West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner says officials need to take a proactive role to insure the integrity of our political elections. Speaking before the Berkeley County Council on Thursday, Warner said relentless media coverage reporting Russian hacking of recent American elections may have eroded citizen confidence, and consequently affect voter turnout. “If you keep one person away from registering to vote because they don’t want their information captured somewhere, or if they keep one person from voting, because they think somehow my vote isn’t going to matter, then they’ve eroded that confidence and they’re attacking the very fundamental foundations of our democracy — which is our electoral process,” Warner said.
Warner recently was one of four secretaries of state who participated in a cyber security “tabletop exercise” run by the Belfer Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School. The secretaries worked with cybersecurity experts from Google and Facebook, as well as officials from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
… Warner said the workshop reaffirmed his conviction for tighter cybersecurity vigilance for elections.
“We need to be out in front of this — not reacting, but be proactive in fighting against this,” Warner said. “We need to partner with the leading firms in the United States with regards to cyber technology run by the best minds in the country.”
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