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A Monday Supreme Court ruling rejecting a proposal by President Donald Trump to use the U.S. Postal Service to restrict the use of mail-in voting represents a "major victory for Pennsylvania voters," Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt said at a Tuesday afternoon press briefing.
The decision, also "importantly, provides much needed finality for voters and counties ahead of this year's election," Schmidt said. "Nothing has changed about voting by mail in Pennsylvania. Any eligible Pennsylvanians who choose to vote by mail should have confidence that they can continue to do so safely and securely."
Schmidt, as a Republican city commissioner in Philadelphia, gained national attention by defending the integrity of the vote counting there during the 2020 election, despite fierce criticism from Trump and his allies. Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, appointed Schmidt to lead the Department of State after he was elected governor in 2022.
The Supreme Court majority wrote that Trump's push to implement the restrictions this year would likely lose in court, though the order didn't explain their reasoning. The Trump administration had asked the justices to clear the way for restrictions before the pivotal November contests for control of Congress.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed that the restrictions should not go into effect for the midterms but indicated he might rule in favor of the Trump administration if the issue returns at a later time.
Pennsylvania legalized mail-in voting for the first time through Act 77 of 2019, a compromise election law update that also eliminated straight ticket voting, which allowed voters to select all of a party's nominees by checking one box on the ballot.
Democrats have embraced mail-in voting more than Republicans, in part due to Trump's repeated attacks on voting by mail. On the other hand, Republicans in the state have benefited from the move to eliminate single ticket voting.
Democrats largely had a lock of statewide row offices prior to the move away from single ticket voting. After single ticket voting was eliminated, Republicans were elected auditor general, treasurer and attorney general. The GOP nominee for governor, Treasurer Stacy Garrity, was among those who won in the wake of the change.
Partisan divide on mail-in voting
Almost 28% of the votes cast in the 2024 presidential election in Pennsylvania were submitted by mail-in ballots, including 664,982 mail-in ballots submitted by voters who supported Trump.
Voters using mail-in ballots accounted for 25% of the votes cast in 2025, state data shows.
Republicans submitted 238,148 of the 950,000 mail-in ballots used by voters in 2025.
In the spring primary, 35% of the votes cast were on mail-in ballots.
Three years of auto voter registration
Almost 420,000 people have registered to vote through the automatic registration option first offered at the state Department of Motor Vehicle locations. Pennsylvania launched automatic voter registration on Sept. 15, 2023.
State data shows that the most popular political party selected by new voters using the automatic registration option has been: neither. Almost 155,000 of the new voters registered as independents or members of minor political parties.
Automatic voter registration by party:
Independents -- 154,896 (37% of total)
Democrats -- 134,394 (32%)
Republicans -- 128,774 (31%)
Younger voters have been more likely to decline to join either major political party than older voters. More than 25% of voters, ages 18-24, are registered as independents, a larger share than any other age group.
The number of independent voters now exceeds 1.5 million, though voting advocates assert that the ranks of independent voters would swell dramatically if Pennsylvania dropped its closed primary system, which only allows voters who registered as members of a political party to participate in the party's primary elections.
Since the start of the year, the number of independent voters has increased by almost 46,000 voters. The Democrats have added 32,429 members while the number of voters registered as Republicans dropped 10,114.
Total voter registration by party:
Democrats -- 3,848,004 (43% of total)
Republicans -- 3,633,784 (40% of total)
Independents --1,506,630 (17% of total)