Our Impact
2023
Keystone Votes, the public face of the PA Voice Voting Rights and Election Administration work group, successfully shut down legislative efforts to impose voter ID restrictions in October 2023.
Voter education materials were created in English and translated into 18 languages requested by partners: Amharic, Arabic, Bangla, Chinese, French, Haitian, Indonesian, Khmer, Korean, Nepali, Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili, Tigrinya, Twi, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Yoruba.
The focus of the application is on the needs of registrants, canvassers and program managers, making it a field-first tool. The app and website guides users through the registration process, provides information about voter eligibility and requirements, allows users to check their registration status and request for ballots by mail.
2022
When Census data was released in mid-2021 showing that the state would lose one Congressional seat, many feared that extreme gerrymandering would entrench incumbents at the expense of growing communities of color. PA Voice worked with our local partners on community-created “unity maps” that model a fair reapportionment.
2021 marked the first time that PA Voice granted money for voter registration in an “off” year; these grants were made to implement integrated voter engagement plans, recognizing that some of our partners, as community organizers, are especially well positioned to combine voter engagement with other issues of importance to their community.
In 2021, building on vote-by-mail legislation, PA Voice won a major advocacy victory that integrated voter registration into Medicaid applications.
2021
When Census data was released in mid-2021 showing that the state would lose one Congressional seat, many feared that extreme gerrymandering would entrench incumbents at the expense of growing communities of color. PA Voice worked with our local partners on community-created “unity maps” that model a fair reapportionment.
2021 marked the first time that PA Voice granted money for voter registration in an “off” year; these grants were made to implement integrated voter engagement plans, recognizing that some of our partners, as community organizers, are especially well positioned to combine voter engagement with other issues of importance to their community.
In 2021, building on vote-by-mail legislation, PA Voice won a major advocacy victory that integrated voter registration into Medicaid applications.
2020
In 2020, PA Voice grew to 13 full time staff and granted almost $3 million to partners.
We developed COVID- related policies to support staff during these unprecedented times and expanded our tools support and services to allow a pivot to remote field work during the global pandemic.
PA Voice launched a legal clinic to support individuals if their voter registrations or voter applications were erroneously rejected by a county and expanded the civic engagement program’s reach from 15 to 25 counties.
In the 2020 general election, PA Voice and its partners helped deploy 1,800 Vote Guardians to assist voters at the polls, monitored extremist activity, provided information to state and local law enforcement on threats to voters, and addressed ballot challenges to protect 10,000 votes.
2019
Ray Murphy, former Deputy Director of PA Voice and Micah Sims, former Board Chair of PA Voice pictured.
Our staff and partners played a critical role in the passage of Act 77, which updated the state’s election law to allow Vote By Mail.
Internally, we worked to ensure that the organization’s infrastructure allowed for the expansion of the team and a transition to a new executive director. At the partnership table, we expanded our commitment to racial equity by ensuring that all partners sign a racial equity agreement.
PA Voice launched the largest nonprofit Census Get Out the Count field effort in Pennsylvania in 2019.
It was a multi-layered approach that included outreach tactics such as door-to-door canvassing, mailing, phonebanking, and text banking. We were effective in mobilizing people of color to participate in the 2020 Census at scale and at a level of effectiveness to our goal of making Pennsylvania’s count equitable and accurate.
2018
2017
Launched the nonpartisan Keystone Counts coalition to ensure Pennsylvania would be counted fairly and accurately in the 2020 Census.
2016
Established Pennsylvania Voice as an independent 501c3 organization.
Expanded mission to incorporate representation and reflective democracy programs.
