A sparsely populated county in southern Pennsylvania is suing over last month's decertification of its voting machines, and asking a statewide court to reverse the order by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf's top elections official.
In the suit filed Wednesday in Commonwealth Court, Fulton County said it had complied with the guidance in force at the time for the inspection of voting machines by third-party vendors.
The lawsuit also said Acting Secretary of State Veronica Degraffenreid should have re-examined the machines before decertifying them and given Fulton County an administrative opportunity to appeal her July 20 decision before it took effect.
Degraffenreid ordered the county's machines decertified after it had disclosed that it had agreed to requests by local Republican lawmakers for an “audit" last winter. It came amid former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him in Pennsylvania and other battleground states.
Fulton County officials have maintained that West Chester-based software company Wake TSI had agreed not to “disturb or manipulate” any election equipment, and were watched at all times by county staff.
Degraffenreid told Fulton County officials that the inspection violated state law, and said Wake TSI had “no knowledge or expertise in election technology."
Wake TSI went on to work briefly on a widely discredited partisan “audit” in Arizona fueled by Trump’s baseless claims.
