With 23 days until Election Day, state and local election officials, as well as the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, are on their highest-ever level of alert for hackers trying to meddle with the vote. But it’s not vote rigging or the takeover of electronic voting booths that has officials most concerned. … Rather, officials are more concerned by the discovery in recent weeks that hackers, including ones believed to be working for the Russian government, are trying to access voter registration files, perhaps to alter or delete them, inmore than 20 states. … This unprecedented focus on election security was prompted both by a suspected Russian campaign to hack emails and documents from U.S. political organizations, as well as the news that, last summer, election systems were compromised by hackers in Arizona and Illinois, where the perpetrators are believed to have absconded with files on 200,000 voters. “When you suddenly had two states with reports of registration breaches, regardless of the effect or the impact, which appear to have been minor, it gave everybody a sense that this isn’t necessarily theoretical anymore,” Pam Smith, the president of Verified Voting, a nonprofit group that advocates transparency and security in U.S. elections, told The Daily Beast.
… If a voter shows up at his polling place to find that he’s not listed as eligible, he can still vote. Federal law requires that so-called provisional ballots be issued to any voter who believes he’s eligible. Experts advise checking before Election Day whether the state has a voter’s correct information. But in the event something goes wrong, demand the provisional ballot, they say.
But beware: That ballot might not be counted right away. States use different procedures, and different schedules, for adjudicating which provisional ballots really do belong to eligible voters. So, a voter may still be able to cast a ballot, but “it could mean a lot more work for you and the election official to get those provisional ballots adjudicated correctly,” Smith said. “It could be disruptive in a really bad way for voters if they had to jump through hoops unnecessarily.” … And hackers who alter addresses could cause problems for absentee and early voters. Some states have already begun the early voting process by mail, and ballots are now being sent to military and government personnel living abroad. “If someone changed the address [in a voter file], a ballot could go astray, and you might not realize it until it’s too late and can’t get another one,” Smith said.
… “Nobody’s being blasé about this,” Smith said. “The election officials I’ve spoken to are taking extra steps,” Smith said, to ensure that there are backups in place and that everyone involved in the election process is watching out for security vulnerabilities and suspicious activity.
Full Article: Election Hackers Could Erase You – The Daily Beast.