Official dismisses voter fraud talk

Pennsylvania is immune from any allegation of voter fraud by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, the state’s top elections official declared Thursday, and Pennsylvania’s voting machines and tabulating systems can’t be hacked because they aren’t connected to the internet.

Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro Cortes, a Democrat, said claims of voter fraud are without proof in the modern history of Pennsylvania’s elections.

“We run good elections in Pennsylvania, we have done so historically, we will do so again,” Cortes told reporters at a Capitol news conference.

He said every voting machine prints out an audit of votes cast on that machine during the day, and copies are given to the judge of elections and elected minority and majority inspectors.

Election night reporting of results is run through a secured network that is not connected to the internet, Cortes said.

Cortes’ comments came in response to suggestions by Trump and others that election results could be rigged, hacked or bent by voter fraud, such as by people casting ballots in the name of dead people still on voter rolls.

In court cases challenging Pennsylvania’s 2012 law requiring voters to show an acceptable form of photo identification, officials from then-Republican Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration presented no examples of voter impersonation. The law was struck down in the courts.