By MARC LEVY-Associated Press
HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (AP) – The government of Governor Tom Wolf and a voting system manufacturer are trying to prevent Republican lawmakers from expanding the so-called “forensic investigation” of the 2020 Pennsylvania elections to a new front: the inspection of voting machines.
This is yet another move fueled by former President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims about election fraud.
The lawyers of Wolf’s chief electoral functionary Veronica DeGraffenreid asked a court late Friday afternoon to stop a digital data exchange planned for next Wednesday in sparsely populated Fulton County in southern Pennsylvania.
The elective equipment used in last year’s presidential election in the heavily Republican county was decertified by the state after Fulton County had the equipment checked by a software company. The firm – West Chester-based software company Wake TSI – was not federally accredited to inspect voting machines and later played a role in the widely discredited Republican Republican party “revision” in Arizona.
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Allowing a similarly unaccredited and inexperienced contractor hired by the Pennsylvania Senate Republicans to get digital data from the devices would spoil Fulton County’s lawsuit against the state’s decertification, lawyers from wrote DeGraffenreid in a court file.
On December 10th, Chairman of the Committee of Inquiry, Senator Cris Dush, R-Jefferson sent a letter requesting the “digital data” from the voting computers and hardware used in Fulton County’s 2020 election.
Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems warned Fulton County that it was against their contract to give the Senate Republican contractor access to their devices in order to obtain the digital data.
But Dominion – whose elective equipment was at the center of some of the feverish conspiracy theories about last year’s presidential election – said Fulton County had a backup of the data it could easily provide without giving access to Dominion’s equipment.
However, a lawyer representing Fulton County Tom King said in an interview Saturday that digital election data is not just what Dush wants.
Rather, Dush wants Senate Republican contractor Envoy Sage to do a “forensic investigation” to determine if the Dominion equipment used there is the same equipment that the state of Pennsylvania certified for use last year, said King.
“I think people just want to know whether or not what was being used in Fulton County was actually the equipment certified for Dominion, Pennsylvania,” King said. “Whether it was or not, it is not clear to us at this point.”
King said a district officer who spoke to Dush told him the investigation mainly concerned the Dominion’s equipment. The Wake TSI inspection didn’t cover that, King said.
Electoral systems that pass anti-tampering tests are certified by states. The US Election Assistance Commission accredits laboratories for testing voting machines and provides guidance to states on maintaining a chain of surveillance for voting systems.
King said granting the request was allowable under the contract and that he viewed Envoy Sage as “highly skilled” to do the job. Separately, King also said the exercise would not affect legal process or the state’s rights in court.
Trials were scheduled for Tuesday.
Trump and his allies have put sustained pressure in the battlefield states where he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, including Pennsylvania, to have his allies examine ballot papers, voting machines and electoral rolls for evidence to support their unsubstantiated claims of election fraud.
Dush – who campaigned to undo Biden’s victory over Trump in Pennsylvania – didn’t say why he is seeking access or whether he is seeking similar access in other counties.
He did not return any message about it.
Dush has insisted that the company has nothing to do with Trump or trying to overturn last year’s presidential election, but rather that it is about solving problems in the state election.
In any case, the analysis of voting machine data in the Senate Republicans’ $ 270,000 deal with Envoy Sage is not specifically described, which begs the question of whether Trump-affiliated groups are doing some of the billing, as they did with the Arizona corporation to have.
Dush said he wanted to take the Arizona-style electoral exam to Pennsylvania.
Unlike Arizona, a Dush Republican-controlled Senate committee-approved subpoena to Pennsylvania election officials has stopped demanding ballots and voting machines, and other counties have turned down less formal requests.
But in Fulton County, Dush found a willing partner.
There Trump won more than 85% of the vote last year, according to official figures, and the number of registered Republican voters is 7 to 2 higher than that of the Democrats.
In internal post-election emails released through public record requests, the two Fulton County’s Republican commissioners expressed solidarity with Republican senators who later attempted to block Pennsylvania’s voting for Biden. One wrote: “We must not allow this election to be stolen.”
No Pennsylvania prosecutor, judge, or electoral committee has raised concerns about widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and courts at all levels have dismissed claims of fraud, irregularities, and violations.
Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at www.twitter.com/timelywriter.
Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed in any way without permission.
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