775 in the 2019-20 session, which was aimed at scrubbing the names of deceased Pennsylvanians from mailing lists used by the Department of Aging and the PACE program to solicit additional state benefits. HB775 was unanimously passed by both the House and the Senate, and was signed into law on April 17, 2020 as Act 14. This legislation was introduced during the 2021-22 session as HB143, and was amended to also address voters who move from county to county and out of state. The bill was passed unanimously by the House. A more efficient process of cleaning up our voter rolls will not only help prevent future lawsuits, but will also further safeguard the integrity of our elections. Please join me in co-sponsoring this important piece of legislation. Previous co-sponsors: BERNSTINE, BOROWICZ, BROOKS, SCHLEGEL CULVER, GROVE, HAMM, IRVIN, JAMES, JOZWIAK, KAUFFMAN, PYLE, ROTHMAN, ROWE, RYAN, SAYLOR, SMITH, STAMBAUGH, WHEELAND, CIRESI, R. MACKENZIE, DUNBAR, KEEFER, MOUL, GLEIM, COX, ZIMMERMAN, M. MACKENZIE, KERWIN, POLINCHOCK, ARMANINI AND GREINER |
Introduced as HB1758