HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s top election official has decertified the voting machines of a sparsely populated county that disclosed that it had agreed to requests by local Republican lawmakers and allowed a software firm to inspect the machines as part of an “audit” after the 2020 election.

The action by Acting Secretary of State Veronica Degraffenreid almost certainly means that Fulton County — where officials maintained they did nothing wrong — will have to buy or lease new voting machines.

The lawmakers’ request for the “audit” came amid former President Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was rigged against him in Pennsylvania and other states.

Degraffenreid, an appointee of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, notified Fulton County officials in a letter Tuesday that the inspection violated state law. It was done in a manner that “was not transparent or bipartisan” and the firm had “no knowledge or expertise in election technology,” Degraffenreid wrote.

“I have no other choice but to decertify the use of Fulton County’s leased Dominion Democracy Suite 5.5A voting system last used in the November 2020 election,” Degraffenreid wrote.

Pennsylvania’s election law gives counties the duty to “maintain proper chain of custody” of ballots to ensure voting systems are not compromised, Degraffenreid wrote.

About 8,000 votes were counted in Fulton County’s 2020 election, with voters backing Trump by almost seven-to-one over Democrat Joe Biden. Biden went on to win Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes.