 Good morning everyone, then thank you so much to my dear friend Commissioner Crick-Lamon For his leadership He's kind introduction for hosting us this morning and the beautiful weather because I understand the seek up takes credit for that But we're also giving We gave him praise and thanks to to God for this as well And thank you for everyone to be here all of our friends. We very much appreciate your time. Certainly the governor Governor is great to have you with us as well You know and I appreciate everyone joining the governor wolf and distinguished state legislators County officials voting right advocates Deputy Secretary for Elections and Administration Mary Schneider as well as other staff from the Department of State of myself for this historic announcement of the launching of online voter registration in Pennsylvania It is specially feeding that we meet at the headquarters of the County Commissioners Associations as seek up has been an integral Partner in the development of online voter registration through the work of its election reform committee Online voter registration is an important development that will yield significant benefits It will make registering more convenient and accessible for voters while saving money and time for County voter registration staff In Arizona, which was the first state to implement online voter registration Election officials saw the cost of processing voter registrations decreased from 83 cents per traditional paper form to 3 cents for each online registration in The 22 states that already are using online voter registration Voters as well as election officials has have found the process and the technology to be accurate efficient and secure When I recently attended the annual conference of the National Association of Secretaries of State I listened with great interest to what my fellow chief election officials had to say about their state's experience with online voter registration They gave overwhelmingly positive reports about OVR online voter registration Even those secretaries that had once opposed its implementation as Elsewhere Pennsylvanians have come to expect the option of conducting important transactions online They shop bank and take classes online as a natural extension They want the convenience and accessibility of being able to register to vote using their own computer or mobile device In terms of the security of online voter registration It may of this year the Pew Charball Trust issue a report that noted that no security breaches Have been reported among the 20 state plus that already employ OVR In Pennsylvania our system incorporates the latest data security protocols and will be constantly monitored and updated design Development and launch of OVR have been the result of thoughtful and diligent Process and planning. I would like to thank Pennsylvania's county election directors for their partnership building online voter registration Along the way the department consulted with the election directors of all 67 counties They provided valuable input and suggestions Many of which have already been incorporated in the system or will be added in future enhancements One of the benefits of online voter registration is that county election workers do not have to learn an entirely new system Each OVR application will be forwarded directly to the appropriate county voter registration office using the same Technology already in place for the Pennsylvania Motor Voter Act through the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation The applications Generator online will simply have a differently coded label when they are queued for processing by the counties Another consideration for the adoption of online voter registration is that over the years The department has heard about the difficulties counties face in processing voter registrations County personnel must try to decipher handwriting that is often illegible or maybe a required field is not completed So the county must contact the applicant and make a good-faith effort to obtain the information necessary to process the application Additionally counties receive the bulk of handwritten Applications in the final days before election registration deadline That means counties often must pay overtime or hire temporary staff in order to process thousands of last-minute submissions This problem is significantly greater in Presidential election years With all VR there is no eligible handwriting or labor intensive data entry All required information is captured at the time of application. I Will also like to acknowledge and express my gratitude to all of the voting rights groups that have offered guidance and support for our work Their expertise and input has contributed significantly to the development of OVR Which the department is confident will soon become the preferred method of registration for eligible Pennsylvania voters and Talking about Pennsylvania voters in the Commonwealth. There are approximately two million Citizens who are eligible to vote but are not currently registered the department state Wants to do whatever it can to change that we believe OVR will help to reduce that number by making registration more convenient and accessible Their result will be more Pennsylvanians exercising their most fundamental right of citizenship the right to vote Now it is my great pleasure and honor to introduce the governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf Thank you very much Pedro. I think you did a fine job outlining the benefits of this I want to say a special word of thanks to well first of all Craig Thank you for introducing me and forgetting my name, right? That's really appreciate that But also want to shout out to senator Teplitz Thank you for being here and and Mary Jo representative daily. Thank you for being here And I also want to say thank you to senator smucker for his support of what we're doing here This is about two things I When I talked about this in my inauguration, I also talked about it in my budget address One of the things we have to work on here in Pennsylvania is making sure we have a government that works And this is Really about that as the secretary pointed out, but the other thing is we have to have a democracy that works And and so this is about that as well And I'm really pleased that that Susan you're here too because we are not only here to do what is efficient and In an easy and convenient Government needs to do that But we also have to recognize that we're stewards of a of a grand democratic tradition that dates back to 1776 and in Pennsylvania by the way And so we all I think have to recognize that we are doing both things here and this online voter registration is about both things It's about efficiency and accuracy for counties, especially it's about cost savings And that's a real thing for for citizens for taxpayers to make sure that that Exercising the responsibilities of citizenship can be done efficiently and securely that's important But again today is also about making our political system more democratic It's about making the voting experience more convenient and more accessible And it's about giving citizens an easier way to exercise their right to vote This should establish a clearer connection between the political system and the citizens it serves and it should make that political system It should make that political system more more responsive in both cases in both cases online voter registration Will make a big contribution to my goal of building a government that works So let me start with the first of these government that works and then I'll get to government that Democracy that works as well the first thing there's no question that online voter registration will make the administrative process of voting More efficient right now I think my right there about 30 states that in the United States have either implemented or have passed legislation or Seriously considering legislation mandating online voter registration Arizona was the first state as secretary said to have online registration, and I think they started back in 2002 New York, South Carolina, Maryland, Georgia, Utah some of the other states that have done this We're joining those states in time I think Pennsylvania joined in the 21st century in this efficient drive to make our system more efficient It's also time that we contributed I think more to improvement of government efficiency at the county level the old-fashioned The manual system the paper system of voter registration as the secretary pointed out is time-consuming It also allows more room for errors for invasion of privacy for fraud Online registration on the other hand improves accuracy it increases the integrity of voter rolls And it reduces time consuming data entry None of that has to take place to the extent that online voter registration becomes the norm Online voter registration will also help counties establish a more seamless integration with the state now This is not to say that the paper systems will not continue to exist But we're adding I think something that will make this process more convenient The second thing is that this online voter registration is also going to help our democracy For whatever reason we Americans really don't participate to the extent We have in the past and to the extent that other systems have done this Judged by our voter turnout rates. We're not as good as we once were in the 19 or in the 18th century in the 19th century It wasn't unusual in the late 19th century the 1800s for voting to the turnout participation rate of eligible voters to reach 80% When I won my primary election in May of 2014 on the other hand The turnout of registered voters was in the low 20s the turnout of eligible voters citizens over 18 was in the teens Now just by way of comparison with other countries India went to the polls that same week The turnout in that election. They've been a democracy since 1947. Their turnout was in the 60% range Democracy began in Pennsylvania whether you consider it 1776 or 1787. I'm from York consider 1777 which is the Articles of the Confederation, but it started in Pennsylvania and We should do everything we can to make sure that that citizenship is central to the everyday lives of the people We serve an online voter registration should help according to the Pew charitable trust online voter registration does three things first It makes the exercise of registration obviously more convenient for citizens, especially with a mobile friendly System that should help in this 21st century second. It helps cut through language barriers Online voter registration does that and finally it improves accessibility for people who for whatever reason can't physically show up to places Where online or voter registration now has to take place? Taken together this change will place most this most central act of citizenship In easier to easier access and easier reach of all citizens the hope is that this in turn will make voter participation more likely I think it's tough to prove that but that's the hope This will be a good thing for building government that works obviously and making government more efficient But it will also be a good thing for making a democracy that works and I think that's important So I want to commend everybody who had something to do with putting this into place I think it's making the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in so many ways better I want to commend Secretary Cortez and the Department of State. Is it the Department of State or the Department of the Commonwealth? Department of State, okay, you've accomplished a great deal here. This is really important You've gotten this done in relatively short order and you've worked collaboratively with county governments as the secretary pointed out But also with other departments within the state Penn Dot the office of administration just to name to have done really great work And making sure this gets done. So I want to thank all of them all of you for your hard work This is going to make a big difference in our efficiency in making sure that again government that works But it's also I think going to make sure that we do a better job of having a democracy that works So thank you very much for making this happen. Thanks very much. Thank you