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    Pennsylvania’s Online Voter Registration and Mail Ballot Web application Programming Interface (PA-OVR-WebAPI)

    The Pennsylvania Department of State has developed a secure internet facing service to which approved Posting Entities can consume this web-based service from their custom voter registration applications (custom VRApp). We are also continuously seeking comments on the documentation and process.  Please submit comments to ra-voterreg@pa.gov.

    The goal of the PA-OVR-WebAPI is to provide a programmatic interface to the Department of State’s Online Voter Registration System in order to increase access to voter registration as well as reduce processing times.

     

    General Information: 

    Registration

    An organization wishing to use PA-OVR-WebAPI must register with the Department of State’s Bureau of Commissions, Elections and Legislation at https://paovrwebapi.votespa.com/SUREWebAPIAdmin/. All organizations must also sign the Pennsylvania Online Voter Registration Web API Terms of Use.

    Authentication

    Organizations will receive an authentication access key in staging before they are approved for an access key in production. A production access key will be provided once the organization’s application has satisfied all testing requirements and agreed to the PA-OVR-WebAPI Terms of Use. The access key will be used to authenticate each organization for security and reporting purposes.

    Sandbox Testing

    All organizations will need to submit their custom VRApp to the Department of State for review and testing to ensure their underlying application collects all necessary data elements as outlined in the PA-OVR-WebAPI Field Definitions document below. The PA-OVR-WebAPI will be available to users in either interactive and/or batch mode.  Custom VRApps must be tested and approved in either or both, interactive and batch, modes.

    The Department of State’s PA-OVR-WebAPI currently resides in two environments, Staging and Production. The Staging environment is used for a variety of purposes, including:

    • User Review of new features and ongoing bug fixes
    • User Acceptance Testing (UAT) of new features and ongoing bug fixes
    • Deployment Testing
    • Demos
    • Posting Entity testing and approval

    Meanwhile, the PROD or production environment is for operational functions of LIVE data involving Voter Information and its associated systems.

    All testing will occur against the Department of State’s staging environment. We require all custom VRApps and organizations to successfully submit testing criteria in staging before the Department begins the testing process in our production environment.

    Reporting

    Organizations can generate a report by clicking a link in the organization’s online account. This on-demand report will provide the status of all successfully submitted applications by transaction number within the reporting period specified.

    As mentioned above, the PA-OVR-WebAPI login page may be accessed at https://paovrwebapi.vote.pa.gov/SUREWebAPIAdmin

     

    Key PA-OVR-WebAPI documentation

    Key PA-OVR-WebAPI documentation:

     

    This page was last modified May 2024.