Secretary Veronica Degraffenreid was appointed to lead the Pennsylvania Department of State on February 8, 2021. There, she heads efforts to promote the integrity of the electoral process, support economic development through corporate filings and transactions, and protect the health and safety of the public through professional licensure.

Previously, Secretary Degraffenreid served as Director of Election Operations for the North Carolina State Board of Elections where, for six years, she managed a team of election technology and election program specialists responsible for providing training, support and administrative oversight to North Carolina’s 100 county boards of elections. The program areas under her supervision included voter registration, voting processes, precinct and voting site administration, election event administration and voting systems. She led efforts to modernize North Carolina’s aging statewide voter registration and election management system and developed the state’s first voting systems certification program. She also served as a Special Litigation Legal Assistant with the North Carolina Department of Justice for nearly 10 years, specializing in redistricting and election-related litigation.

Secretary Degraffenreid joined the NSGIC Geo-Enabled Elections project’s Circle of Advisors in 2018, and has contributed significantly to the success of the project. In 2019, she participated in the Geo-Enabled Elections workshop in Louisville, KY, and presented on the critical topic of spatial data audits, and in the Elections GeoSummit in Washington, DC, as part of a panel of states sharing lessons learned on integrating GIS technology in elections. 

She joins us now in an entirely new capacity leading the modernization of elections in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, where she continues to champion GIS as a tool to provide transparency, accuracy, and confidence in elections.