IT outage affects online voter registration, mail-in ballot applications, other services in Pa.

PITTSBURGH — An IT outage was affecting online voter registration and mail-in ballot applications, and is still impacting several other services, in Pennsylvania.

State officials said a “hardware issue” affected access to online services in multiple Pa. agencies, including the Department of State, revenue, human services and liquor control board.

The issue started around 5:30 p.m. Saturday, according to a release. Technicians identified the cause as an equipment failure at a data center managed for the commonwealth by Unisys and started recovery operations. All was fully operational again by 9:30 a.m. Monday.

There was no indication of any malicious physical or cyber activity -- or any loss of data -- according to officials.

If you want to receive BREAKING NEWS ALERTS, please download our WPXI News App. You can also follow WPXI on Facebook and Twitter.

“The outage was due to an issue with the contractor’s equipment, and there is no evidence of malicious interference,” Secretary Boockvar said. “All data was backed up, as always.”

The state pointed out that Pa. residents can still download and print out paper voter registrations and mail-in ballot applications, as well as other election-related forms, and fill them out by hand.

Counties were also still able to process registrations, applications and ballots using “alternative processes" and will be able to generate reports despite the outage.

Still affected are:

- the Department of State’s professional licensing services

- online services for the departments of Revenue and Human Services

- the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board

Local elections offices already swamped with high volume of mail-in ballots

Cox Media Group