As of this evening, Thursday at 6PM ET, the PAVoterServices website https://www.pavoterservices.state.pa.us/ is down. This is the website where PA voters can check their registration status and register/change their party online (it produces a pre-filled form which must be mailed/delivered to the county). I'm not sure how long it's been down. NOT good four days before the primary deadline. PA is a closed primary, and voters must file their registration/declare their party by this Monday in order to vote in the primary.
The http://www.votespa.com/ website is up & running, as is the general PA Department of State website, but these are static sites. The PAVoterServices website is the only online method that I'm aware of where a PA resident can check their registration status or register to vote online. I recently filed my change of party and wanted to make sure it had been processed, which led me to the discovery that it's down. I believe tomorrow (Friday) is a state holiday, so this is bad news for anyone concerned about their PA voter registration status with the Monday deadline looming.
I plan to monitor the https://www.pavoterservices.state.pa.us/ site, and will post an update when/if it comes back on line.
UPDATE:
Thanks to the commenters for reporting that there was a security breach. I'm surprised this isn't announced on the http://www.state.pa.us homepage. And the more important question: was any voter data compromised?
UPDATE 2
I have only been able to find one stingy MSM mention of this issue. WTF?
State stops computer voter registration
by The Associated Press
Thursday March 20, 2008, 1:14 PM
State officials have taken down a Web site that allowed Pennsylvanians to fill out voter registration forms from their computers. People who want to register can still print out the forms and fill them out by hand.
And more ominous...
Officials took down the site Tuesday night after learning it was possible to tamper with the coding and use the site to view other people's registration information, including voters' driver's license numbers or the last four digits of Social Security numbers.
We're talking about thousands of new voter registration here...