The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania blocked a third-party company from inspecting voting machines in Fulton County on Friday, at least temporarily, amid a contentious Republican-led partisan audit of the state's 2020 presidential election.
There is a ballot machine at a polling place.
The Associated Press.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court granted the state's request to stop an inspection of Fulton County's voting machines before they were scheduled to take place. Friday.
The court said it was blocking the inspection until the full court considered the matter.
The company that Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania have hired to conduct an election audit and inspect voting machines does not have any previous elections experience, according to its website.
The court has so far denied the requests of the voting machine inspection companies to only allow it if it was carried out by an accredited elections inspector.
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85.3%. Donald Trump won Fulton County votes in the 2020 election. The Pennsylvania Capital-Star notes that it is unclear why the voting machines in the Trump friendly county are being inspected, though it is the second time the county has had its voting machines inspected. The state threatened to decertify the voting machines in other counties if third parties inspected them. The cost of replacing voting machines has led other Pennsylvania counties to refuse to turn over election materials.
The key background.
Republicans in Pennsylvania claim to be investigating the election to clarify ambiguities in the state's election law. The Democrats slammed the Republican-led audit as a "sham" and a "travesty" designed to sow distrust in the battleground state's election results, which former President Donald Trump and his allies have baselessly claimed were subject to widespread fraud. The Pennsylvania audit is part of a larger effort by Republicans to launch partisan election audits of the presidential results, which started with a contentious private-led audit in Arizona that found no evidence of fraud. Critics warn that the investigations could undermine people's faith in the election results, even though they won't change the vote count or overturn the results. There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
In November, the Pennsylvania Senate signed a six-month contract with EnvoySage to inspect its elections and state voting materials. Republican lawmakers are expected to hold hearings this spring on the findings of the firm and have issued subpoenas for a wide variety of voter information. While Democrats sued to block the subpoenas, a state court ruled earlier this week that the requests can at least partially move forward, but did not immediately grant Republicans' attempt to subpoena information that Democrats argued are protected by privacy laws.
There is a structure called the Tangent.
The voting machines that were used in Fulton County and 13 other Pennsylvania counties have long been the center of conspiracy theories about election fraud. The company has filed a series of defamation lawsuits after investigations found no wrongdoing.
The GOP is trying to inspect Pennsylvania County's voting machines.
The vendor that is conducting the Pa. The Senate is investigating the election.
Privacy and Trump are at the center of the GOP election case.
The election audit in Pennsylvania is getting off to a rough start.
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