I wear a lot of hats as the Montpelier, Vermont City Clerk, and in my capacity as election administrator for the state Capital for six years now, it should come as no surprise that a frequent topic of conversation has been the security of our elections systems. In an attempt to respond to concerns expressed by my constituents, I decided to brush off my IT credentials (I have served as a network and database administrator for political parties and non-profits in the past ) to get a first-hand sense of the threats rather than just tacking to the winds of either the doomsayers or the nothing-to-see-here crowds. Now a CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker) and looking at security for the first time from the outside in, I can respond with a smidge more authority on the question “should we be worried?” The answer is yes and no.
… We all grew up hearing news reports about misplaced boxes of absentee ballots, incorrect registration lists, or even the legendary “hanging chads” in one jurisdiction or another – often many. These were failures of the system that required election officials to step back and engage their fault tolerance procedures and protocols, often dragging out final results for weeks.
If we’re all doing what we should be doing as election professionals, electronic mischief in our voting systems doesn’t have to be more impactful than those low-tech issues of the past (which themselves have been minimized by the technology). As long as we have the right procedures, protocols and policies in place, when our systems get hacked (and they will be), we should prove just as resilient.
Full Article: Election Security in our Hackable World | HuffPost.