HARRISBURG — Gov. Tom Wolf on Monday said that he will have a new top election official as he enters his last year in office, naming Leigh Chapman to replace Veronica Degraffenreid atop the Department of State.

Chapman will take over Jan. 8.

The Department of State has been at the center of efforts to protect elections from outside hackers, moving counties to paper-based machines, administering the introduction of a broad new mail-in voting law and defending the administration against baseless allegations of election fraud by former President Donald Trump and his allies.

The department took heat in 2021 for a major bureaucratic bungle, failing to advertise a proposed state constitutional amendment, as required, to allow victims of childhood sexual abuse to sue perpetrators and collaborators over decades-old claims.