Pennsylvania Republicans slam move to decertify Fulton County voting machines

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Republican state lawmakers are critical of the decision by Pennsylvania’s top election official to withdraw certification from voting machines that a sparsely populated county used in the 2020 presidential election.

Acting Secretary of State Veronica Degraffenreid withdrew the machines’ certification after Fulton County revealed it had accepted requests from local Republican lawmakers and authorized a software company to inspect the machines as part of a free post-election audit. “

Representative Jesse Topper, R-Fulton, said on Friday that he hopes Degraffenreid will reconsider and allow county officials to argue that the voting machines can be used again. Decertifying the machines was not necessary and it is expensive to replace them, Topper said.

Topper said county officials were unaware that the State Department had a list of certified vendors to test voting machines, and that the department should have made this information known to counties.

County officials maintained that they had done nothing wrong.

In a joint statement, Pro Tempore Senate Speaker Jake Corman, R-Center, and Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward, R-Westmoreland, said Degraffenreid’s action was “antagonistic” and serves to erode voting rights and undermining the role of counties in elections.

Lawmakers’ demand for the audit came amid unfounded claims by former President Donald Trump that the 2020 election was rigged against him in Pennsylvania and other battlefield states.

Degraffenreid, a person appointed by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, informed Fulton County officials in a letter on Tuesday that the inspection violated state law.

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