Nevada’s election system stayed up during massive statewide cyberattack. Here’s why. | Kiara Adams/The Nevada Independent
The recent statewide cyberattack took down many critical state websites and services, but at least one system was not affected: Nevada’s voter registration and backend election system. That’s thanks to a 2021 law mandating that the secretary of state’s office move to a top-down voter registration system, a centralized database that collects and stores voter preregistration and registration information and is used by all 17 county clerks. The state previously had a bottom-up system, where each county individually tracked and recorded voter information, but it was long criticized for inefficiency. Several years and millions of dollars in state funding later, the new system is up and running. State officials and cybersecurity experts say the adoption follows best practices by keeping election and voter information separate from other systems. Read Article