Retaliatory Decertification – State Punishes County for Exercising Audit Rights (PA)

The Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth’s decertification of Fulton County’s Dominion machines, triggered solely by Fulton County’s exercise of its audit rights, effectively inverted the relationship between state oversight and local accountability. Under Pennsylvania election law, counties retain statutory authority to verify the integrity of election equipment under their custody. If the state can decertify county equipment as a penalty for independent auditing, it structurally eliminates the possibility of any county-level verification of certified voting system compliance – creating a regime in which the certified configuration is legally unverifiable at the point of deployment. The Fulton County litigation confirms this interpretation is disputed and that the Secretary’s legal authority for the decertification is at minimum contestable.