Pennsylvania’s voters simultaneously are getting identical twin urgent warnings — one from the top down, the other from the bottom up: Junk your unsecure voting machines and replace them, without delay.

The bottom-up warning comes from an elite statewide panel, co-chaired by Grove City College President Paul McNulty, in a report released this week.

“While there is not evidence to support the conclusion that 2016 election results were compromised, the risk remains and it is imperative that steps be taken to eliminate this vulnerability,” states the commission report. “Pennsylvania is one of the state’s most vulnerable to both election manipulation and election-day disruptions because most of its counties rely on insecure electronic voting machines that are susceptible to manipulation and offer no paper record — and therefore no way of verifying the tabulation of votes where the veracity of election results is questioned. Nor can these machines support meaningful recounts.”

The top-down warning had its origins in the 2016 election itself. The aftermath persists two years later: an ongoing special counsel investigation into allegations of the hacking of Democratic Party computers and Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential campaign; and this week, fresh allegations by President Trump that the agents of the People’s Republic of China are attempting to exert influence on the upcoming midterm elections.

Nefarious forces are looking for vulnerabilities in the U.S. electoral system, and Pennsylvania’s current system is rife with vulnerabilities, according to McNulty’s panel, officially titled the Blue Ribbon Commission on Pennsylvania Election Security.

The commission recommends that all of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties replace their voting machines — starting with the most potentially vulnerable counties — those using machines categorized as “DRE’s without VVPAT” — Direct Recording Electronic systems without a Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail.

While 83 percent of the state’s voters use these particularly vulnerable computerized voting systems, Butler County does not. Even so, the county’s voting machines are described as even more outdated than the DRE’s without VVPAT — in fact, they can’t interface at all with the Internet.

There also is an element of the “one bad apple” principle in play. An opportunity even a small level of foul play can ruin the integrity of the whole system.

Shari Brewer, Butler County’s Bureau of Elections director, says that bringing the county’s voting system up to code will cost an estimated $6 million to $8 million.

The County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania estimates the cost for replacing voting machines statewide at $125 million. But only a fraction of that has been appropriated in the state budget — $14 million, Leslie Osche, chair of the Butler County commissioners, said in April.

The recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Pennsylvania Election Security cannot be overamplified. Replace the existing voting machines with equipment that’s certifiably secure from hacking and which provides a paper trail; provide additional state funding to help pay for the upgrade.

Simply said, there’s too much at stake to allow any shadow of doubt to penetrate our faith in a democratic institution as fundamental as our electoral process.