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Court asked to require accredited lab in Pennsylvania GOP 'investigation'

A canvas observer photographs Lehigh County provisional ballots as vote counting in the general election continues, Nov. 6, 2020, in Allentown, Pa.
Mary Altaffer
/
AP
A canvas observer photographs Lehigh County provisional ballots as vote counting in the general election continues, Nov. 6, 2020, in Allentown, Pa.

Dominion Voting Systems has asked a court to restrict any inspection of its voting machines as part of what Republican lawmakers call a “forensic investigation” of Pennsylvania’s 2020 election to a laboratory that has specific credentials.

The Denver-based voting-system manufacturer filed paperwork in court Monday evening as Republican lawmakers move to inspect Dominion's machines and software in southern Pennsylvania's sparsely populated Fulton County using an unaccredited contractor that has no election experience.

In its court papers, Dominion requested an order requiring that any inspection be conducted by a federally accredited voting system test lab or a national laboratory used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Fulton county heavily backed former President Donald Trump, whose baseless claims about election fraud in 2020's presidential election have propelled various Republican endeavors to search for fraud in states Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

A Commonwealth Court judge has separately given state and county officials until Jan. 10 to work out an agreed-upon set of rules for an inspection.

A lawyer representing Fulton County has said the Republican senator in charge of the “ forensic investigation ” wants to determine if the county’s voting system was the same equipment as was certified by the state of Pennsylvania for use in 2020′s election.

Fulton County is cooperating.

Dominion's voting equipment has been at the center of conspiracy theories about the presidential election and it has filed defamation lawsuits against right-wing broadcasters and Trump allies.

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