PA · How to vote

Voting in Pennsylvania.

Three ways to vote, three deadlines. ID rules and vote-by-mail policy below — verify the specifics with the Pennsylvania Secretary of State at the link.

Official source of record

Pennsylvania Department of State — Elections

Verify →

VOTER ID REQUIREMENTS

Pennsylvania requires ID only for first-time voters at a polling place. Accepted: driver's license, passport, military ID, student ID, or utility bill/bank statement with name and address.

VOTE BY MAIL

Any registered voter may request a mail-in ballot. No excuse required.

3NCSL voter ID requirements2026-04-153NCSL absentee + VBM rules2026-04-15

Official action — PA

The state’s own tools, with links to verify.

Each card below routes to the official Pennsylvania system. Where the state delegates to county Supervisors of Elections, the card says so honestly.

Statewide→

Check my registration

Name + DOB + county. Shortlink: vote.pa/check/.

Statewide→

PennDOT DL or state ID; SSN-4 fallback. 15 days before election deadline.

Statewide→

Find my polling place

Address-based. Polls 7am–8pm.

County

Preview my ballot

Each county BOE posts. Allegheny, Philadelphia (atlas.phila.gov/voting), Montgomery, Bucks, Lancaster, York, Delaware all run separate viewers.

Statewide→

Request a mail ballot

Online via SURE; county receives the request. Annual mail-ballot list available.

Statewide→

Track my mail ballot

Statewide tracker via SURE feed. Per-county application data also as Socrata: data.pa.gov — first state with a structured open-data feed for mail-ballot stats.

Statewide→

See who's on the ballot

Not a single search URL — list published per cycle as PDFs. 403 / paywall risk on legacy dos.pa.gov.

Statewide→

Statewide ballot measures

PA constitutional amendments require passage in two consecutive sessions. No statewide measures confirmed for 2026.

Statewide→

Live + past results

Election-night returns + downloadable per-office reports. First-party state-aggregated.

Statewide→

Election calendar

Primary 2026-05-19, general 2026-11-03.

1UOCAVA · military & overseas voters

Federal deadlines for Pennsylvania

Active-duty service members, their families, and U.S. citizens overseas have separate deadlines under UOCAVA. Sourced live from the U.S. Federal Voting Assistance Program.

2026-05-19Ballot Request — State PrimaryReceived by

2026-05-19Ballot Return — State PrimaryReceived by

2026-05-19Ballot Return — State PrimarySent by

2026-05-19Ballot Return — State PrimaryReceived by

Full FVAP PA guide →

Local authorities — PA

First-class county / borough sources.

For some tasks — especially sample ballot, drop-box lists, and live local results — the county or borough is the authoritative source. We list them here as peer authorities, not delegates.

FIRST-CLASS

Philadelphia City Commissioners

PA's only consolidated city-county. ArcGIS-native polling-place portal at atlas.phila.gov — only county whose primary lookup tool IS a GIS app. PA SOS doesn't aggregate sample ballots, so vote.phila.gov is the only real surface for Philly voters.

~1,000,000 registered voters

→

Cite this

turnout.app/how-to-vote/pa · 2026-05-02 · NCSL

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