National

The FBI is investigating suspected hacking attempts by Iran targeting both a Trump associate and advisers to the Biden-Harris campaign, according to people familiar with the matter, as the agency formally acknowledged Monday it has opened a high-stakes national security investigation months before Election Day. Three staffers on the Biden-Harris campaign received spear phishing emails that were designed to appear legitimate but could give an intruder access to the recipients’ communications, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive investigation. So far, investigators have not found evidence that those hacking attempts were successful, these people said. The FBI began the investigation in June, suspecting Iran was behind the attempts to steal data from two U.S. presidential campaigns. Agents contacted Google, among other companies, to discuss what appeared to be a phishing effort targeting people associated with the Biden campaign, these people said. Read Article

National: Google says Iranian efforts to hack US presidential campaigns are ongoing and wide-ranging | Sean Lyngaas/CNN

Google said Wednesday that an alleged Iranian hacking operation aimed at US presidential campaigns is ongoing and more wide-ranging than previously known as the hackers continue to target the email accounts of current US officials and people associated with Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. In May and June, a hacking group linked with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targeted the personal email accounts of about a dozen people associated with Biden and Trump, including current government officials, Google researchers said in a blog post. And even today, Google is seeing unsuccessful attempts by the Iranian hackers to log into the accounts of people associated with Biden, Harris, Trump and both presidential campaigns. Read Article

National: The nation’s best hackers found vulnerabilities in voting machines — but no time to fix them | Maggie Miller/Politico

Some of the best hackers in the world gathered in Las Vegas over the weekend to try to break into voting machines that will be used in this year’s election — all with an eye to helping officials identify and fix vulnerabilities. The problem? Their findings will likely come too late to make any fixes before Nov. 5. In one sense, it’s the normal course of events: Every August, hackers at the DEF CON conference find security gaps in voting equipment, and every year the long and complex process of fixing them means nothing is implemented until the next electoral cycle. But Election Day security is under particular scrutiny in 2024. That’s both because of increasing worries that foreign adversaries will figure out how to breach machines, and because President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations of widespread fraud in 2020 undermined confidence in the vote among his supporters. Read Article

National: Researchers race to document voting machine vulnerabilities ahead of November | David DiMolfetta,/Nextgov/FCW

One peek inside the Voting Village at the DEF CON hacker conference would lead the average person to believe they had entered a sterile operating room meant only for computers. At tables placed throughout the space, voting equipment and other machine parts lie exposed like patients awaiting surgery, surrounded by tech specialists taking notes and wielding diagnostic tools as they peer into the circuit boards, microchips and wires underpinning the pivotal instrument that will enable Americans to cast their votes in this November’s election. In one back corner, Will Baggett is one of several performing his own digital surgery. He images a single tabulation device, used in counties across the U.S. to tally up votes that are brought in from a separate machine, which only enables voters to cast their ballots. To the left, he examines a newer generation machine that allows voters to pick their candidate while the device internally tabulates the totals. Read Article

National: Ahead of election, Senate Dem0crats urge DOJ to hike poll-worker protections | Benjamin S. Weiss/Courthouse News Service

In the lead-up to November’s presidential election, a group of Senate Democrats on Monday asked the Justice Department to double down on efforts to investigate and counter threats against poll workers and local election officials. In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, lawmakers led by Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, Vermont Senator Peter Welch and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin sounded the alarm about what they call an ongoing barrage of abusive conduct towards people tasked with overseeing U.S. elections. “Our election officials and workers are public servants working on the frontlines of our democracy to make sure that every vote is counted,” the lawmakers wrote. Growing numbers of local election officials have reported experiencing threats, harassment or other abuse. In a survey published in May by the Brennan Center for Justice, around 38% of responding officials said they’d been the target of such conduct. Read Article

National: Supreme Court Drawn Into Fight on Timing of Election Law Changes | Zoe Tillman/Bloomberg News

The US Supreme Court is weighing how close to elections judges can change voting rules, with the potential to affect legal fights unfolding across the county less than three months before the presidential contest. In Arizona — a battleground for Donald Trump as he tries to reclaim the White House — the Republican National Committee has asked the justices to restore a state law requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote after it was blocked by an appeals court. The case is the latest test of a nearly 20-year-old ruling that cautioned against last-minute federal court action that causes “voter confusion.” Any action by the justices could give judges handling fights over state voting practices fresh guidance about how to account for proximity to the Nov. 5 election, when voters will choose the next US president and federal lawmakers. The RNC asked for a decision by Aug. 22. The court ordered responses by Friday. Read Article

National: Iran is accelerating US election influence operations, Microsoft research says | David DiMolfetta/Nextgov/FCW

Iran is stepping up its efforts to interfere in the 2024 U.S. elections, laying the groundwork to stoke chaos with fake news campaigns and seeking to get into the accounts of candidates, Microsoft said in a report Friday. One Iranian hacking group sent a spear-phishing email two months ago to a high-ranking presidential campaign official, relying on a compromised email account of a former senior adviser, according to the tech giant. It also tried to log into the account of a former presidential candidate. Microsoft didn’t name any of the targets. In total, four different groups have conducted a range of activities, Microsoft said. Read Article

National: How secretary of state elections became the new battleground for election deniers | Sudiksha Kochi/USA Today

Kari Estes made a 25-minute journey from her home in Festus, Missouri, to the suburbs of St. Louis County on a hot summer evening to mingle with Democratic Secretary of State candidate Barbara Phifer. Estes was among a few dozen voters who gathered for an ice cream social to hear Phifer less than a week from the state’s primary election on Aug. 6. It was her first time seeing Phifer in person – and she said she felt an air of “hopefulness” in the room that day. “What she said when she addressed all of us is that the secretary of state position should be boring … (and) nonpartisan,” she said. “Since the ‘big lie’ and steal the election and all of that, people now are more aware of the importance of the secretary of state to be nonpartisan and neutral on the subject of certifying elections.” For Estes and many voters paying close attention to secretary of state races around the country, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Read Article

National: GOP continues a legal fight against mail ballots that arrive after Election Day | Ashley Lopez/NPR

Ahead of this year’s election, Republicans have been trying to stop some states — including swing state Nevada — from counting postmarked mail ballots that don’t make it to election officials until after Election Day. That legal effort hasn’t been going well. But Republican Party officials say they are committed to these challenges and in recent days they appealed their case in Mississippi to a conservative circuit court in the hopes of getting a favorable ruling there. Roughly 20 states plus Washington, D.C., accept and count mail-in ballots that are received after Election Day if they are postmarked on or before Election Day. These rules are meant to accommodate voters who don’t remember to turn in their ballot until Election Day and to create wiggle room in case there are issues with the Postal Service. Read Article

National: State lawmakers eye promise, pitfalls of AI ahead of November elections | Kevin Hardy/Stateline

Inside a white-walled conference room, a speaker surveyed hundreds of state lawmakers and policy influencers, asking whether artificial intelligence poses a threat to the elections in their states. The results were unambiguous: 80% of those who answered a live poll said yes. In a follow-up question, nearly 90% said their state laws weren’t adequate to deter those threats. It was among the many exchanges on artificial intelligence that dominated sessions at this week’s meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures, the largest annual gathering of lawmakers, in Louisville. “It’s the topic du jour,” Kentucky state Sen. Whitney Westerfield, a Republican, told lawmakers as he kicked off one of many panels centering on AI. “There are a lot of discussions happening in all of our state legislatures across the country.” Read Article

National: Justice Deparment says it’s committed to sharing info about foreign election threats with tech companies | Eric Tucker/Associated Press

The Justice Department remains committed to sharing with social media companies information that it picks up about efforts by foreign governments to influence this year’s elections, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco told a lawyers’ conference on Friday. Speaking at the American Bar Association’s annual meeting, Monaco, the department’s No. 2 official, said that though it’s ultimately up to technology companies to decide what if any action to take, “We will provide companies with actionable intelligence so they can make decisions regarding abuse on their platforms by adversaries conducting foreign malign influence operations, including targeting our elections.” The comments were part of a wide-ranging speech on election security in which Monaco also warned that Russia remains the primary foreign threat to elections, with Moscow targeting specific voting demographics and using encrypted direct-messaging apps to reach Americans, and sound an alarm about a rising threat of violence to public officials — including election workers. Read Article

National: Vice presidential candidates present stark contrast on voting issues | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

The selection Tuesday of Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, as Kamala Harris’ vice presidential running mate spotlights a clear contrast with JD Vance, his counterpart on Donald Trump’s ticket, on the issue of voting. As governor, Walz has staked out a lengthy policy record on voting and election issues, including an expansion of voting rights. Vance has had fewer opportunities to affect voting policy as a senator, but his statements on the subject over the last four years, including false claims about voter fraud, offer insight into his views. Read Article

National: Like Election Systems, Voter Registration Must Be Cyber Secure | Jule Pattison-Gordon/Government Technology

Cyber and elections experts turned their attention during a recent webinar to the possibility of hackers trying to compromise digital jurisdictions’ voter registration systems — and what defenders can do about it. “If [advanced persistent threat actors] are trying to come after us, or our election, and they know that it’s near impossible to get into our voting systems and get out of it without detection, then the next easiest target is to mess with our registration system[s],” Craig Bowman, vice president of government, education and healthcare at cybersecurity company Trellix, said in the FedInsider webinar. Adversary nations want to tamper with U.S. elections to promote candidates whose policy stances they prefer or to foment chaos that undermines the credibility of American democracy, Bowman said. Read Article

National: ‘Wild west of election work’: How certification fights are already cropping up in battleground states | Sara Murray/CNN

Georgia conservative Julie Adams spread conspiracies about election workers, concocted a baseless story about ballot couriers drinking beer and doing drugs while hoarding ballots, and boasted of her contentious relationship with local election officials. Then, in February, Adams was sworn in as a member of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections in Georgia. In one of her first acts, she sued the rest of the board and the elections director, claiming she should not be forced to certify election results “without access to all elements of the election materials”. The dustup in Fulton County is just one example of the election certification fights already cropping up in battleground states, from Georgia to Michigan to Nevada this year. The election officials who have refused to certify have said they’re guarding against election fraud or seeking information they believe is necessary to certify the results. But voting rights activists see the challenges as an effort to undermine faith in the election process and test out ways to contest the election results in November. Read Article

National: The Voting Machine Conspiracy Theorists Are Still at It | Alan Feuer/The New York Times

Nearly four years later, zealous supporters of former President Donald J. Trump who promoted the conspiracy theory that Dominion Voting Systems had rigged its machines to rob him of the 2020 election are still at it. Even though Dominion has aggressively defended itself in court, a network of pro-Trump activists has continued to push false claims against the company, often by seeking to use information gleaned from the very defamation lawsuits the firm has filed against them. The network includes wealthy business executives like Patrick Byrne, who once ran Overstock.com, and Mike Lindell, the founder of the bedding company MyPillow. Both have sought without credible evidence to put Dominion at the heart of a vast conspiracy to deny Mr. Trump a victory. It also includes a pro-Trump sheriff from southwest Michigan, a former election official from Colorado and Mr. Byrne’s own lawyer, who is facing charges of tampering with Dominion machines and who once worked alongside Mr. Trump’s legal team in claiming that the company was part of a plot to subvert the last election. Read Article

National: Election officials continue to face threats, harassment ahead of November | Laura Romero/ABC

In early July, a man wearing a gator face mask, sunglasses, and camera equipment attached to a vest walked into the elections building in King County, Washington, and began to take videos and photos of the employees and their surroundings. The man, according to a video obtained by ABC News, approached a counter and began harassing the election workers as he recorded them with his equipment. After he left, the man posted a video of the interaction on YouTube and published some of the staff’s names, emails, and phone numbers, which officials said resulted in “dozens of calls and emails” to election workers. Read Article

National: A Senate Bill Would Radically Improve Voting Machine Security | Eric Geller/Wired

Congress is moving closer to putting US election technology under a stricter cybersecurity microscope. Embedded inside this year’s Intelligence Authorization Act, which funds intelligence agencies like the CIA, is the Strengthening Election Cybersecurity to Uphold Respect for Elections through Independent Testing (SECURE IT) Act, which would require penetration testing of federally certified voting machines and ballot scanners, and create a pilot program exploring the feasibility of letting independent researchers probe all manner of election systems for flaws. The SECURE IT Act—originally introduced by US senators Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, and Susan Collins, a Maine Republican—could significantly improve the security of key election technology in an era when foreign adversaries remain intent on undermining US democracy. Read Article

National: Election offices are slowly adopting .gov domains, report finds | Sophia Fox-Sowell/StateScoop

A growing number of election offices are adopting verified, top-level .gov domains to safeguard against impersonation, phishing attacks and the spread of misinformation, according to a report published by the Washington think tank Bipartisan Policy Center. The report includes analysis of a dataset maintained by the Center for Tech and Civic Life consisting of websites and contact information for all local election offices in the United States. The center found that since 2022, nearly a third of the nation’s 7,000-plus election office websites have adopted .gov domains. William Adler, associate director of the center’s Elections Project and one of the report’s authors, said he’s encouraged by the trend, but that it’s still moving slowly. Read Article

National: Russia is relying on Americans to spread election disinformation, officials say | David Klepper/Associated Press

The Kremlin is turning to unwitting Americans and commercial public relations firms in Russia to spread disinformation about the U.S. presidential race, top intelligence officials said Monday, detailing the latest efforts by America’s adversaries to shape public opinion ahead of the 2024 election. The warning comes after a tumultuous few in U.S. politics that have forced Russia, Iran and China to revise some of the details of their propaganda playbook. What hasn’t changed, intelligence officials said, is the determination of these nations to seed the internet with false and incendiary claims about American democracy to undermine faith in the election. “The American public should know that content that they read online — especially on social media — could be foreign propaganda, even if it appears to be coming from fellow Americans or originating in the United States,” said an official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity under rules set by the office of the director. Read Article

National: State election directors fear the Postal Service can’t handle expected crush of mail-in ballots | Steve Karnowski/Associated Press

State election directors from across the country voiced serious concerns to a top U.S. Postal Service official Tuesday that the system won’t be able to handle an expected crush of mail-in ballots in the November election. Steven Carter, manager of election and government programs for the postal service, attempted to reassure the directors at a meeting in Minneapolis that the system’s Office of Inspector General will publish an election mail report containing “encouraging” performance numbers for this year so far. “The data that that we’re seeing showing improvements in the right direction,” Carter told a conference of the National Association of State Election Directors. “And I think the OIG report is especially complimentary of how we’re handling the election now.” Read Article

National: Election workers prepare for violence with guns and PPE | Charlotte McDonald-Gibson/The Times

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump has highlighted the growing danger faced by public figures across the United States and experts are warning that, unless politicians dial down the divisive rhetoric, more violence is likely. Politicians, state legislators, election workers, school board officials and local prosecutors are increasingly targeted with death threats, harassment and other abuse as the political atmosphere before the election on November 5 becomes more tense. This is forcing local officials to take extraordinary measures to keep themselves and their staff safe. At her office in Douglas County, Nevada, Amy Burgans, the county clerk treasurer, has stockpiled personal protective equipment to keep election workers safe from ballots spiked with drugs. She has nasal spray on her desk to reverse overdoses in case any fentanyl gets through, and has organised training on how to deal with active shooters. She also carries a personal firearm. Read Article

CISA publishes resilience-planning playbook for critical infrastructure | Sophia Fox-Sowell/StateScoop

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on Wednesday published a supplemental manual to its infrastructure resilience planning framework, which provides guidance on how local governments and the private sector can work together to improve the security and resilience of the nation’s critical infrastructure. The new playbook includes processes and table top exercises to help public and private sectors minimize the impact of cyberattacks on their communities, reduce the risk of disruption to critical services and keep system restoration costs low. It also outlines key actions for resilience planning, such as establishing incident-response groups, identifying critical infrastructure and those that dependent on it, creating mitigation strategies and integrating solutions into existing protocols. Read Article

National: Conservative groups are pushing to clean voter rolls. Others see an effort to sow election distrust | Julie Carr Smyth/Associated Press

Conservative groups are systematically attempting to challenge the legitimacy of large numbers of voter registrations across the country before the presidential election. The strategy is part of a wider effort raising questions about the integrity of this year’s election as former President Donald Trump repeatedly claims without evidence that his opponents are trying to cheat. The voter roll tactics include mass door-knocking campaigns, using special software designed to identify voters whose eligibility could be challenged and a crush of lawsuits. Read Article

National: How mapping tech is revolutionizing election administration | Chris Teale/Route Fifty

When St. Louis County, Missouri, kicked off its redistricting process after the 2010 Census, local officials used colored pencils on transparent paper to redraw their legislative boundaries and reflect population shifts. Ten years later, following the 2020 Census, officials in Missouri’s most populous county had traded in their pencils and paper for geographic information system mapping. St. Louis County, despite delays wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, had automated the process and used GIS to redraw the lines with the updated residency data. The result was more accurate and transparent maps. The story was similar in Orange County, California, which used to use “reams of paper” in its redistricting process, according to Matt Eimers, GIS supervisor at the Orange County Registrar of Voters. Officials there would have to compare their hand-drawn maps against paper records, which was a laborious process. Read Article

National: CISA bolsters security of US election infrastructure with new OpSec guide | Liam Garman/Cyber Daily

The six-page guide highlights the potential security risks menacing the upcoming US elections and provides actionable insights into how election officials can effectively manage them, from securing online infrastructure to protecting voter information. The document also includes insight into how the US’ adversaries collect private information and officials can find themselves on the radar of overseas threat actors, before laying out actionable steps for the creation of OpSec policies. “CISA provides various training programs for election workers, including secure practices, incident response planning, and de-escalation techniques,” Cait Conley, CISA special adviser to the director for election security, said. “This guide is another excellent resource CISA provides the public with to keep our elections safe and secure.” Read Article

National: Deployable voting machines for overseas troops move closer to reality | Jonathan Snyder/Stars and Stripes

Deployable electronic voting machines are now fully functional and could be used in a pilot election as soon as next year, the president of a nonprofit technology firm said this week.“We now have a fully functional prototype and are a few weeks away from wrapping up our report to [the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency],” Ben Adida, executive director of VotingWorks and the technical lead on the project, told Stars and Stripes by email Monday.VotingWorks unveiled an early-stage version of its deployable voting machine in February at the National Association of State Election Directors conference in Washington, D.C. The machine aims to allow service members around the world, even at remote locations, to transmit a signed, encrypted digital ballot to their home precinct for tallying on Election Day. Read Article

National: Conservative activists find errors in software they hoped would root out voter fraud | Jane C. Timm/NBC

After months of testing, some conservative activists are finding that the vigilante computer programs they’d hoped would give them the ability to root out redundancies and fraud in the country’s voter rolls aren’t very reliable. Last year, those activists excitedly embraced EagleAI and similar programs that promised to help them look through voter rolls across the country in search of outdated or fraudulent voter registrations, even as experts warned about the programs’ limitations. The country’s voter rolls are designed for registration, not removal. Few people think to cancel old voter registrations when they move, which can lead to messy voter rolls as election officials must wait years to remove outdated registrations under federal law. Read Article

National: US intel reveals Russia plans to meddle in 2024 election | Ariana Baio/The Independent

Russia will attempt to influence the 2024 US presidential election using familiar tactics like spreading misinformation online to subvert the public’s faith in the democratic election process, according to intelligence officials. On Tuesday, officials in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told reporters that Russia is using covert social media tactics like targeting voter groups in swing states with bot farms. The goal, they said, is to drive a larger rift in domestic political ideology, promote mistrust in the electoral system and sway public opinion in favor of a certain candidate. “We haven’t observed a shift in Russia’s preferences for the presidential race from past elections,” a senior official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said. Though officials did not name a particular candidate, investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election found that their strategies were aimed at helping Donald Trump. Read Article

Georgia: Critics charge GOP election board members violated state laws in rushed meeting | Stanley Dunlap/Georgia Recorder