National: Senate Intelligence report triggers new calls for action on election security | Maggie Miller/The Hill

Democrats are renewing their calls for Senate action on election security measures following the release of a Senate Intelligence Committee report that found the Kremlin directed Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. The party has repeatedly gone after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for imposing obstacles to action on election security, a point underscored once again in the wake of the bipartisan Intelligence report. McConnell was “blocking a full-throated U.S. response” by stopping various election security bills from being brought up in the Senate and burying them “in his legislative graveyard,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) charged in a statement. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a 2020 presidential candidate, called on McConnell to allow votes on election security legislation.

National: Internet Group Says Most U.S. Presidential Candidates Have Cybersecurity Flaws | Sintia Radu/US News

Moire than three years after media reports disclosed hackers were interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential race to influence voters, most of the country's candidates in the 2020 presidential election are struggling with cybersecurity issues, according to a nonpartisan group focused on internet standards. A majority of the 23 candidates in the race for the White House failed to meet the privacy and security standards set by the Internet Society's Online Trust Alliance (OTA), according to the group's audit released this week. The findings are the latest to show the increasing pressure countries are facing to preserve online security during elections, as well as in their industries and infrastructure. The research by the OTA examined how well the 23 Democratic, Republican and Independent candidates are handling online security challenges in their campaigns. Just seven of the 23 politicians scored 80% or higher in campaign cybersecurity, meaning researchers found no failures in the three areas examined: privacy, website security and consumer protection. Weaknesses ensuring the data privacy of users accessing the candidate's online platforms raised the most red flags, researchers found.

National: Study links Russian tweets to release of hacked emails | Tami Abdollah/Associated Press

Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election has generally been seen as two separate, unrelated tracks: hacking Democratic emails and sending provocative tweets. But a new study suggests the tactics were likely intertwined. On the eve of the release of hacked Clinton campaign emails, Russian-linked trolls retweeted messages from thousands of accounts on both extremes of the American ideological spectrum. Those retweets increased the odds selected Twitter users would be online and able to express outrage when the next day on Oct. 7, details such as the revelation that Clinton may have had early access to a primary debate question were released. Those retweets also brought those lesser-known users a wider audience, encouraging them to tweet more, and ultimately helping polarize American public debate.

Voting Blogs: Election experts warn against RFID-based voting systems | e-lected blog

A voting system which uses Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to store electronic votes has been under scrutiny after election experts questioned its capacity to safeguard the integrity of election data. Though the voting system had been tested in a few Argentine jurisdictions, academics from around the world had not had a real chance to analyze it in detail until authorities from the Democratic Republic of Congo decided to use a similar system for the long-delayed elections of December, 2018. The decision to automate the controversial elections using an untested system drew criticism from U.S. diplomats. According to experts from The Sentry, it is possible to manipulate the information the RFID chip contains, since the use of this unique identifier technology and radio communications give off signals that can be easily detected at distances greater than expected. Experts recommend election officials to refrain from implementing this type of technology.  RFID technology is well known for its usefulness in tracking inventories, but its use extends to other industries, from bookstores and apparel to health and transportation. The main benefit of having RFIDs is that it allows quick communication with remote sensors. Nonetheless, however useful RFID may be for certain industries, elections are an entirely different ballgame. The capacity to allow remote sensors to read the information it contains opens the door for bad actors to hack the votes.

Georgia: Voters begin casting ballots on new Georgia election system | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The first Georgia voters to test the state’s new voting machines cast their ballots Monday, with some voters in Paulding County praising the addition of a paper ballot and others saying the voting equipment was more cumbersome than what they’re accustomed to using. Election officials rolled out the new voting system in six counties for local elections as in-person early voting began Monday. The $107 million system, which combines touchscreens and computer-printed paper ballots, will be used by all voters statewide on March 24 for the presidential primary. A few minor problems surfaced when polls opened in Paulding, located about 35 miles west of Atlanta.

Pennsylvania: Rage Against the (Voting) Machines: Pennsylvania’s Ongoing Battle for Secure Ballots | Kira Simon/State of Elections

“Green Party’s Jill Stein threatens legal challenge to Philly’s new, $29M voting machines.” At first glance, this may sound like a headline from the 2016 election. In fact, it’s a headline from October 2, 2019. Readers of this blog likely remember that Stein settled a lawsuit with Pennsylvania stemming from a state recount of the 2016 election. Why this is still in the news? Let’s run through Pennsylvania’s recent history of voting machine troubles. In 2016, Pennsylvania was one of fourteen states to use paperless voting machines as the primary polling place equipment in some counties and towns. During the Democratic primary, some counties encountered unusual voting procedures with their electronic voting machines. Three counties did not include a U.S. Senate candidate because the counties did not have enough time to add his name to the ballot after the state supreme court reversed a lower court decision to keep the candidate off the ballot after his petitions were challenged. The counties were unable to add his name because three weeks before the election it was “impossible” to update the information on the machines. To remedy this, voters in one county completed all primary votes except their U.S. Senate vote on an electronic machine – and submitted their Senate vote by a paper ballot; in another county voters had to separately write in the candidate’s name. While this was an unusual instance involving an essentially unknown candidate, you can imagine a scenario where a voting machine may need to be updated close to an election due to an emergency or court order – and the fact that there is no good way to address that issue is disconcerting.

Utah: Mobile voting system used in Utah County subject of attempted 2018 West Virginia breach | Graham Dudley/KSL

The FBI is investigating an attempted intrusion of the Voatz mobile voting system during West Virginia’s 2018 midterm elections, officials announced last week, throwing a spotlight onto an experimental app that Utah County used for the first time in this year’s primary elections. Mike Stuart, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia, said in a statement that there was “no intrusion and the integrity of votes and the election system was not compromised.” Stuart also said that the FBI investigation into the attempt is ongoing and that it’s still not determined whether any federal laws were violated. Voatz is a new technology allowing overseas voters, like missionaries and U.S. military personnel, an alternative to email or traditional mail-in voting, which have long sparked concerns over security and anonymity risks. It’s an app that uses blockchain technology, a sort of public digital ledger, to encrypt and secure votes.

Utah: New threats, new solutions: How Utah’s counties secure elections | Graham Dudley/KSL

Rozan Mitchell would like to clear up one thing: Yes, her office really does look at every signature on returned mail-in ballots and compare them against the signatures on voter registration forms. “People say, ‘Well, you only do a sampling.’ Nope,” Mitchell said, sitting in the Provo headquarters of the Utah County elections office in early September. She is the county’s elections director and, as she’s making clear, she takes that responsibility seriously. “We check the signature on every single one of those ballots that comes through here.” That’s how the county discovers instances where, say, a parent has voted for a missionary serving abroad, or a spouse has voted for someone away on business. “I think people don’t realize the great lengths we go to to do things like that,” Mitchell said. Supervising elections, a function of county clerks and their staff, is a process very much driven by local entities: states, counties and municipalities. The federal government has laws mandating equal access to the ballot box, but it’s up to local governments to decide how to achieve that goal.

Washington: How Washington is fighting back against attempts to hack ballots | Nick Bowman/KIRO

A week ago, Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman told KIRO Radio that the state’s election system routinely faces faces tens of thousands of hacking attempts daily. But how exactly is Washington’s system designed to fight those attacks? Wyman stopped in again to detail the various measures in place. “The biggest thing is we moved to the VoteWA system, and so this has enabled us not only to build a stronger firewall, more robust security, and monitoring systems around it, but now … any user that gets into our system, they have to be pre-approved,” Wyman told KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross. VoteWA is system that was first enacted for August’s primary election, featuring a handful of new security measures to ensure results aren’t altered, hacked, or tampered with in any way. Results from each of the state’s 39 counties are tabulated from paper ballots, and then transferred to an air-gapped machine (i.e. a computer not connected to the internet). The results are then transferred to a flash drive, which is plugged into an internet-enabled computer to transmit the final results.

West Virginia: The FBI is investigating West Virginia’s blockchain-based midterm elections | Matthew De Silva/Quartz

During the 2018 midterm elections, somebody tried to hack Voatz, the blockchain-based voting system used by West Virginia. The attack was unsuccessful, but is under investigation by the FBI, said Andrew Warner, West Virginia’s secretary of state in an Oct. 1 press conference. “In last year’s election, we detected activity that may have been an attempt to penetrate West Virginia’s mobile voting process,” said Warner. “No penetration occurred and the security protocols to protect our election process worked as designed. The IP addresses from which the attempts were made have been turned over to the FBI for investigation. The investigation will determine if crimes were committed.” The hacking attempt may have stemmed from an election security class at the University of Michigan, CNN reported Friday (Oct. 4). Last November, 144 West Virginian voters—including active members of the US military serving overseas—used Boston-based Voatz, a blockchain-enabled smartphone application, to cast their ballots for the Senate and House of Representatives as well as for state and local offices. That’s a small number, but could be consequential, especially in close races. Four seats in West Virginia’s House of Delegates were decided by less than 150 votes.

Wisconsin: Election Commission takes steps to strengthen security of Wisconsin’s voting process | The Milwaukee Independent

The Wisconsin Elections Commission unanimously approved a $1.1 million grant program on September 24 that aimed to help cities and towns beef up their election security. The program would make up to $1,200 in federal funding available for qualified participants to update operating systems or buy new computers. Municipalities that already meet baseline security standards could use the funding to make security improvements, like setting up a firewall. These measures are meant to protect Wisconsin’s electronic voting system and voters’ personal information. Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe said the sooner municipalities have completed the improvements, the better. Wolfe told the commission during its meeting in Tuesday in Madison that every municipality that receives funds will need to be up to minimum security standards by January. The grant program will prioritize the lowest of Wisconsin’s low-tech municipalities. Before approving the program, the commission decided to wait until after those cities and towns get their grants in November before giving money to communities that already meet the security baseline.

Europe: EU to take action against fake news and foreign electoral interference | Emerging Europe

MEPs have warned that foreign electoral interference seriously threatens European democratic societies to the benefit of anti-EU, right-wing extremist and populist forces. Attempts to influence decision-making in the EU will put European democratic societies at risk, the European Parliament declared in a resolution passed on October 10. Parliament points out that foreign interference has a systematic pattern, be it through campaigns on social media, cyber-attacks on infrastructure related to elections or financial support to political parties in the run-up to all major national and European elections. Much of this interference benefits anti-EU, extremist and populist candidates. Despite member states fully or partially banning foreign donations to political parties or candidates, foreign actors find ways to circumvent those rules, say MEPs, singling out cases of the Front National in France, and allegations reported by media on the Freedom Party in Austria, Lega in Italy and Leave.eu in the UK.

Afghanistan: Election Commission confirms cyberattacks on its main server | MENAFN

A member of Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission (IEC) has said that the cyber-security of IEC's data center has been enhanced in order to counter any threat of cyber-attacks. Mohammad Hanif Danishyar, a member of the IEC told Ariana News that two German experts from Dermalog, a German company, have arrived in Kabul to resolve the problem of low data transferring from biometric devices to main server. He also confirmed cyber-attacks on IEC main server. 'Our server is the main thing in elections. We have taken special measures to avoid any possible threats. Even there was such attempts but experts have arrived. We want to make sure that the security of our server is not decreasing again,' Mr. Danishyar said. In addition, officials said that around 23,000 result sheets and a complete data of voters from 5,000 biometric devices have been transferred to the IEC main server in Kabul.

Israel: Preventing electoral interference – the next frontier for the National Cyber Directorate? | Tamir Libel/Jerusalem Post

In recent years, the threat of foreign interference in elections by governmental and non-governmental actors alike became prominent in public discourse due to the alleged actions taken by Russians and others in various Western election campaigns, such as the 2016 US presidential elections. Such interferences, or “influence operations,” are not limited to the formal election period itself; they are often preceded by the lengthy establishment of large networks for message dissemination and resonance. Even in cases where the interference operation was either unsuccessful or did not take place at all, the mere possibility of such influence becomes a polarizing point in and of itself. The threat of electoral interference should therefore be avoided, especially in contested societies like Israel, necessitating the appointment of a national authority tasked with the observation, disruption and prevention of influence operations.