Secretary of Commonwealth Decertified Fulton County Voting Machines in Retaliation for Commissioning Independent Forensic Audit (PA)

After Fulton County, Pennsylvania commissioned an independent forensic examination of its Dominion voting equipment – an audit it was authorized to conduct under Pennsylvania law – the Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth decertified Fulton County’s voting machines on the stated basis that the county had permitted an independent inspector to access them. Fulton County subsequently filed suit, arguing that the decertification was unlawful and retaliatory – that the Secretary used the power of the state office to punish a county government for exercising its legitimate audit rights. This decertification creates a distinct configuration-integrity problem independent of any underlying forensic findings: by punishing the one county that subjected its equipment to independent forensic scrutiny, the Secretary created a statewide deterrent effect ensuring that no other county would risk losing its equipment by commissioning a similar audit. The result was the systematic foreclosure of precisely the kind of independent technical review that would establish whether the certified configuration had been maintained across all Pennsylvania Dominion deployments.