Claims that there were “more votes than voters" in Pennsylvania in the 2020 general election are false.
The short answer
Official public documents from the Department of State show that 6,945,045 registered voters successfully cast a ballot in PA's November 2020 election and that a total of 6,915,283 votes were recordedOpens In A New Window as cast in the presidential election. These two data points clearly show that there were not “more votes than voters" in the 2020 general election.
The full answer
The November 2020 election was free, fair, safe, and secure. Claims of systemic voter fraud are devoid of any supporting evidence and have consistently been rejected by judges, government agencies, and election experts across the political spectrum.
On Nov. 24, 2020, the Pennsylvania Department of State officially certified the final results of the 2020 general election based on the certified results provided by each county as statutorily required.
Pennsylvania's Election Code outlines the process for counties to verify the number of voters and the number of ballots cast in each election. That process, which takes place during the official canvass, involves county boards of elections comparing the number of registered voters against the certificates returned by each election district that show the number of people who voted and the number of ballots cast.
There is no evidence that any county board of elections failed to complete this post-election requirement or identified a discrepancy during this process that could have impacted the outcome of any election, including the 2020 general election.
Trying to extrapolate numbers from the Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors (SURE) system based on vote history contained in the Full Voter Export (FVE) file is not an accurate way to reconcile votes cast to the number of voters who participated in any individual election.
While the SURE system is an important tool for county election officials to record the vote history for every individual registered voter in the Commonwealth, it was never intended to – and should not be used to – crosscheck vote totals for any specific election. Voter records in SURE are constantly updated as new voters register, or registered voters move to a different county and have their record transferred, or voters have their record cancelled as a result of moving to a different state, death, or other cancellations pursuant to state and federal law, such as protracted inactivity.
So, for example, a registered voter in Philadelphia County who voted in the November 2020 general election but moved to New Jersey the next day would have their voter record cancelled in the SURE system when Philadelphia's Board of Elections receives confirmation that the voter has moved. In that case, the voter's general information – and the record of their having voted in November 2020 – would no longer be listed in subsequent FVE files.
The FVE is a snapshot of the moment in time it is downloaded and cannot, therefore, be used to create a reconciliation of votes cast in any individual election.
Additionally, the SURE system does not publicly display records for all types of voters, including federal voters and confidential voters. Confidential voters are those whose identities are required by law to be kept out of publicly available voter registration databases and lists, and they include victims of domestic violence, stalking, or human trafficking.
For these reasons, among others, FVE files exported from SURE cannot be used to reconcile vote histories from individual voter files with the number of voters who voted in a given election.
As we shared with the public in our 2020 General Election Report on our website, a total of 6,945,045 registered voters successfully cast a ballot in Pennsylvania's Nov. 3, 2020, general election.
As Pennsylvania's official certificate of ascertainmentOpens In A New Window – which was signed by Gov. Wolf and is electronically stored within the National Archives – shows, a total of 6,915,283 votes were cast in that year's presidential race. The certificate breaks down the votes per presidential candidate this way:
- Biden/Harris: 3,458,229
- Trump/Pence: 3,377,674
- Jorgensen/Cohen: 79,380
Comparing these two official public data sources shows that 29,762 Pennsylvania voters (0.004% of the 6,945,045 voters who cast a ballot) did not have a vote recorded – for whatever reason – for one of the presidential candidates in that year's race. This comparison clearly shows that there were not more votes than voters in Pennsylvania's November 2020 general election.