New front in GOP’s election ‘investigation’ draws protests

Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration and a voting-system manufacturer are trying to prevent Republican lawmakers from expanding what they call a “forensic investigation” of Pennsylvania’s 2020 election to a new front, inspecting voting machines.

It is another step driven by former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about election fraud.

Lawyers for Wolf’s top election official, Veronica DeGraffenreid, asked a court late Friday afternoon to stop a digital data exchange scheduled for Wednesday in southern Pennsylvania’s sparsely populated Fulton County.

The election equipment used in last year’s presidential election in the heavily Republican county has already been decertified by the state after Fulton County let a software company inspect the equipment. The firm was not federally accredited to test voting machines.

Allowing a similarly unaccredited and inexperienced contractor hired by Pennsylvania’s Senate Republicans to obtain digital data from the equipment will spoil evidence in Fulton County’s lawsuit challenging the state’s decertification, lawyers for DeGraffenreid wrote in a court filing.

Meanwhile, Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems warned Fulton County that granting the Senate Republicans’ contractor access to its equipment’s digital data violates their contract.

In a letter to a Dominion official, a lawyer representing Fulton County said granting the request is allowed under the contract. Separately, the lawyer, Tom King, told state lawyers that handing over the digital data will not affect the court case or the state’s rights in court.