Pennsylvania’s automatic voter registration option for driver’s license applicants works as intended to filter out noncitizens, but the process needs improvement, according to a report by the state’s auditor general. The audit only reviewed in full a fraction of the voter applications and left unanswered some questions about the data’s reliability, The Epoch Times found.

The auditor only looked at the underlying citizenship documentation of 58 of the more than 200,000 applications submitted through the driver’s license application process to the Pennsylvania Department of State (DOS) during the audited period of Jan. 1, 2024, through June 30, 2024, according to the auditor’s April 17 report.

For all 200,000 records, the audit only checked whether they were marked in the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) system as citizens or not. The audit didn’t review in detail all the records, as it would have taken “years,” Auditor General Timothy DeFoor said during an April 17 press conference.

“It would not have changed the outcome of the audit based on the objectives,” his spokesperson, April Hutcheson, told The Epoch Times via email.

There were “significant delays” in obtaining the data because PennDOT and the governor’s Office of Administration “had concerns related to the ... confidential nature of the personally identifiable information” in their systems as well as “sensitive” information about the third-party application they use, the report said.

Yet there are unanswered questions about why only the 58 applications were picked for detailed review. DeFoor said his office picked them because they lacked the proper “null” data marker belonging to U.S. citizens. The auditor was told by PennDOT staff that those records were only mismarked due to a data query issue, his staff said during the press conference.

Of the 58 records, 53 lacked any citizenship marker, but all, it turned out, belonged to citizens. The remaining five were marked as permanent residents, but four of them actually belonged to citizens.

“PennDOT explained this was because of how the query was written to match information from two separate computer systems,” Hutcheson said.

“It said that report was wrong and that citizens were actually blank and not null and reran the report. When it reran the report, all but one record was blank.”

One Noncitizen

That one non-blank record indeed belonged to a noncitizen. This was caused by a “human error,” DeFoor said. The person wasn’t marked in the computer system as permanent resident during the driver’s license application process and was thus automatically guided through the voter registration application, he said.

The application process, conducted at a self-service kiosk at one of the PennDOT Photo License Centers, specifically asks if the applicant is a U.S. citizen and asks for an affirmation under the penalty of perjury, according to the report.

It’s not clear whether the person was ultimately registered to vote. The applications are sent by PennDOT to the DOS, which routes them to relevant county election offices for processing.

PennDOT staff caught and corrected the error before the person left the Photo License Center, but because the applications are sent to the DOS automatically, it couldn’t have been stopped, the report said. It’s not clear why the staff didn’t immediately contact the DOS to report the issue. PennDOT did contact the DOS eventually, “as a result of our audit,” DeFoor said.

“The person identified in the auditor general’s audit never voted in Pennsylvania during any election and does not have an active voter registration,” DOS Communications Director Amy Gulli told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

Missing Markers

The audit report said the applications received by the DOS were matched to the citizenship data in the PennDOT system by “unique driver’s license numbers.” Both PennDOT reports thus should have covered the exact same applications. It’s not clear why, in the “reran” PennDOT report, four permanent resident markers disappeared. Hutcheson said PennDOT should answer that question, but PennDOT didn’t respond to emailed questions by press time.

There’s no indication in the report that the disappearing markers raised questions about the reliability of the data more broadly. Hutcheson said the 58 applications was a sufficient sample based on the Government Auditing Standards for Performance Audits issued by the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO).

“I would encourage you to read the methodology portion of the audit where they explain in great detail how they identified the sample size to test the objectives and why it was sufficient to complete the audit,” she said.

The GAO standards require that evidence “is sufficient and appropriate for addressing the audit objectives and supporting findings and conclusions” and that “auditors should assess whether the evidence is relevant, valid, and reliable.”

The audit report didn’t explain why looking at 58 records out of 200,000 was sufficient. It concluded that the data “was sufficiently reliable to support our audit objectives.”

Sill, the audit report noted that “the potential exists that within the 210,905 voter registration applications identified during our audit period, other noncitizens’ applications to register to vote may have been submitted.”

“Without corrective actions, manual errors similar to the one this audit identified may result in the transmission of ineligible voter registration applications to DOS for processing,” the report said.

Citizenship Check

Pennsylvania has been criticized by the conservative Heritage Foundation for setting up an automatic registration option for driver’s license applicants in 2023.

The auditor said the system “works as intended.”

When applying for a driver’s license, all applicants are asked for proof of citizenship, and only those who provide it are automatically prompted to complete the registration process. Those applications are then automatically sent to the DOS for processing.

Of the 58 records reviewed in detail, 54 had at least a passport or a birth certificate on file, and three included other documents to establish citizenship.

The audit also found that PennDOT didn’t sufficiently monitor and review which employees could access the electronic system that stores voter application data.

It included eight recommendations to PennDOT or the Office of Administration to “strengthen safeguards against processing errors” and “strengthen policies and procedures that control employee access to the system.”

The audit was prompted by a legislative request in August 2024, the report said.