National: Sticking With Trump, Republicans Resist Call for Broader Russian Inquiry | The New York Times

Congressional Republicans, straining to defend the Trump administration amid investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, resisted growing calls on Thursday for a special prosecutor or select congressional committee to review the matter, even as Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from any inquiry. That decision followed a day in which Republicans mostly closed ranks around Mr. Sessions, a well-liked former Senate colleague, amid revelations that he spoke with the Russian ambassador last year, seemingly contradicting testimony from his confirmation hearing in January. Initially, the fallout seemed to spawn fissures among Republicans: Several, including Senators Rob Portman of Ohio and Susan Collins of Maine, were quick to call for Mr. Sessions’s recusal, defying party leaders — including President Trump — who had said earlier on Thursday that they saw no reason for it. But by day’s end, consensus appeared to have been restored: Mr. Sessions would step aside in any investigation. And that, Republicans suggested, would be enough, at least for now.

National: Lawmakers unveil bill to help state, local governments with cybersecurity | The Hill

A bipartisan pair of senators has introduced a bill that would require the federal government to do more to help state and local officials combat cyber threats. Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) on Thursday announced that they have reintroduced the State and Local Cyber Protection Act, which would bolster cybersecurity cooperation between the Department of Homeland Security and state and local governments. Cybersecurity has attracted increased attention in the wake of Russia’s cyberattacks aimed at influencing the presidential election and other high-profile breaches in the public and private sectors. Officials have particularly expressed concerns about the vulnerability of state systems and infrastructure to attacks.

National: Jeff Sessions did not disclose meetings with Russian ambassador during Trump campaign | The Guardian

Donald Trump’s attorney general Jeff Sessions twice spoke with the Russian ambassador to the United States during the presidential campaign. The Washington Post, citing justice department officials, first reported that Sessions met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak once in September 2016, when US intelligence officials were investigating Russian interference in the presidential election, and once in the summer of that year. It was communications with Kislyak that led to the firing of Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, in February. A spokeswoman for Sessions confirmed that the meetings took place, but provided a statement from the attorney general saying they were not related to the election campaign. “I never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign,” Sessions’ statement said. “I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false.”

National: Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War: What lay behind Russia’s interference in the 2016 election—and what lies ahead? | The New Yorker

On April 12, 1982, Yuri Andropov, the chairman of the K.G.B., ordered foreign-intelligence operatives to carry out “active measures”—aktivniye meropriyatiya—against the reëlection campaign of President Ronald Reagan. Unlike classic espionage, which involves the collection of foreign secrets, active measures aim at influencing events—at undermining a rival power with forgeries, front groups, and countless other techniques honed during the Cold War. The Soviet leadership considered Reagan an implacable militarist. According to extensive notes made by Vasili Mitrokhin, a high-ranking K.G.B. officer and archivist who later defected to Great Britain, Soviet intelligence tried to infiltrate the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic National Committees, popularize the slogan “Reagan Means War!,” and discredit the President as a corrupt servant of the military-industrial complex. The effort had no evident effect. Reagan won forty-nine of fifty states.

National: Russia Hacking Election Scandal: Investigation Too Complicated For Tech-Challenged US Congress? | International Business Times

Capitol Hill lawmakers are starting the process of investigating Russia’s role in hacking last year’s presidential election and whether the Trump campaign was communicating with the Russian government while the hacking occurred. With members of Congress, most of whom have legal backgrounds, slated to begin digging into issues like hacking and cyber security, it’s unclear if those responsible for conducting such vital investigations have the technical expertise to fully comprehend the technical data. Very few members of congress, or their staffs, have any background in technology, and that worries many technology experts who spoke to The Intercept, an investigative news outlet formed in 2014.

National: Intelligence nominee supports probes on Russian interference | Reuters

President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the director of national intelligence pledged on Tuesday to support thorough investigation of any Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election, seeking to reassure lawmakers worried that partisan politics might interfere with a probe. “I think this is something that needs to be investigated and addressed,” former Republican Senator Dan Coats told the Senate Intelligence Committee during his confirmation hearing to be the top U.S. intelligence official. Coats, 73, a former member of the intelligence panel, also promised that it would have full access to all of the documents and other materials needed for an investigation. “I have no intention of holding anything back from this committee,” Coats said.

National: After Court Setbacks, Lawmakers Push for New Voting Restrictions | Stateline

Amid President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of massive voter fraud in the 2016 election, bills have been introduced in at least 20 states that would make it more difficult for many people to vote. In some states, such as Texas and Arkansas, lawmakers are responding to court rulings that struck down or scaled back earlier attempts to restrict voting. Bills in other states would make changes to early voting and registration deadlines. Proponents of the legislation say the proposed limitations, such as requiring a photo ID and eliminating Election Day registration, are necessary to restore public confidence in the electoral system. They say the measures protect the integrity of the ballot box by confirming voters’ identities and whether they are qualified to vote. In state legislatures the measures are backed mainly by Republicans, though polls show that most Democrats also support a photo ID requirement.

National: Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media | Carole Cadwalladr/The Guardian

Just over a week ago, Donald Trump gathered members of the world’s press before him and told them they were liars. “The press, honestly, is out of control,” he said. “The public doesn’t believe you any more.” CNN was described as “very fake news… story after story is bad”. The BBC was “another beauty”. That night I did two things. First, I typed “Trump” in the search box of Twitter. My feed was reporting that he was crazy, a lunatic, a raving madman. But that wasn’t how it was playing out elsewhere. The results produced a stream of “Go Donald!!!!”, and “You show ’em!!!” There were star-spangled banner emojis and thumbs-up emojis and clips of Trump laying into the “FAKE news MSM liars!” Trump had spoken, and his audience had heard him. Then I did what I’ve been doing for two and a half months now. I Googled “mainstream media is…” And there it was. Google’s autocomplete suggestions: “mainstream media is… dead, dying, fake news, fake, finished”. Is it dead, I wonder? Has FAKE news won? Are we now the FAKE news? Is the mainstream media – we, us, I – dying? I click Google’s first suggested link. It leads to a website called CNSnews.com and an article: “The Mainstream media are dead.” They’re dead, I learn, because they – we, I – “cannot be trusted”. How had it, an obscure site I’d never heard of, dominated Google’s search algorithm on the topic? In the “About us” tab, I learn CNSnews is owned by the Media Research Center, which a click later I learn is “America’s media watchdog”, an organisation that claims an “unwavering commitment to neutralising leftwing bias in the news, media and popular culture”.

National: Analysis: Election hackers used many of the same techniques as Carbanak gang | SC Media

An analysis of two Department of Homeland Security reports focusing on Russia’s reputed interference in the 2016 U.S. election revealed multiple commonalities between the infamous hacking campaign, dubbed Grizzly Steppe, and activity by the Carbanak cybercrime group. TruSTAR, the threat intelligence exchange provider that conducted the research, has cautioned that its findings do not necessarily mean that APT 28 (Fancy Bear) or APT 29 (Cozy Bear), the two Russian government-sponsored threat groups tied to Grizzly Steppe, are one and the same as Carbanak, which is also tied to Russia and has garnered a reputation for stealing from financial institutions. Still, one also cannot summarily dismiss the notion that the groups are somehow related or share certain personnel, especially because they have adopted similar tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs).

National: House GOP rejects Democratic effort for info on Trump-Russia probes | Associated Press

House Republicans have rejected a Democratic effort to require the Justice Department to provide Congress with information about President Donald Trump’s finances and possible campaign ties to Russia. The GOP-led Judiciary Committee on Tuesday defeated the resolution on a party-line vote of 18-16. Republicans said it would be premature and duplicative of their own efforts on the matter. The committee vote came a day after the full, Republican-led House blocked an attempt by Democrats to force Trump to release his tax returns to Congress. The resolution of inquiry, introduced by Rep. Jerold Nadler, D-N.Y., would have sought information related to an investigation on Trump’s ties to Russia and potential financial conflicts of interest, but wouldn’t have forced the Justice Department to turn any of those documents over.

National: Why Rep. Darrell Issa is breaking with his fellow Republicans on the Russian hacking probe | Los Angeles Times

Over the weekend, Darrell Issa did something that no other Republican congressman has done. Sitting for an interview with HBO’s Bill Maher, the longtime Vista Republican said he believed that a prosecutor needed to investigate Russia’s involvement in the U.S. election and that Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, who was involved in President Trump’s campaign, should not be that prosecutor. “You cannot have somebody — a friend of mine, Jeff Sessions — who was on the campaign and who is an appointee,” Issa said. “You’re going to need to use the special prosecutor’s statute and office.” He backed that up Monday with a statement calling for a fully independent review of Russian attempts to interfere in the election, saying there is too much speculation and assumption. “An investigation is not the same as an assertion of specific wrongdoing, it’s following the facts where they lead so that American people can know what may or may not have taken place,” Issa said.

National: Dispute erupts over investigation into alleged Trump-Russia contacts | The Guardian

A dispute erupted on Monday between top US lawmakers on the intelligence committees in Congress, as Democrats suggested Republicans were incapable of conducting an independent investigation into alleged contacts between Donald Trump and Russian intelligence sources. Tensions between the two parties escalated when Devin Nunes, the Republican who chairs the House intelligence panel, claimed he had not seen any evidence that associates of Trump had communicated with Russian officials and said calls for a special committee to probe the issue would amount to a “witch hunt”. “As of right now, I don’t have any evidence of any phone calls,” Nunes, who served on Trump’s transition team, told reporters on Capitol Hill. “That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, but I don’t have that. And what I’ve been told by many folks is that there’s nothing there.” He added: “At this time, I want to be very careful that we can’t just go on a witch-hunt against Americans because they appear in news stories.”

National: Top Republican says special prosecutor should investigate Russian meddling in Trump’s election | The Washington Post

A senior Republican lawmaker on Friday agreed that a special prosecutor should investigate Russia’s alleged interference with the 2016 presidential election. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) became one of the few Republican representatives to state publicly the need for an independent investigation into Russia’s reported election meddling. This comes as Democrats have increasingly pushed for an investigation into President Trump’s associates’ ties to Russia. In an appearance on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Issa, a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, first told the progressive show host that House and Senate intelligence committees would look into Russia’s activities “within the special areas they oversee.” That was not sufficient for Maher, who pressed Issa — formerly the head of the House Oversight Committee — on whether he would have “let that slide” had similar suspicions arose involving the Democrats. Maher has been a vocal critic of Trump. … Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), echoing other Democrats, has said that “the appearance of bias is unavoidable” if Sessions does not recuse himself in an independent investigation. Sessions indicated during the confirmation process that he would not recuse himself during any investigations involving Trump.

National: FBI Broke Rules Talking to the White House About Russia | Time

FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe may have violated multiple existing Justice Department rules controlling contacts between the bureau and White House officials when they spoke earlier this month with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus about their ongoing investigation into Russia’s influence operation against the 2016 U.S. presidential election, according to several former senior Justice Department officials. The first questionable contact came when McCabe spoke with Priebus for five minutes after a 7:30 a.m. meeting at the White House on Feb. 15 on an unrelated intelligence issue. The day before, the New York Times had reported that Trump’s campaign and other Trump associates had multiple contacts with known agents of Russian intelligence in the year before the election. At the White House meeting, McCabe told Priebus, ‘I want you to know story in NYT is BS,” according to senior Administration officials who briefed reporters on Feb. 24. Priebus asked McCabe what could be done to push back, saying the White House was “getting crushed” on the story. McCabe demurred, and then later called back to say, “We’d love to help but we can’t get into the position of making statements on every story.”

National: Nunes, Burr comments cast doubt on Russia probes | McClatchy DC

Congressional Democrats are questioning whether recent comments from leading Republicans, made at the request of the White House, have compromised Senate and House investigations into possible Russian influence on the recent election. The comments were from the chairs of the Senate and House intelligence committees, which are expected to play pivotal roles in investigation of Russian interference in the election and Russian influence in the administration of President Donald Trump. The comments came last week after the White House admitted contacting Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and asking them to speak to reporters to debunk media reports of “repeated” or “constant” contact between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.

National: Senators ask feds for ‘full account’ of work to secure election from cyber threats | The Hill

Democratic senators are asking a federal agency that helps certify and secure voting systems for a “full account” of its work to secure the 2016 election from Russian hackers. The senators, led by Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), also want the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to detail cybersecurity challenges facing state and local officials as they look to safeguard future elections. The intelligence community concluded in an unclassified report released in January that Russia engaged in a cyber and disinformation campaign during the election to undermine U.S. democracy and damage Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Intelligence officials determined that “Russian intelligence accessed elements of multiple state or local electoral boards,” though they found no systems involved in voting tallying were breached.

National: Secretaries of State balk at election system move by DHS | FCW

A group of state officials voted to oppose a federal critical infrastructure designation covering their election systems. They’re looking to get that designation removed. The National Association of Secretaries of State voted on Feb. 18 to oppose the Department of Homeland Security’s late January designation of state election systems as federally protected “critical infrastructure.” The designation puts election systems on similar footing as systems in the energy and financial services sectors. NASS also voted over the weekend to create a task force to work with federal agencies and stakeholders on election system cybersecurity issues. While some states, like Arizona, took DHS up on its offer to provide cybersecurity scans of some of their systems in the wake of attempted hacks into state voter registration systems, others are very wary of letting federal agencies into state-managed facilities for fear of, or the impression of, federal influence or management.

National: Meet the Math Professor Who’s Fighting Gerrymandering With Geometry | The Chronicle of Higher Education

Tufts University professor has a proposal to combat gerrymandering: give more geometry experts a day in court. Moon Duchin is an associate professor of math and director of the Science, Technology and Society program at Tufts. She realized last year that some of her research about metric geometry could be applied to gerrymandering — the practice of manipulating the shape of electoral districts to benefit a specific party, which is widely seen as a major contributor to government dysfunction. At first, she says, her plans were straightforward and research-oriented — “to put together a team to do some modeling and then maybe consult with state redistricting commissions.” But then she got more creative. “I became convinced that it’s probably more effective to try to help train a big new generation of expert witnesses who know the math side pretty well,” she says. “It’s clear that this is the right moment to do this kind of work. We want to harness all that energy.” In part, she says, that’s because court cases over voting districts have risen since a 2013 Supreme Court decision, Shelby County v. Holder, struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

National: FEC member: I have the right to demand Trump prove voter fraud claims | CNN

A member of the Federal Election Commission was defiant Tuesday after a nonprofit group said her request that President Donald Trump provide proof of voter fraud merited an investigation into whether her comments were inappropriate. Ellen Weintraub’s remarks were in response to a letter sent from the Cause of Action Institute to Lynne A. McFarland, the FEC inspector general, about a statement Weintraub made earlier in February. Weintraub called on the President to substantiate his claim of massive voter fraud in New Hampshire, a call she repeated in her statement Tuesday. Cause of Action’s letter said Weintraub, a Democratic member of the six-member commission, may be in violation of government ethics rules for making the statement as an FEC official and called on the agency’s watchdog to look into the matter. The FEC is tasked with regulating campaign finance, and Cause of Action’s letter said Weintraub could have stepped outside of her authority by commenting about voter fraud.

National: Senate Intelligence Committee asks for Russia-related records to be preserved | The Washington Post

The Senate Intelligence Committee is seeking to ensure that records related to Russia’s alleged intervention in the 2016 U.S. elections are preserved as it begins investigating that country’s ties to the Trump team. The panel sent more than a dozen letters to “organizations, agencies and officials” on Friday, asking them to preserve materials related to the congressional investigation, according to a Senate aide, who was not authorized to comment publicly. The Senate Intelligence Committee is spearheading the most comprehensive probe on Capitol Hill of Russia’s alleged activities in the elections. The letters went out the same day that FBI Director James B. Comey huddled for almost two hours with the committee’s Senate members in a closed-door briefing in the Capitol. Senators emerged from that meeting especially tight-lipped about what transpired, with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) breaking the silence by tweeting the next day that he was “now very confident” the committee “will conduct thorough bipartisan investigation of #Putin interference and influence.”

National: California’s top elections officer finds his critique of Trump’s voter fraud accusations blocked at national meeting | Los Angeles Times

Secretary of State Alex Padilla, one of the most vocal critics of President Trump’s unproved accusations of voter fraud, lost in an effort Friday to convince other elections officials to take a stand on the issue. Padilla, attending a conference of the National Assn. of Secretaries of State, had drafted a resolution calling Trump’s repeated allegations of widespread illegal voting “without merit” and urging the president to “cease his baseless allegations about voter fraud.” But he was blocked at the last minute from introducing the resolution at the Washington gathering, even though the bipartisan organization issued a statement last month disputing Trump’s comments. The president’s assertions, never backed up with any specific information, have included the election results certified in California.

National: U.S. inquiries into Russian election hacking include three FBI probes | Reuters

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is pursuing at least three separate probes relating to alleged Russian hacking of the U.S. presidential elections, according to five current and former government officials with direct knowledge of the situation. While the fact that the FBI is investigating had been reported previously by the New York Times and other media, these officials shed new light on both the precise number of inquires and their focus. The FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, which runs many cyber security investigations, is trying to identify the people behind breaches of the Democratic National Committee’s computer systems, the officials said. Those breaches, in 2015 and the first half of 2016, exposed the internal communications of party officials as the Democratic nominating convention got underway and helped undermine support for Hillary Clinton. The Pittsburgh case has progressed furthest, but Justice Department officials in Washington believe there is not enough clear evidence yet for an indictment, two of the sources said.

National: Democratic Member Quits Federal Election Commission, Setting Up Political Fight | The New York Times

A Democrat on the Federal Election Commission is quitting her term early because of the gridlock that has gripped the panel, offering President Trump an unexpected chance to shape political spending rules. The commissioner, Ann M. Ravel, said during an interview that she would send Mr. Trump her letter of resignation this week. She pointed to a series of deadlocked votes between the panel’s three Democrats and three Republicans that she said left her little hope the group would ever be able to rein in campaign finance abuses. “The ability of the commission to perform its role has deteriorated significantly,” said Ms. Ravel, who has sparred bitterly with the Republican election commissioners during her three years on the panel. She added, “I think I can be more effective on the outside.” Her departure will probably set off an intense political fight over how a new commissioner should be picked. By tradition, Senate Democrats would be allowed to select the replacement, but, by law, the choice belongs to the president, and Mr. Trump has shown little interest in Washington customs.

National: How Voter ID Laws Discriminate Against Racial Minorities | The Atlantic

For all the fervor of the current debate over voter ID laws, there’s a startling lack of good data on their effects. As of the 2016 election, 33 states have a voter identification law, with 12 of those considered “strict” requirements. After the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder Supreme Court case weakened federal oversight over state and county election laws, the debate over whether these and other more restrictive laws have discriminatory effects has mostly been waged in the realms of ideology and intent, with most existing studies relying on data limited by time, place, or bias. The catch-22 of course is that the laws have to be passed and solidly in place first to have robust longitudinal data on their effects, which in this case would mean potentially discriminatory effects would have already impacted elections. A new study from researchers Zoltan Hajnal, Nazita Lajevardi, and Lindsay Nielson at the University of California San Diego is one of the first to analyze certified votes across all states after the implementation of voter laws in multiple elections, and it found just that kind of racially discriminatory impact. Specifically, they found “that strict photo identification laws have a differentially negative impact on the turnout of Hispanics, Blacks, and mixed-race Americans in primaries and general elections.”

National: Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence Before Election | The New York Times

Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials. American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said. The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election. The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation. But the intercepts alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. At one point last summer, Mr. Trump said at a campaign event that he hoped Russian intelligence services had stolen Hillary Clinton’s emails and would make them public.

National: The Election Assistance Commission – The Federal Voting Agency Republicans Want to Kill | The Atlantic

Every odd-numbered year since 2011, Republicans in the House have tried to kill the Election Assistance Commission—the tiny federal agency responsible for helping states improve their voting systems. None of their previous efforts made it very far, and with Barack Obama in the White House, the 15-year-old commission had little to fear. This year, the same fight has taken on much greater urgency. Congressional committees are investigating whether a foreign power tried to hack the U.S. election. The new president is convinced that widespread fraud cost him millions of votes. And with an ally in the Oval Office, House Republicans have begun moving faster than ever before to eliminate an agency they say is unnecessary and wastes taxpayer money. “I’m more worried this time,” said Wendy Weiser, the director of the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “There’s a belief that this has more legs than it did in the past.” The House Administration Committee has a new chairman, Representative Gregg Harper of Mississippi, who has led the opposition to the EAC, and last week the panel made his bill ending the agency the first piece of legislation it approved in the new Congress. “It is my firm belief that the EAC has outlived its usefulness and purpose,” Harper said shortly before the committee’s six Republicans voted down objections from its three Democrats to approve the legislation.

National: U.S. lawmakers push for answers on Trump team’s Russia ties | Reuters

A crisis over the relationship between President Donald Trump’s aides and Russia deepened on Wednesday as a growing number of Trump’s fellow Republicans demanded expanded congressional inquiries into the matter. Trump sought to focus attention on what he called criminal intelligence leaks about his ousted national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Trump forced Flynn out on Monday after disclosures he had discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia with the Russian ambassador to the United States before Trump took office, and that he later misled Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations. The drama of Flynn’s departure was the latest in a series of White House missteps and controversies since the Republican president was sworn in on Jan. 20. At a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, Trump said Flynn, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, was a “wonderful man” who had been mistreated by the news media.

National: Trump’s Labor Pick Has a History of Attacking Voting Rights | The Nation

The essential battleground state of the 2004 presidential campaign was Ohio, and as the election approached, supporters of embattled President George W. Bush announced an exceptionally controversial scheme to station citizen “challengers” at polling places. As a Brennan Center for Justice report explained, “Only a few weeks before Election Day, the Ohio Republican Party announced its plan to deploy thousands of citizen challengers across the state, mostly in African-American voting precincts. The announcement led to multiple voting rights lawsuits and sparked a media firestorm.” The firestorm ultimately led Ohio Republicans to abandon their initial plan. But, as the Brennan Center analysts noted, “the ensuing controversy shined a national spotlight on the disruptions that partisan and discriminatory challenge efforts can cause.” It also shined a light on Alexander Acosta, President Trump’s latest nominee to serve as secretary of labor, and the first Latino to be tapped by the president as a cabinet pick. Acosta is an experienced government hand, who has a long history of working the conservative Republican side of the aisle. After finishing Harvard Law School, he clerked for future Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito, who was then serving as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and as a senior fellow with the right-leaning Ethics and Public Policy Center. Acosta served briefly as a Bush appointee to the National Labor Relations Board, and then was appointed by Bush as the assistant attorney general with responsibility for leading the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

National: Locking down voting tech | GCN

State election officials are making plans to tighten security all along the voting chain – from voter registration to machine integrity, audit trails and help from the Department of Homeland Security under the new critical infrastructure designation. At a Feb. 13-14 meeting of the Election Assistance Commission, New Jersey State Department’s division of elections Bob Giles said that although his state’s voting machines are not connected to the internet, the attention garnered by Russia’s reported electoral influence has led to a rethinking of his agency’s cybersecurity protocols. Giles said cyber hygiene practices such as improving password strength and multifactor authentication will be included in the state’s plan to modernize its voter registration system. “The other thing we heard a lot about this election is who is making our voting machines,” he said, adding that moving forward, New Jersey will partner with the DHS to ensure voting machine security.