Pennsylvania’s Acting Secretary of State Veronica Degraffenreid decertified the voting machines in Fulton County.
Why? Degraffenreid’s move comes in response to county officials’ decision to allow the software company Wake TSI to inspect the voting machines.
According to Pennsylvania’s Acting Secretary of State, the company gained access to Windows system logs, result files, and the election database. Wake TSI was also allowed to use a “system imaging tool to take complete hard drive images of these computers” and “complete images of two USB thumb drives.”
The story: Degraffenreid sent a letter to Fulton County officials, saying that the audit conducted by the West Chester-based software company violated state law. She wrote that the firm has “no knowledge or expertise in election technology,” that the inspection was “not transparent or bipartisan,” and that it compromised the machines.
Degraffenreid explained that now the county, state officials, and Dominion Voting Systems cannot “verify that the impacted components of Fulton County’s leased voting system are safe to use in future elections.”
Thus, she decided to decertify the machines, meaning Fulton County would likely have to purchase or lease new ones for the next election.
“I have no other choice but to decertify the use of Fulton County’s leased Dominion Democracy Suite 5.5A voting system last used in the November 2020 election,” Degraffenreid said in the letter.
How we got here: Fulton County informed Degraffenreid in May that Wake TSI will inspect the voting machines under the supervision of the county’s information technology director.
The decision to hand over the voting machines to the firm came after state. Sen. Doug Mastriano (R) sent requests to several counties to allow for an investigation. Several other counties in the state that were contacted to voluntarily turn over their election equipment for an audit rejected the request.
York and Tioga specifically cited the possibility that the machines could be decertified in denying Mastriano’s requst.
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