Washington: Secretary Of State Pushes ‘Election Security’ Bill | Associated Press

Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman is seeking $1.8 million in state money for security in county election offices that would make Washington eligible for another $8.6 million in matching federal funds. The Seattle Times reports that the budget request is part of an election security proposal Wyman, a Republican, unveiled Wednesday. The bill also provides stricter penalties and restrictions surrounding the collection of ballots — which are mailed to each of the state’s nearly 4.5 million voters — and provides more thorough post-election audits for race recounts. It also would eliminate online ballots for military and overseas voters, to reduce the risk of potential malware coming into elections offices.

Ukraine: Interior Ministry asks FBI to help probe suspected Russian hack of Burisma | Ilya Zhegulev/Reuters

Authorites in Ukraine have asked the top law enforcement agency of the United States for help investigating the suspected cyberattack by Russian military hackers on Burisma Holdings, an energy company caught up in the impeachment of US President Donald Trump. The Ukrainian interior ministry on Thursday also announced an investigation into the possible illegal surveillance of the then American ambassador to Kyiv, Marie Yovanovitch, following the release of  messages this week by the US Congress as part of the impeachment case. Burisma was at the center of attempts by Trump last July to persuade Ukraine to announce an investigation into Hunter Biden, who is the son of Democratic US presidential contender Joe Biden and used to have a seat on the Ukrainian company’s board.

National: Internet voting Is happening now and it could destroy our elections | Rachel Goodman and J. Alex Halderman/Slate

Russian hackers will try to disrupt American voting systems during the 2020 election cycle, as they did in 2016. This time, they’ll be joined by hackers from all over the world, including some within the United States. What unites them all is an eagerness to undermine free and fair elections, the most basic mechanism of American democracy. There are some hard questions about what to do about all this, but one piece is surprisingly straightforward: We need to keep voting systems as far away from the internet as possible. There’s a growing and clear consensus on this point. Federal guidelines for new voting machines might soon prohibit voting systems from connecting to the internet and even using Bluetooth. At the same time, though, voter turnout in this country remains abysmal. Allowing people to vote on their phones seems intuitively like it could help, especially for young people who vote at especially low rates. It could also be helpful for some military and overseas voters, as well as some voters with disabilities, who face challenges getting a physical ballot cast, returned, and counted. So why not try it? Well, put mildly, security vulnerabilities introduced by internet voting could destroy elections.

National: U.S. election security czar says attempts to hack the 2020 election will be more sophisticated | Ken Dilanian/NBC

The U.S. government is geared up as never before to combat foreign election interference, but there are limits to what American intelligence agencies can do, even as determined adversaries build on their 2016 playbook, the nation’s election security czar said Tuesday. In prepared remarks before an elections group, and in an exclusive interview afterward with NBC News, Shelby Pierson, the election security threats executive at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said a number of adversaries may be poised to attempt election interference. “The threats as we go into 2020 are more sophisticated,” she said. “This is not a Russia-only problem. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, non-state hacktivists all have opportunity, means and potentially motive to come after the United States in the 2020 election to accomplish their goals.” Pierson spoke at an election summit sponsored by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an independent, bipartisan agency that certifies voting systems and serves as a national clearinghouse of information on election administration.

National: State election officials will get fresh intelligence briefing after Iran tensions | Sean Lyngaas/CyberScoop

In the wake of the U.S.-Iran standoff and just weeks before the first Democratic primary, the intelligence community’s lead official for election security will brief state officials on the top cyberthreats to the U.S. electoral process. Shelby Pierson, the intelligence community’s election threats executive, said that the briefing this Thursday will cover the full gamut of digital threats to U.S. elections, including those emanating from Iran. Asked if Iran is more likely to interfere in the 2020 election after the U.S. military killed Tehran’s top general earlier this month, Pierson told reporters Tuesday that “it certainly is something that we’re prepared for.” “As our adversaries look to the political climate … it wouldn’t surprise me at all that this is part of the calculus,” she added.

National: Democrats sound election security alarm after Russia’s Burisma hack | Maggie Miller/The Hill

Congressional Democrats are raising fresh concerns about 2020 election security following a report this week that Russian military officers hacked Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian gas company at the center of President Trump’s impeachment. Several Democratic lawmakers are viewing the incident, reported by The New York Times on Monday night, as the first major sign that Moscow is gearing up for a repeat of its 2016 election interference. They cited what they call similarities between the Burisma attack and the Democratic National Committee hack four years ago. Sen. Gary Peters (Mich.), the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said the hack confirmed that Russia will be back to interfere in U.S. elections this year. “The Russians are actively engaged in hacking all sorts of sites and businesses, and I am sure there was a political motivation behind it. We know the Russians are going to be actively involved in trying to cause problems in the 2020 election, and this is just a further confirmation of their active involvement in American politics,” Peters told The Hill.

National: Paperless voting machines pose risk to US’s election infrastructure | Ash-har Quraishi/Scripps Media

Could foreign parts in voting machines be putting the U.S. election at risk for hacking? It’s a question that lawmakers have been exploring as they seek answers from top bosses at three major voting manufacturers. Tom Burt, the President and CEO OF Election Systems & Software, appeared confident as he testified before the House Administration Committee last week. “We’ve seen no evidence that our voting systems have been tampered with in any way,” said Burt. The companies that make vote tabulation systems say they welcome federal oversight of election infrastructure and need help securing their supply chains, especially for voting machine parts made in foreign countries. “Several of those components, to our knowledge, there is no option for manufacturing those in the United States,” explained Dominion Voting Systems CEO John Poulos. Cyber and national security experts say antiquated and paperless voting machines pose the most significant risk to the U.S.’s election infrastructure.

National: Election officials are watching how their states respond to cyberattacks | Benjamin Freed/StateScoop

State election officials said Tuesday that they’ve been watching how their state governments have responded to incidents like ransomware attacks as lessons on what they would do if the voter registration databases, vote-total reporting systems and other components of election infrastructure that they manage were targeted. Though the ransomware incidents that have spread through state and local governments across the United States have largely spared election systems from the worst, debilitating effects, the Department of Homeland Security last year said that local officials could be targeted by viruses that lock them out of voter rolls unless they pay a financial demand. And at a conference in Washington hosted by the Election Assistance Commission, state officials said they are paying attention to ransomware wave.

National: Millions of Americans have been purged from voter rolls – and may not even realize it | Natasha Bach/Fortune

Millions of Americans have been purged from the voter rolls in recent years, as state governments seek to remove the names of individuals who have died, relocated, or have otherwise become ineligible to vote. But such purges have been widely criticized due to instances in which states have relied on bad information, unregistering eligible voters who are often unaware until they attempt to cast their ballots on Election Day. “The most important thing people get wrong is they forget that purges are a necessary and important part of administering our elections,” Myrna Pérez, director of the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, told Fortune. “We all benefit when our rolls are clean, and sometimes we forget that purges—when done properly—are a good thing.” But large-scale systematic purges that remove hundreds of thousands of names at a time are more likely to round up individuals who should not be removed from the rolls.

California: Beverly Hills City Council Might Sue Over Los Angeles County’s New Voting Machine Design | Libby Denkman/LAist

The Beverly Hills City Council has voted to move ahead with a possible lawsuit against election officials responsible for the new Los Angeles County voting equipment which will debut in the March 3 primary. The new machines are digital, and there are concerns that voters will vote without seeing all the candidates. Already there are huge changes in store for Angelenos voting in-person when vote centers start opening Feb. 22 — from where and when to vote to a new, high-tech way to cast a ballot. Electronic ballot marking devices developed by Los Angeles County will be the default option in all 1,000 new vote centers, replacing the familiar old InkaVote System. The new devices include touch screens to mark voter selections, which are then printed onto a paper ballot that will be collected and tallied by election officials. Now, with voting fast approaching, local governments and campaigns are familiarizing themselves with the new system. And many don’t like what they see.

Verified Voting Blog: Verified Voting Comments on proposed amendments to Georgia State Election Board rules

Download as PDF Verified Voting welcomes the opportunity to comment on the proposed amendments to Georgia’s State Election Board rules published on December 19, 2019. These amendments are wide-ranging, and we recognize that substantial work has gone into drafting them. Our comments focus on certain aspects especially relevant to cybersecurity and election verification. We substantially…

Iowa: Despite Election Security Fears, Iowa Caucuses Will Use New Smartphone App | Kate Payne, Miles Parks/NPR

Iowa’s Democratic Party plans to use a new internet-connected smartphone app to help calculate and transmit results during the state’s caucuses next month, Iowa Public Radio and NPR have confirmed. Party leaders say they decided to opt for that strategy fully aware of three years’ worth of warnings about Russia’s attack on the 2016 election, in which cyberattacks played a central role. Iowa’s complicated caucus process is set to take place Feb. 3 in gymnasiums, churches, rec centers, and other meeting places across the state. As opposed to a primary in which voters cast ballots in the same way they would for a general election, Iowa’s caucuses are social affairs; caucus-goers gather in person and pledge their support for a candidate by physically “standing in their corner” in designated parts of a room.

Kansas: State won’t be ready to implement vote center law for 2020 elections | Tim Carpenter /The Topeka Capital-Journal

Secretary of State Scott Schwab predicted Tuesday regulations necessary to implement a state law allowing Kansans to vote at the polling station of their choice won’t be completed in time for the August or November elections in 2020. Schwab told members of the Senate’s election committee that technical considerations, including cellphone coverage problems, in the state’s 105 counties made the process of drafting rules complex. The program won’t be finalized until 2021, he said. The voting reform bill signed last year by Gov. Laura Kelly was inspired by a proposal from Sedgwick County officials. “They are not going to be ready by this year simply because we don’t want to screw up,” the secretary of state said. “If we rushed it through for this year, I promise you there would be a lot of mistakes.”

New York: Lawmakers call on Board of Elections to vote ‘no’ on new machines | Denis Slattery/New York Daily News

A coalition of advocates and lawmakers are calling on the state Board of Elections to reject controversial new touchscreen voting machines they say aren’t compatible with the city’s soon-to-take-effect ranked choice system. Opponents say the problem-plagued ES&S ExpressVote XL voting machines, which the state will be testing on Tuesday as part of its certification process, pose too many problems and could present major issues as the city prepares for ranked voting in 2021. “What we’re hoping is that the Board will realize that there are significant issues with this machine and require the vendor to answer questions particularly regarding its capability to run a ranked choice voting election,” Susan Lerner, the executive director of good government group Common Cause, told the Daily News. City voters approved a ballot initiative last November giving the green light to ranked choice in upcoming elections, allowing voters to literally rank their top picks for a given position in order of preference.

Pennsylvania: Some voting security groups want Northampton County voting machines gone after November malfunction | Bo Koltnow/WFMZ

“They are insecure and administration panels are easily opened and tampered with.” Attorney Leslie Grossberg is talking about the ExpressVoteXL voting machines. The machines used in Northampton County malfunctioned last November causing a paper ballot recount. Grossberg’s clients, voting security groups, recently filed an injunction with the Court of Common Pleas to block the XL in 2020. The groups cite immediate and irreparable harm to the election. “Decertification of the ExpressXL is the goal,” Grossberg said. In December the machines, also used in Philadelphia, received a vote of no-confidence from the Northampton County Election Commission Board.  A state hearing is set that could decide to keep or toss the XL.

New York: State Contemplates Voting Machines with Troubled Track Record | Brigid Bergin/WNYC

The New York State Board of Elections may approve a voting machine with a troubled track record. The State is testing the Express Vote XL from Election Software & Systems. The machine uses a touchscreen and marks the ballot FOR the voter. But the machines were used in a Pennsylvania judicial election last year where thousands of votes weren’t counted due to mechanical error. Advocates say New York needs a higher standard. “To be sure [the machines] are minimally hackable and that the vote will reflect the intent of the voter so that they can be cast and accurately counted is to have hand-marked paper ballot,” said Susan Lerner, head of Common Cause New York. A spokeswoman for ES&S said the machines use layers of security and have been approved by the federal government.

National: ‘Online and vulnerable’: Experts find nearly three dozen U.S. voting systems connected to internet | Kevin Monahan, Cynthia McFadden and Didi Martinez/NBC

It was an assurance designed to bolster public confidence in the way America votes: Voting machines “are not connected to the internet.” Then Acting Undersecretary for Cybersecurity and Communications at the Department of Homeland Security Jeanette Manfra said those words in 2017, testifying before Congress while she was responsible for the security of the nation’s voting system. So many government officials like Manfra have said the same thing over the last few years that it is commonly accepted as gospel by most Americans. Behind it is the notion that if voting systems are not online, hackers will have a harder time compromising them. But that is an overstatement, according to a team of 10 independent cybersecurity experts who specialize in voting systems and elections. While the voting machines themselves are not designed to be online, the larger voting systems in many states end up there, putting the voting process at risk. That team of election security experts say that last summer, they discovered some systems are, in fact, online. “We found over 35 [voting systems] had been left online and we’re still continuing to find more,” Kevin Skoglund, a senior technical advisor at the election security advocacy group National Election Defense Coalition, told NBC News.

National: Chinese Technology in Voting Machines Seen as Emerging Threat | Michaela Ross/Bloomberg

The infiltration by foreign countries like China into election voting equipment is emerging as a growing concern among vendors, who are actually asking for more federal regulation as they grapple with a lack of domestic suppliers producing critical technologies. Top executives of the three largest voting machine vendors—Hart InterCivic, Dominion Voting Systems and Election Systems & Software—told the House Administration Committee Thursday they are hoping for guidance and support from the Department of Homeland Security on how to secure their subcontractors. Committee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said the hearing marked the first time all three CEOs of the largest companies supplying voting machines in the U.S. agreed under oath that they’d welcome comprehensive regulations from the federal government. The executives told committee members they have no choice but to rely on components from China due to a lack of U.S.-made equivalents, a problem facing developers of other technology products including 5G telecommunications and drones.

National: U.S. Probes If Russia Targeting Biden in 2020 Election Meddling | Chris Strohm/Bloomberg

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials are assessing whether Russia is trying to undermine Joe Biden in its ongoing disinformation efforts with the former vice president still the front-runner in the race to challenge President Donald Trump, according to two officials familiar with the matter. The probe comes as senior U.S. officials are warning that Russia’s election interference in 2020 could be more brazen than in the 2016 presidential race or the 2018 midterm election. Part of the inquiry is to determine whether Russia is trying to weaken Biden by promoting controversy over his past involvement in U.S. policy toward Ukraine while his son worked for an energy company there. Trump was impeached by the House and faces a trial in the Senate over his pressure on Ukraine’s president to investigate Biden, the early front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, as well as an unsupported theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 election.

National: Keeping US elections safe from hackers | Maggie Miller/The Hill

Robert Mueller’s former chief of staff from his time at the FBI says Washington isn’t doing nearly enough to secure U.S. election systems in the wake of the special counsel report on Russian interference in 2016. John Carlin, who now chairs the law firm Morrison & Foerster’s global risk and crisis management group and co-chairs its national security practice group, told The Hill in a recent interview that foreign threats against elections are “here and present,” adding that he “absolutely” expects Moscow to attempt to interfere in this year’s vote. “The overall message that the seriousness of what they found in terms of the Russian government interfering in our elections in a sweeping and systematic action, you would hope that this is the type of report that would drive in a bipartisan way all Americans to see what we can do to prevent it from occurring again,” said Carlin. “I wish there would be more of a bipartisan focus on what Russia did and holding them [to] account.” Carlin noted that while “there have been improvements” from the federal government to address election security concerns — most notably $425 million Congress designated to states for election security as part of the recent appropriations cycle — the ongoing “plague” of ransomware attacks poses a new threat.

National: Cyber Threats to Elections Reported Nationwide | Associated Press

West Virginia reported unusual cyber activity targeting its election systems. The Texas governor said the state was encountering attempted “attacks” at the rate of “10,000 times a minute” from Iran. Information technology staff in Las Vegas responded to an intrusion, though the city says no data was stolen. All told, state election officials in at least two dozen states saw suspicious cyber activity last week, although it’s unclear who was behind the efforts and no major problems were reported. Long before a U.S. drone strike assassinated a top Iranian general, there were already concerns about foreign efforts to hack American institutions and its elections. The conflict with Iran has exacerbated those fears. Yet as the recent spate of reports makes clear, not all suspicious cyber activities are equally troublesome, the work of a foreign government or a precursor to the type of Russian interference seen in the 2016 election on behalf of Donald Trump.

National: Russians Hacked Ukrainian Gas Company at Center of Impeachment | Nicole Perlroth and Matthew Rosenberg/The New York Times

With President Trump facing an impeachment trial over his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter Biden, Russian military hackers have been boring into the Ukrainian gas company at the center of the affair, according to security experts. The hacking attempts against Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company on whose board Hunter Biden served, began in early November, as talk of the Bidens, Ukraine and impeachment was dominating the news in the United States. It is not yet clear what the hackers found, or precisely what they were searching for. But the experts say the timing and scale of the attacks suggest that the Russians could be searching for potentially embarrassing material on the Bidens — the same kind of information that Mr. Trump wanted from Ukraine when he pressed for an investigation of the Bidens and Burisma, setting off a chain of events that led to his impeachment. The Russian tactics are strikingly similar to what American intelligence agencies say was Russia’s hacking of emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman and the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential campaign. In that case, once they had the emails, the Russians used trolls to spread and spin the material, and built an echo chamber to widen its effect.

Idaho: Voter registration system to be overhauled, according to election officials | Trevor Fay/KBOI

The Idaho State Voter Registration System (ISVRS) needs to be replaced, according to the Canyon County Clerk’s Office. CBS2 News spoke with election officials about what needs to happen to get the voting system up to speed. Chris Yamamoto, Canyon County Clerk, and Chief Elections Officer, worked with the Idaho Secretary of State to replace the ISVRS. Yamamoto wants the new system to be GIS-based, meaning it keeps track of voter addresses. He says the current system is known to crash when many people use it at once, like during elections.

Illinois: Mayor Lori Lightfoot wants to spend nearly $19 million on new Chicago touchscreen voting machines before March primary election | John Byrne/Chicago Tribune

Chicago voters are poised to see updated voting machines that election officials said will provide more security in the March primary election, thanks to nearly $19 million Mayor Lori Lightfoot wants to move from the city’s streetlight replacement program to pay for the new equipment. Under the spending plan aldermen advanced Monday, the bond money will be transferred to the Chicago Board of Elections to buy new touchscreen voting machines that will generate a paper ballot that voters will feed into ballot readers when they’re done voting. The city has borrowed money for the “smart streetlight” program that Mayor Rahm Emanuel championed through his public-private Infrastructure Trust as a way to save energy costs and speed the replacement of broken lights.

Pennsylvania: Voting security advocates seek to block use of Northampton County’s machines | Peter Hall/The Morning Call

Warning of immediate and irreparable harm to the election system, voting security advocates asked a Pennsylvania court to block the use of troubled voting machines in Northampton County and elsewhere in the 2020 elections. Leading a group of Northampton County and Philadelphia voters in a lawsuit over the machines, the National Election Defense Coalition and Citizens for Better Elections filed a motion Friday in Commonwealth Court seeking a preliminary injunction requiring the state to decertify the ExpressVote XL electronic voting system for the April primary and November general election. Citing new information from voters who encountered difficulty using the machines last year and a vote of “no confidence” in the ExpressVote XL by Northampton County election commissioners, the advocates said there is “no way to repair voters’ trust in the machines.” “If voters do not trust the machines, they cannot trust the outcome of the election,” the advocates said. “If that is to happen, the entire state of democracy starts to crumble under the weight of suspicion, distrust and frustration.”

South Dakota: State House bill for online voter registration | Anderley Penwell/KOTA

A State House Bill has been introduced that would allow South Dakota voters to register to vote online. House Bill 1050 is sponsored by the Committee on Local Government at the request of the State Board of Elections. If passed, the county auditors will still be in charge of maintaining voter registration records in their respective counties and any eligible voter with a valid drivers license or state-issued ID card can register to vote through the online system.

Wisconsin: Election officials look to launch security outreach plan | Todd Richmond/Associated Press

Wisconsin officials are considering spending more than a quarter of a million dollars on a public relations push to reassure voters that elections in the state are secure after nearly three-quarters of respondents to a survey this fall said they were worried about threats. Wisconsin Elections Commission staffers planned to ask the six commissioners Tuesday for permission to spend $260,000 to hire Madison-based advertising firm KW2 to develop the campaign, which could include online content, videos, news releases and graphics. The money would come from a $7 million federal grant the state received in 2018 to bolster election security. The commission has already hired KW2 to research voter impressions on election security. Those efforts are expected to cost about $140,000. That money will also come from the federal grant. The firm conducted an online survey in October of 1,116 Wisconsin adults’ impressions of election security. Less than a third of respondents — 29% — said they had confidence in election security nationally. More than half — 54% — said they had confidence in state elections.

Japan: Push to spread e-voting may mean allowing use of off-the-shelf tablets | The Yomiuri Shimbun

The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry aims to allow the use of commercially available tablets and personal computers for electronic voting in local elections. E-voting became possible in 2002 and 10 local governments and assemblies have since implemented the voting method. But e-voting has not been used since 2016. To encourage the implementation of more electronic voting, the ministry plans to review the current guidelines that effectively limit devices to those specialized for e-voting. As mistakes in local elections have been rapidly increasing nationwide, the ministry believes that e-voting can be effective for preventing mistakes in vote counting. During fiscal 2020, the ministry aims to improve the circumstances to make it possible for local governments and assemblies to resume the implementation of e-voting. The guidelines stipulate criteria on devices used for vote counting in elections in which e-voting is implemented. It effectively only allows the use of electronic devices specialized for e-voting because of durability and measures to prevent fraudulent voting. However, compared with devices that were available in 2002, the performance of commercially available electronic devices has remarkably improved and there are now more lower-priced models.

National: Voting vendors, security pros still far apart on protecting 2020 election | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Voting machine companies and cybersecurity advocates are still miles apart on what it will take to secure 2020 against Russian hackers. During a nearly three-hour congressional hearing yesterday, security advocates sounded alarm bells about possible election hacks, warning machines in use today can be easily compromised. Companies, meanwhile, mostly defended the status quo. At one point, the chief executive of Hart InterCivic, one of three major companies that control more than 80 percent of the voting machine market, even defended selling paperless voting machines that can’t be audited and that top security experts and the Department of Homeland Security have warned are far too vulnerable in an era when elections are being targeted by sophisticated Russian hackers. “We actually believe our [machines] are secure,” said Hart CEO Julie Mathis, describing a number of internal defensive measures and security reviews they passed – primarily before 2016. The divisions highlighted how, despite three years of surging congressional attention to election security since Russia’s 2016 hacking efforts, there has been almost no government oversight of voting machine makers themselves. … Mathis’s comments were panned by security advocates. “It’s very simple. No matter how secure that device is, there’s no way to know whether the choice that’s recorded matches what the voter intended. It’s rightly called a black box,” Edward Perez, a former Hart executive who’s now global director of technology development at OSET Institute, a nonprofit election technology organization, said in an interview. 

National: Voting machine makers face questions from House lawmakers — but more remain | Ben Popken/NBC

For decades, the companies that dominated the U.S. voting machine industry operated in relative anonymity. Now, lawmakers want answers and transparency. The CEOs of the three companies that make more than 80 percent of the country’s voting machines testified before Congress Thursday for the first time, marking a new and bipartisan effort to ensure the security of the 2020 election. The three companies, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Dominion Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic, are almost entirely unregulated. But in recent years, policymakers and election advocates have begun to question who owns the companies, how they make their machines and whether they could be susceptible to remote hacking. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., chair of the congressional subcommittee that oversees federal elections, said in her opening remarks that they need more information from the companies. “Despite their outsized role in the mechanics of our democracy, some have accused these companies with obfuscating, and in some cases misleading election administrators and the American public,” said. “There is much work to do, and much for Congress to learn about this industry.”