Pa. voting system errors 'minuscule,' judge says in tossing Fulton County civil suit

A federal court has rejected a Pennsylvania county's attempt to sue Dominion Voting Systems for breach of contract.

In a ruling dated Sept. 28, Judge Sylvia Rambo for the Middle District of Pennsylvania wrote that Fulton County's Republican commissioners and their legal counsel didn't prove that a hardware defect prevented Dominion systems from functioning according to contract.

Rambo noted that the voting machines had passed federal and state certification before the 2020 election and were only decertified by the Pennsylvania Department of State because county officials had improperly allowed third parties to access and review them.

Why is Fulton County suing Dominion?

The decision is the latest blow to Fulton County Commissioners Stuart Ulsh and Randy Bunch, who permitted outside companies to inspect voting machines at the height of then-President Donald Trump's "Stop the Steal" fervor.

Bombshell: Lawsuit claims cybersecurity firm was instructed to lie about 2020 Pa. voting machine hacks

Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that the last presidential election was stolen from him via widespread voter fraud in key battleground states such as Pennsylvania. Ulsh and Bunch had a company called Wake TSI access Dominion voting systems starting in December 2020, and last year had a company called Speckin Forensics do the same.

Wake TSI alleged "errors" in the ballot-scanning process amid their inspection.

Speckin claimed to have found that a “python script” was installed on a system post-certification, creating vulnerabilities. The company reported discovering an Canadian IP address on a workstation that suggested an external connection.

Fulton County's breach of contract suit, which was filed in September 2022, also referenced a report from the United States Election Assistance Commission suggesting anomalies and tabulation errors within a Dominion system used in Williamson County, Tennessee', municipal election of October 2021.

Ulsh, Bunch and legal counsel wrote that Dominion "fail(ed) to provide a voting system that met the conditions for certification and that was free from defects which prevented the system from operating in conformity with the agreement’s specifications."

What did Judge Rambo say in her ruling?

Rambo dismissed their claims without prejudice. She noted that commissioners may file an amended complaint.

"(This) complaint and documents referenced therein provide every indication that the voting system functioned substantially as intended, and by all appearances, those actual errors which did occur were minuscule and had no material impact on the functioning of the devices," Rambo wrote.

Why is Fulton County at the center of 2020 election controversy?

Fulton County's unauthorized voting machine inspections have put commissioners in recent trouble with the courts. Supreme Court of Pennsylvania justices found Ulsh and Bunch in contempt earlier this year, making the county liable for the Department of State's legal fees in relation to the case.

In court: The cost of Fulton County's losing legal battle over Dominion keeps climbing. The latest.

The state submitted nearly $500,000 of invoices for reimbursement from the county thus far, not counting the expenses incurred from a three-day hearing in August to establish third-party custody of the decommissioned Dominion voting systems.

Last month, Commonwealth Court Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer sided with the state over the county in selecting an escrow agent to take possession of the systems. They're to be lodged at a Pro V&V facility in Huntsville, Alabama.

Compounding the controversy, a cybersecurity company named XRVision has accused an attorney for Fulton County of asking for a falsified report about voting machine hacking through a civil suit filed this summer in Michigan.

Bruce Siwy is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network's Pennsylvania state capital bureau. He can be reached at bsiwy@gannett.com or on the social media site X at @BruceSiwy.

This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Fulton County, PA lawsuit dismissed against Dominion Voting Systems