Author Archives: Warren Stewart

National: Campaign cybersecurity might be the weakest link in the midterms | Tim Starks/The Washington Post

An official at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said last week that election security is “light-years ahead” of where it was in 2016. But there’s one area lagging behind as the 2022 midterm vote looms: the cybersecurity of political candidates’ campaigns. In the aftermath of Russia’s election interference in the 2016 cycle, Congress delivered hundreds of millions of dollars to state and local governments to spend on things like replacing less secure voting machines and giving cybersecurity training to election officials. There’s been no comparable mobilization for campaign security. That’s noteworthy because Russian hackers breaking into the systems of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign kicked off the big election security push in the first place. And political campaigns — almost none of which have dedicated cybersecurity staffers, and are near-totally focused on dedicating every available dollar to victory — are highly vulnerable.

Full Article: Campaign cybersecurity might be the weakest link in the midterms – The Washington Post

Georgia voting breach reminds us how dangerous Trump’s ‘big lie’ is | The Washington Post

The tale of how rogue actors sought to access voting systems after the 2020 election becomes more convoluted with every new piece of information. Yet the bottom line remains simple: Former president Donald Trump’s allies went to swing states around the country breaching critical infrastructure and damaging democracy even as they claimed to protect it. The “big lie” motivating their efforts is as potent a threat today.
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New surveillance video from rural Coffee County, Ga., as reported by The Post’s Emma Brown and Jon Swaine, reveals a hodgepodge of election deniers visited a local elections office in early 2021 as they hunted for nonexistent proof of voter fraud. Most interesting are the activists’ links to each other and similar gambits elsewhere: Some were forensic specialists hired by lawyer Sidney Powell to copy sensitive software — an incident already the subject of a federal lawsuit against Georgia authorities. Others, it now appears, were consultants connected to interference in multiple other states including Michigan, where the same forensic firm also traveled for the same purpose, according to records.

The precise connections between attempts to probe voting systems not only in Georgia and Michigan but also in New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona remain unclear. What’s obvious, however, is the devastating impact of the tampering. Of course, when a password to a machine appears on YouTube, there’s a security risk. Punching a hole in a system also renders it more vulnerable to future hacking, which puts a heavy burden on cash-strapped jurisdictions forced to replace their equipment. Technical safeguards can mitigate some of this danger. But no piece of computer code can restore the public’s trust in the integrity of the country’s elections. That’s true for those who believe President Biden won in 2020 but now worry that hackers can fiddle with results, as well as those who still think, contrary to all available evidence, that Trump was the real victor — whose suspicions the meddlers sought to stoke.

‘Absolutely terrifying prospect’: How the midterms could weaken U.S. election security | Eric Geller/Politico

Republicans who support former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election would gain the power to open up access to their states’ voting machines if they win in November — a prospect that security experts call potentially catastrophic for American democracy. Already, unvetted outsiders have examined voting equipment or inspected the devices’ sensitive computer code in counties in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania, bypassing longstanding security protections — in many cases with the support of Trump allies overseeing local elections. Now Republicans who embrace the former president’s conspiracy theories are running for governor or secretary of state, offices that would give them even broader authority to allow like-minded activists and consulting firms to conduct so-called “audits” of the entire voting systems in key states. These kinds of examinations would make it easier for hackers intent on sowing chaos or changing the outcomes of future elections to learn how to conduct their attacks, according to voting security professionals, who note that some sensitive information about voting machines has already been leaked since Trump supporters began their push for audits. It’s “an absolutely terrifying prospect,” said J. Alex Halderman, a computer security expert and professor at the University of Michigan who has repeatedly exposed flaws in voting systems but has also debunked Trump’s claims about 2020 fraud.

Full Article: ‘Absolutely terrifying prospect’: How the midterms could weaken U.S. election security – POLITICO

Election deniers on ballot: What does this mean for democracy? | Peter Grier and Noah Robertson/CSMonitor

Mark Finchem, the Republican candidate to become Arizona’s top election official, secretary of state, has said he would not have certified President Joe Biden’s victory there in 2020. Kristina Karamo, the GOP nominee for Michigan secretary of state, claims that the 2020 vote there was rife with fraud and that former President Donald Trump – not President Biden, who won the state by 154,000 votes – was the true victor of the state’s Electoral College votes. Doug Mastriano, Republican gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania, is a state lawmaker who introduced a resolution following the 2020 vote claiming that the election was “irredeemably corrupted” and the state legislature should appoint new delegates to the Electoral College. If he wins the governorship this November, Mr. Mastriano would have the power to appoint Pennsylvania’s next secretary of state. Across America, Republicans who question the legitimacy of the last presidential election are on the ballot for the 2022 midterms. At least 195 GOP Senate, House, governor, attorney general, or secretary of state nominees have echoed Mr. Trump’s false charge that the presidential election was stolen, data media site FiveThirtyEight estimated this week. Yet multiple reviews in state after state have shown the election to be fair and the results accurate. Multiple officials of both parties, including Mr. Trump’s former Attorney General William Barr, have said they saw no evidence of widespread fraud.

Full Article: Election deniers on ballot: What does this mean for democracy? – CSMonitor.com

National: Cameras, Plexiglass, Fireproofing: Election Officials Beef Up Security | Neil Vigdor/The New York Times

In Wisconsin, one of the nation’s key swing states, cameras and plexiglass now fortify the reception area of a county election office in Madison, the capital, after a man wearing camouflage and a mask tried to open locked doors during an election in April.In another bellwether area, Maricopa County, Ariz., where beleaguered election workers had to be escorted through a scrum of election deniers to reach their cars in 2020, a security fence was added to protect the perimeter of a vote tabulation center.And in Colorado, the state’s top election official, Jena Griswold, the secretary of state and a Democrat, resorted to paying for private security out of her budget after a stream of threats.As the nation hurtles closer to the midterm elections, those who will oversee them are taking a range of steps to beef up security for themselves, their employees, polling places and even drop boxes, tapping state and federal funding for a new set of defenses. The heightened vigilance comes as violent rhetoric from the right intensifies and as efforts to intimidate election officials by those who refuse to accept the results of the 2020 election become commonplace.Discussing security in a recent interview with The Times, Ms. Griswold, 37, said that threats of violence had kept her and her aides up late at night as they combed through comments on social media.

Full Article: Before Midterms, Election Officials Increase Security Over Threats – The New York Times

National: Election activists are seeking the “cast vote record” from 2020. Here’s what it is and why they want it. | Rachel Leingang/Votebeat

Elections departments across the country are getting tons of near-identical requests for an obscure document generated by ballot-counting machines, spurred by people who insist this record could help detect fraudulent voting patterns that show former President Donald Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election. It is the latest example of the endless, fruitless quest for a smoking gun that has so far yielded no proof of wrongdoing affecting the election results. But the document, called a “cast vote record,” can’t be used to detect these kinds of patterns, nor is it particularly useful to people who aren’t researchers or auditors, experts say. And the sheer number of requests is overwhelming elections offices as they prepare for this year’s general election. “The remarkable thing is that there’s really a lot less here than it might seem in both directions. It’s way less ominous than it could be, but it’s also way less useful,” said Max Hailperin, a retired computer science professor who has researched election technology. Put simply, a cast vote record is the electronic representation of how voters voted. These lines of data appear in a spreadsheet full of zeros and ones to indicate the votes an anonymous ballot contained. Whether the resulting records can be made public varies around the country, and the exact definition and appearance of what’s included in a cast vote record also varies, depending on the jurisdiction and the voting technology it uses.

Full Article: What is a cast vote record? Election activists seek obscure document from ballot tabulators. – Votebeat Arizona – Nonpartisan local reporting on elections and voting

National: Election conspiracies find fertile ground in conferences | Margery A. Beck and Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

On a quiet Saturday in an Omaha hotel, about 50 people gathered in a ballroom to learn about elections. The subject wasn’t voter registration drives or poll worker volunteer training. Instead, they paid $25 each to listen to panelists lay out conspiracy theories about voting machines and rigged election results. In language that sometimes leaned into violent imagery, some panelists called on those attending to join what they framed as a battle between good and evil. Among those in the audience was Melissa Sauder, who drove nearly 350 miles from the small western Nebraska town of Grant with her 13-year-old daughter. After years of combing internet sites, listening to podcasts and reading conservative media reports, Sauder wanted to learn more about what she believes are serious problems with the integrity of U.S. elections. She can’t shake the belief that voting machines are being manipulated even in her home county, where then-President Donald Trump won 85% of the vote in 2020. “I just don’t know the truth because it’s not open and apparent, and it’s not transparent to us,” said Sauder, 38. “We are trusting people who are trusting the wrong people.” It’s a sentiment now shared by millions of people in the United States after relentless attacks on the outcome of the 2020 presidential election by Trump and his allies. Nearly two years after that election, no evidence has emerged to suggest widespread fraud or manipulation while reviews in state after state have upheld the results showing President Joe Biden won.

Full Article: US election conspiracies find fertile ground in conferences | AP News

National: An ex-professor spreads election myths across the U.S., one town at a time | Annie Gowen/The Washington Post

One recent still summer night in this tiny city on the Nebraska prairie, more than 60 people showed up at a senior citizens center to hear attorney David Clements warn of an epidemic of purported election fraud. For two hours, Clements — who has the rumpled look of an academic, though he lost his business school professor’s job last fall for refusing to wear a mask in class — spoke of breached voting machines, voter roll manipulation and ballot stuffing that he falsely claims cost former president Donald Trump victory in 2020. The audience, which included a local minister, a bank teller and farmers in their overalls, gasped in horror or whispered “wow” with each new claim. “We’ve never experienced a national coup,” he told the crowd, standing before red, white and blue signs strung up alongside a bingo board. “And that’s what we had.” Clements, who has no formal training or background in election systems, spent months crisscrossing the back roads in his home state of New Mexico in a battered Buick, trying to convince local leaders not to certify election results. His words had an impact: In June, officials in three New Mexico counties where he made his case either delayed or voted against certification of this year’s primary results, even though there was no credible evidence of problems with the vote.

Full Article: An ex-professor spreads election myths across the U.S., one town at a time – The Washington Post

National: Election Officials Have Been Largely Successful in Deterring Cyber Threats, CISA Official Says | Edward Graham/Nextgov

Increased coordination between federal agencies, election officials, and private sector election vendors has helped deter an influx of cyber threats directed at U.S. voting systems, an election official from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said on Thursday during an event hosted by the Election Assistance Commission and Pepperdine University. Mona Harrington, the acting assistant director of CISA’s National Risk Management Center—which includes the agency’s election security team—said that since election systems were designated as critical infrastructure in 2017, “the attacks have become much more sophisticated and the volume of attacks has certainly increased.” But with the partnerships that CISA and election officials have built, along with the products and services currently being used to mitigate potential risks, election officials have many of the tools needed to deter both nation state actors and non-nation state adversaries. Harrington noted that all 50 states have deployed CISA-funded or state-funded intrusion detection sensors in their systems, known as Albert sensors, and that hundreds of election officials and private sector election infrastructure partners have signed up for a range of CISA’s cybersecurity services, from recurring scanning of their systems for known vulnerabilities on internet-connected infrastructure to more in-depth penetration testing.

Source: Election Officials Have Been Largely Successful in Deterring Cyber Threats, CISA Official Says – Nextgov