Pennsylvania: ‘It’s disappointing’ Elections Board reaffirms $29M voting machine contract over objections, violations | Michael D’Onofrio/ Philadelphia Tribune

Objections from an official and activists did not prevent Philadelphia City Commissioners on Thursday from reaffirming a $29 million city contract with a voting system vendor that violated anti-pay-to-play laws.

The three-member commission voted 2-0-1 to continue a city contract with Election System & Software (ES&S) to supply new voting machines for the November election. Commissioner Anthony Clark, a Democrat, abstained from the vote.

Commissioners ignored requests by City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart to refrain from making a decision until her office completed an investigation into the procurement process for the new machines.

Rhynhart revealed this week that the Omaha-based company did not report donations and communications by its lobbyists in the run-up to winning the contract in February.

Rhynhart, a Democrat, said her investigation will wrap up in the coming weeks.

“It’s disappointing, but it’s not over,” she said.

While activists repeatedly shouted, Common Pleas Court Judge Giovanni Campbell, chairman of the commission, said it was the “right decision for Philadelphia” for ES&S to keep the contract.

“I do not believe this process should be overturned or restarted because of the issues that took place before the board” voted today, Campbell said during the meeting inside Room 246 in City Hall. He declined to comment further after the meeting.

City Commissioner Vincent Furlong, another judge, also voted to maintain the contract.

The city will slap ES&S with a $2.9 million fine over the violations, or 10% percent of the contract.

The city continues to withhold payment to ES&S during Rhynhart’s ongoing investigation.

The investigation

Rhynhart’s investigation so far has shown that ES&S used a lobbyist and engaged in lobbying activities in 2017 and 2018.

The lobbying activities included direct communication with then-City Commissioner Alan Schmidt.

ES&S also failed to disclose campaign contributions by consultants to Schmidt and then-City Commissioner Chairwoman Lisa Deeley.

Registered lobbying firms Duane Morris and Triad Strategies, who lobbied for ES&S, contributed $1,000 and $250, respectively, to a political action committee supporting Schmidt, Rhynhart found. Triad Strategies also made a $500 donation to a political action committee supporting Deeley.

Deeley, a Democrat, and Schmidt, a Republican, voted to award ES&S the contract to provide the new voting system, and KNOWiNK LLC to provide electronic poll books. City Commissioner Anthony Clark, a Democrat, did not cast a vote.

Both Deeley and Schmidt stepped down as city commissioners while they run for re-election. Clark is not running for another term and remains a city commissioner.

Campbell and Vincent Furlong, another judge, were appointed to fill the seats vacated by Deeley and Schmidt.

ES&S’s disclosure violations were unintentional and stemmed from a misunderstanding of the mandated disclosure requirements, said Alan Kessler, an attorney for Duane Morris, which was one of the two lobbying firms for ES&S who violated the city’s anti-pay-to-play laws.

Kessler, who noted another bidder for the voting system contract made similar violations, said the contacts and political contributions from ES&S lobbyists were still disclosed with the city, even though they were not noted in the company’s mandatory disclosure form for the bid.

National: Election officials want security money, flexible standards | Dean DeChiaro/Roll Call

State officials from Louisiana and Connecticut on Thursday asked for more money and clear standards from the federal government to help secure voting systems before the 2020 elections. But the officials, Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin and Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill, stressed the differences between their election systems and asked for leeway from the federal government in deciding how to spend any future funding. “The cultures are different and the voters have different expectations,” Ardoin told commissioners from the federal Election Assistance Commission, or EAC, at a public forum. Both states received federal funds to upgrade cyber and physical security of their voting systems after Congress approved $380 million for election security in 2018. They spent their share of those funds differently. Connecticut has put much of its funding toward training, Merrill said, while Louisiana is scrambling to upgrade systems running Windows 7 to Windows 10 before Microsoft stops offering support for the older operating system in January. Ginny Badanes, the director of Microsoft’s Defending Democracy Program, which is working to help both states and companies that build voting machines and software to prepare for the switch in operating systems, said the company “will do whatever it takes to make sure these customers have access to updates that are straightforward and affordable.” Both the state officials and private sector witnesses urged the commission to adopt and publish standards that would set the best practices for election security.

National: States Struggle to Update Election Systems Ahead of 2020 | Alyza Sebenius and Kartikay Mehrotra/Bloomberg

U.S. states operating outdated and insecure voting machines face major hurdles in protecting them in time for the 2020 presidential election, officials said at a meeting of elections experts. Budgets are strained, decision-making authority is diffuse and standards put in place years ago haven’t kept up with today’s cyberthreats, according to testimony Thursday to the Election Assistance Commission in Silver Spring, Maryland. The Senate Intelligence Committee reported last month that Russia engaged in “extensive” efforts to manipulate elections systems throughout the U.S. from 2014 through “at least 2017.” The Brennan Center for Justice reported Thursday that states will have to spend more than $2 billion to protect their election systems in the next five years, including replacing outdated machines or purchasing the software improvements necessary to help harden existing equipment against hackers. Updating software is a “regular and important part” of cybersecurity, the Center for Democracy & Technology warned in a statement. But even when a software patch is available, states can’t compel “severely under-resourced” local elections officials to buy and implement the improvement, said Jared Dearing, executive director of the Kentucky State Board of Elections. On top of those hurdles, Dearing said, the process of certifying elections equipment to federal standards leaves machines in “a time capsule of when that system was developed.”

National: Hackers can easily break into voting machines used across the U.S.; play Doom, Nirvana | Igor Derysh/Salon

Voting machines used in states across the United States were easily penetrated by hackers at the Def Con conference in Las Vegas on Friday. Participants at Def Con, a large annual hacker conference, were asked to try their skills on voting machines to help expose weaknesses that could be used by hostile actors. A video published by CNN shows a hacker break into a Diebold machine, which is used in 18 different states, in a matter of minutes, using no special tools, to gain administrator-level access. Hackers also quickly discovered that many of the voting machines had internet connections, which could allow hackers to break into machines remotely, the Washington Post reported. Motherboard recently reported that election security experts found that election systems used in 10 different states have connected to the internet over the last year, despite assurances from voting machine vendors that they are never connected to the internet and therefore cannot be hacked. The websites where states post election results are even more susceptible. The event had 40 child hackers between the ages of 6 and 17 attempt to break into a mock version of the sites. Most were able to alter vote tallies and even change the candidates' names to things like “Bob Da Builder,” CNNreported. "Unfortunately, it's so easy to hack the websites that report election results that we couldn't do it in this room because [adult hackers] would find it boring," event organizer Jake Braun told CNN.

National: Election Assistance Commission Urged to Finalize 2020 Security Standards | Jack Rodgers/Courthouse News

During a forum on election security Thursday, Connecticut’s secretary of state urged a federal agency in charge of the process to act quickly in issuing new security standards for voting systems so states can update software in time for the 2020 election. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission hosted three panels of witnesses, all of whom testified on ways to improve the security of the nation’s election systems during a three-hour forum in Washington, D.C. Last year, Congress appropriated $380 million under the Help America Vote Act, which makes funds available for states to update election security measures and voter registration methods. However, the federal funds, coupled with a state-required match, were not enough to completely update voting equipment across the country. During Thursday’s first panel, the secretaries of state for Connecticut and Louisiana, Denise Merrill and Kyle Ardoin, respectively, both spoke to the benefits of this funding. Merrill said that with the $5 million in HAVA funds appropriated to her state last year, Connecticut had implemented a virtual system that allows those in election advisory roles to view every desktop used for counting and reporting votes in the state. In most of the state’s 169 towns, methods of recording votes differ depending on the area, Merrill said, also noting that some towns don’t use computers.

National: States and localities are on the front lines of fighting cyber-crimes in elections | Elaine Kamarck/Brookings

When it comes to fighting illegal intrusions into American elections, the states and localities are where the rubber meets the road—that is where American elections are administered. This authority is grounded in more than tradition; it derives from Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution. That section notes that while Congress has the authority to intervene in the setting of elections, election administration is largely a function of state and local government. Given this situation, election law and practice vary considerably from state to state, which leads to a number of ramifications. On the one hand, this decentralization makes it hard for a single cyberattack to take down the entire American election system. But having a fragmented system poses some disadvantages as well. Some states and localities are simply better equipped to protect against cyber intrusions than others, and an adversary seeking to sow doubt and confusion about the integrity of an election needs to compromise only a few parts of the entire system in order to undermine public confidence. The vulnerabilities in election administration exist at every step of the process, from the registration of voters, to the recruitment of poll workers for election day, to the books of registered voters at polling places, to the devices that capture and tally the vote, to the transmission of that data to a central place on election night and to the ability to execute an accurate recount. Every state and locality wants to run a fair election but they are limited by inadequate funding, the absence of trained personnel, and outdated technology.

National: Ex-CIA chief worries campaigns falling short on cybersecurity | Maggie Miller/The Hill

Democratic 2020 presidential campaigns say they are working to boost their cybersecurity, but experts worry those efforts may not be enough. Former acting CIA Director Michael Morell told The Hill he worries there is a “void” and that campaigns need outside help to fully address the issue. “There is not a lot of initial thought given to cybersecurity,” Morell said about the campaigns. Several campaigns insist they have prioritized the issue. Chris Meagher, the spokesman for South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s campaign, told The Hill that “our campaign is committed to digital security,” noting the hiring of a full-time chief information security officer (CISO), Mick Baccio, last week. “Hiring a full-time CISO is one way we are protecting against cyberattacks,” Meagher added. A spokesperson for the presidential campaign of former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) told The Hill they are “actively engaged in defending our operation from disinformation and other cyberattacks.” The spokesperson emphasized that “whether it's training staff as a part of our onboarding process, requiring staff to use complex passwords to protect mobile devices, or using secure messaging services, this campaign understands that protecting our information requires a comprehensive approach to prepare for and manage attacks."

Editorials: Trump is holding election security hostage | Brian Klaas/The Washington Post

President Trump is holding American election security hostage in a bid to suppress votes in his reelection campaign. On Tuesday, Trump tweeted that “No debate on Election Security should go forward without first agreeing that Voter ID (Identification) must play a very strong part in any final agreement. Without Voter ID, it is all so meaningless!” In other words, he is explicitly acknowledging that he will allow known vulnerabilities in American election security infrastructure to remain as inviting targets to foreign adversaries of the United States — unless he gets his way on a long-standing Republican priority. But the evidence is clear: Foreign attacks on American democracy are an urgent, ongoing threat to national security that could result in the entire democratic process being rigged or hacked. On the other hand, voter fraud — the problem that voter ID legislation is ostensibly trying to solve — has already been solved. It’s a minuscule problem that poses virtually no threat to American elections.

Connecticut: Chief elections official says Connecticut’s electronic voting machines are ‘coming to the end of their useful life’ | Mark Pazniokas/CT Mirror

Connecticut’s current system of casting and counting votes has its roots in the chaotic presidential election of 2000. With the winner unclear for a month, it was a frightening moment in U.S. politics that led to a bipartisan consensus about the need to maintain confidence in the integrity of elections. Passage of the federal Help Americans Vote Act in 2002 established broad standards for the conduct of elections and provided funding for new hardware, leading Connecticut in 2006 to abandon its old mechanical lever voting machines for a mix of the old and new — paper ballots counted by computer-driven tabulators. “We fortunately made the right choice,” Secretary of the State Denise Merrill said Wednesday. A proposed Voter Empowerment Act now before Congress would make hybrid systems like Connecticut’s the new federal standard: Using computers to quickly count votes, while maintaining paper ballots as a check on computer hacking and other forms of cyber fraud. President Trump recently endorsed paper ballots on Twitter. But as Merrill and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal made clear Wednesday at a press conference on elections security, the technical and political challenges in protecting U.S. elections are far more complex today than in the aftermath of the Florida recount in the Bush-Gore campaign of 2000. Blumenthal arrived at Merrill’s state Capitol office with his right arm in a sling. He had surgery last week for a torn rotator cuff.

Florida: Broward County elections chief says military adversary could hack US elections. ‘There are forces bigger than us.’ | Anthony Man/South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Broward Supervisor of Elections Peter Antonacci said Wednesday that a determined effort to hack elections — if it’s undertaken by the military of a significant foreign adversary — could prove successful. Antonacci said in an interview he was acknowledging the obvious reality, even though it’s something many people don’t want to recognize. “If the military organizations of our adversaries around the world decide to do something, technically they have the capability to do it,” he said. "There are forces bigger than us and people much bigger than us that may wish us wrong. If they have the intent and capacity, bad things can happen." Antonacci said publicly offering the assessment isn’t the kind of thing that will endear him to the broad universe of people who run elections, including other county elections supervisors. “My fellow supervisors will probably drum me out of the club,” he said. “The general thing people in my business like to say is ‘Everything’s OK.’” Antonacci, who oversees elections in Florida’s second-largest county, said his job is to make sure that Broward County has as many safeguards as it can and to have systems in place that can detect if and when something happens. “What we can do as little people in that drama is make sure our system is protected as much as possible.”

Georgia: Judge Says Georgia To Use Old Electronic Voting Machines For 2019 Elections | Stephen Fowler/NPR

A federal judge has denied a request to move all of this fall's municipal elections in Georgia away from "unsecure, unreliable and grossly outdated technology" and toward hand-marked paper ballots that are optically scanned and counted. The order from U.S. District Court Judge Amy Totenberg Thursday also requires the state to cease using its direct-recording electronic voting machines after 2019 and expresses doubts about the state's ability to roll out its new ballot-marking device system in time for the March 24, 2020, presidential primary election. In the decision, Totenberg also directs the Georgia secretary of state's office to develop a plan to "address errors and discrepancies in the voter registration database" and have paper copies of poll books at each voting precinct. The state must also create a contingency plan for the 2020 elections in case the new system is not completely rolled out. That includes designating several pilot jurisdictions that will use hand-marked paper ballots with optical scanners in their elections this fall. A group of election integrity advocates and Georgia voters sued the secretary of state's office in 2017 alleging that the current DRE system is not secure and is vulnerable to hacking. Last year, Totenberg denied a similar motion for preliminary injunction that would have blocked the DREs from being used in the 2018 midterm election. The current motion sought to prevent the machines from being used this fall in several hundred local elections.

Georgia: Judge denies paper ballots in Georgia this year but requires them in 2020 | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A federal judge ruled Thursday that Georgia voters can cast ballots on the state’s “unsecure, unreliable and grossly outdated” electronic voting machines one last time, deciding it would be too disruptive to switch to paper ballots before this fall’s elections. But starting with next year’s presidential primary election, paper ballots will be required, according to the ruling by U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg. Her order barred the state from using its current electronic voting machines after this year’s elections.Election officials are already planning to upgrade the state’s voting system by buying $107 million in new equipment that will use a combination of touchscreens and printed-out paper ballots to check the accuracy of election results.If the state’s new voting system isn’t completely rolled out to all 159 counties in time for the March 24 presidential primary, Totenberg ruled that voters must use paper ballots filled out by hand. “Georgia’s current voting equipment, software, election and voter databases are antiquated, seriously flawed and vulnerable to failure, breach, contamination and attack,” Totenberg wrote. Totenberg wrote it would be “unwise” to immediately discard the state’s 17-year-old voting machines, which lack paper ballots that could be used to check the accuracy of election results. She wrote that it could be “a recipe for disaster” to force resistant election officials to switch to hand-marked paper ballots this year while they’re also transitioning to the state’s new voting system. Her 153-page ruling clears the way for 386 local elections to move forward as planned this fall, including votes for the Atlanta school board, the Fulton County Commission and city councils across the state.

Kentucky: Election official says counties can’t upgrade cybersecurity because they’re ‘severely under resourced’ | Kevin Collier/CNN

A top Kentucky election official said Thursday that counties there are "severely under resourced," affecting their abilities to provide adequate cybersecurity. "Most of us cannot compel our local election jurisdictions to update their equipment," said Jared Dearing, executive director of the Kentucky State Board of Elections, before an Elections Assistance Commission panel in Silver Spring. The comments came a week after the annual Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas, where the three lawmakers who attended -- all Democrats -- blamed Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, for the Congress' stagnation on any election security bill. At Def Con, a group of election security researchers host a Voting Village, now in its third year, where independent hackers try to break into decommissioned voting equipment. While no system can be guaranteed safe from hackers, election security experts -- including ones consulted for the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report on the subject -- resoundingly say that machines need to be routinely updated and use paper ballots so results can be audited.

Pennsylvania: More-secure hand-marked ballots are also cheaper for Pennsylvania counties | Christopher Huffaker/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Election security experts told the Allegheny County Board of Elections in June that the best choice for secure elections is a voting system where most voters make their selections with a pen on paper — while those who need them have access to ballot-marking devices. A new analysis shows that for Pennsylvania counties that have already selected new systems, that is also the cheaper option. The analysis, from Citizens for Better Elections and the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy and Security, looks at voting systems selected by 31 Pennsylvania counties, as required by a post-2016 election state lawsuit settlement. The remaining 36 counties, including Allegheny County, had yet to make the decision by Aug. 5, when the analysis was done. A voting machine search committee, composed of county employees, is expected to make a recommendation to the Allegheny County Board of Elections by the end of the summer. “Counties that selected exclusively ballot marking device configurations are spending more than two times as much as counties selecting primarily hand-marked paper ballot,” said the University of Pittsburgh’s Chris Deluzio, one of the study’s authors and also one of the experts who appeared before the Board of Elections in June.

Pennsylvania: Philladelphia’s voting-machine contract will move forward despite vendor’s failure to disclose its use of lobbyists | Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

Philadelphia’s acting board of elections voted Thursday to keep its current contract for new voting machines, days after the city’s legal department notified elections officials that the vendor had failed to disclose its lobbying activities. “In my opinion, the continued implementation of ES&S’s voting system … is the right decision for the city,” Judge Giovanni Campbell said at a meeting in City Hall, reading from a piece of paper. His comments, before voting to keep the contract, drew hisses and jeers of protest from dozens of people, many of whom had spoken during the meeting to urge him and the two other sitting board members to scrap the deal. “What’s the point of public comment?” one shouted. Another followed: “This is a charade!” Campbell, unmoved, stuck with his decision. “I do not believe that this process should be overturned or restarted,” he said, despite the revelation that Election Systems & Software (ES&S) had bid for the city contract without disclosing its use of lobbyists and those lobbyists’ donations, including to elections officials’ reelection campaigns. In a meeting and letter, the city solicitor told the elections board that the contract was now voidable and that ES&S is liable for a $2.9 million fine, equal to 10% of the contract. But the city’s procurement commissioner also warned in a letter that the process was far along and going smoothly, and that restarting would risk not having new voting machines in place by the April 2020 presidential primary election. On Thursday, the two judges serving on the board of elections agreed.

Editorials: Security improvements for South Carolina elections are welcome news | Charleston| Post and Courier

South Carolina’s new voting machines that leave a paper trail for audits and cannot be hacked remotely get their first workout Oct. 1 in a special election in Aiken County, and will be operable in all precincts around the state by November. But that’s not the only welcome improvement in the state’s election security. Others address training in cybersecurity for election workers and include frequent tests of the vulnerability of state systems to intrusion. These upgrades, a response to the ongoing threat posed by Russia and other foreign adversaries, are the product of a fruitful collaboration between the federal government and the states. The federal Election Assistance Commission provides an information clearinghouse for best practices and also certifies voting machines and associated hardware and software. The Department of Homeland Security keeps states up to date on the latest security threats. The states receive federal grants to help defray the added costs of enhanced security.