Gov. Wolf picks top election adviser to lead Department of State

HARRISBURG >> Veronica Degraffenreid, a former senior election official in North Carolina, on Friday became Gov. Tom Wolf’s nominee to head of his Department of State, which oversees elections in Pennsylvania.

Degraffenreid joined Wolf’s Department of State a year ago as an election modernization adviser and became the department’s acting secretary after Kathy Boockvar resigned last month with the revelation that the agency had committed a massive bureaucratic error in failing to advertise a proposed constitutional amendment.

Wolf called Degraffenreid “a nationally respected expert in election administration and the perfect person to lead the Department of State.” She had previously served as the director of election operations for the North Carolina Board of Elections.

Degraffenreid represented Wolf’s Department of State through lengthy Appropriations Committee hearings, including taking pointed questions about the November election from Republican lawmakers who had urged Congress to block Pennsylvania’s electoral votes for Democrat Joe Biden.

Wolf is reshuffling his cabinet as he enters his last two years in office. His human services secretary, Teresa Miller, is leaving at the end of April, to be replaced by Wolf’s policy and planning secretary Meg Snead.

Wolf nominated his acting education secretary, Noe Ortega, to succeed Pedro Rivera, who departed last year, and his acting health secretary, Alison Beam, to succeed Rachel Levine, who joined the Biden administration in Washington.