Dauphin County resists Pennsylvania’s push for new voting machines

HARRISBURG — A Pennsylvania county is signaling that it won’t go along with Gov. Tom Wolf’s insistence that counties buy new voting systems as a security measure in 2020’s election, when the state is expected to be a premier presidential battleground.

Dauphin County Commissioner Mike Pries said Wednesday that he’s comfortable with the county’s old machines, particularly after hearing about paper jams, long lines and other problems in other counties that debuted new machines in last week’s election.

Wolf began pressing counties last year to get new voting machines that have an auditable paper backup. That was after federal authorities warned Pennsylvania and other states that Russian hackers targeted them during 2016’s election.

Wolf has warned that he’ll decertify the counties’ old voting systems before the 2020 primary.