Due to an equipment failure at a data center managed by Unisys for the commonwealth, multiple commonwealth agencies, including the Department of State, are experiencing an outage of many online services that began late Saturday.
“We are working around the clock with our vendors to bring services back online as quickly as possible and will continue to do so until operations are fully restored,” said Secretary of Administration Michael Newsome.
Many of the Department of State’s election-related and professional licensing services are among the applications affected, including online voter registration and the online application for mail ballots.
Pennsylvanians can still download and print the paper voter registration and mail ballot applications as well as other election-related forms and applications. Those without access to a printer can call the department’s toll-free voter hotline 1-877-VOTESPA (868-3772), and request that an application be mailed to them.
Additionally, counties will still have the ability to to process registrations and mail-in and absentee ballots via alternative processes, and will also continue to be able to generate reports and export data for other continuing election processing.
“The outage is due to an issue with the contractor’s equipment, and there is no evidence of malicious interference,” said Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar. “All data was backed up, as always. Commonwealth IT personnel are working with Unisys to restore service as soon as possible.”
Most of the resources on the department’s votespa.com website, including contact information for county election offices and information on new voting systems, are still accessible. The department’s election-related and professional licensing services, including online voter registration and mail ballot application, are unavailable at this time as a result of the outage.
Online services for the departments of Revenue and Human Services and the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board are also affected.
The commonwealth will provide updates as the repair process proceeds.
