The Pennsylvania Department of State, represented by Hangley Aronchick attorneys Robert Wiygul and Eitan Kagedan, recently prevailed again in a long-running case over third-party access to county voting machines.
On December 9, 2025, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling, which confirmed that the Secretary of the Commonwealth is empowered to issue directives protecting the security of electronic voting machines.
The decision, which was reported by Law360, stemmed from the aftermath of the 2020 election, when two commissioners in Fulton County, Pennsylvania allowed an unauthorized information-technology firm to conduct a probing inspection of voting machines used in the county. The Secretary of the Commonwealth determined that the inspection had violated the Secretary’s conditions on certification of electronic voting equipment and therefore prohibited use of the compromised machines in future elections. Fulton County and the two commissioners then filed suit in the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court, seeking to overturn the Secretary’s order.
The Supreme Court’s ruling affirmed a 6-1 decision last year by an en banc panel of the Commonwealth Court, which held the Pennsylvania Election Code authorizes the Department of State to prohibit counties from using machines that have been compromised by third-party access.
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