Tag Archives: election cybersecurity

The Nevada Democratic Party is still working on its process for conducting and transmitting the results of its Feb. 22 caucuses and has been unable to answer questions about how that will be carried out, causing alarm among volunteers and campaigns. With early voting starting in less than a week, volunteers who have attended training sessions said they were confused about the process and technology they were expected to use for the state’s caucuses. And questions from campaigns to the state party have either been ignored or only heightened concerns when answered, according to campaign aides. The state party has said that it is evaluating its process and will have backups including paper records in place to ensure that the caucuses run smoothly. In the aftermath of the debacle in Iowa’s caucuses, where glitchy technology and poor planning cast confusion over the outcome, the Nevada State Democratic Party said it would no longer use an app built by Shadow Inc., the vendor in charge of a similar app that failed in Iowa. Nevada’s app was set to play an even bigger role than the one in Iowa did, according to people familiar with the issue. The Nevada Democratic Party, which is implementing early voting for its caucuses for the first time, was planning on using the app to fold in early voting results with caucus night alignments, calculate the threshold required for viability for candidates and the realignment results and then transmit them. Ditching the app has forced the party to make changes to multiple parts of the process, the people said. Some of those changes still aren’t clear, they said.

National: Bipartisan lawmakers introduce bill to combat cyber attacks on state and local governments | Juliegrace Brufke/The Hill

A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Monday introduced a bill that would establish a $400 million grant program at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to help state and local governments combat cyber threats and potential vulnerabilities. Under the legislation — led by Reps. Cedric Richmond (D-La.), John Katko (R-N.Y.), Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.), Mike McCaul (R-Texas), Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) — DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) would be required to develop a plan to improve localities’ cybersecurity and would create a State and Local Cybersecurity Resiliency Committee to help inform CISA on what jurisdictions need to help protect themselves from breaches. The group noted that state and local governments have become targets for hackers, having seen an uptick in attacks in recent years. “It provides more grant funding to state and locals for cybersecurity my own state of Texas impacted, particularly as tensions rise in Iran, for instance, we are seeing more cyber attacks coming out of Iran,” McCaul told The Hill. “And then of course going into the election we will make sure that our voting machines are secure.”

National: Voting Process Under Spotlight After Iowa Confusion | Alexa Corse/Wall Street Journal

States conducting presidential nominating contests in the weeks ahead are facing new scrutiny of their voting processes, after glitches caused confusion over which candidate prevailed in Iowa’s caucuses last week. Federal and local law-enforcement officials huddled at a Manchester, N.H., conference center on Friday morning, gaming out responses to hypothetical hacking scenarios ahead of New Hampshire’s Tuesday primary. The meeting included representatives from the U.S. Secret Service and from the police forces of Manchester, Concord and Nashua, along with private-sector experts. The Manchester gathering, which had been scheduled for months, is one example of intensified efforts nationwide to secure the voting process since 2016, when Russia was found to have interfered in the U.S. presidential election. But such efforts have taken on a new urgency after Iowa’s debacle. The failure of a results-reporting app, due to what the Iowa Democratic Party called a coding issue and a series of problems cascading from those glitches, showed that foreign meddling isn’t the only risk, experts say.

National: US counterintel strategy emphasizes protection of democracy | Eric Tucker/Associated Press

The U.S. government’s top counterintelligence official said Monday that he was concerned Russia or other foreign adversaries could exploit the chaos of the Iowa caucuses to sow distrust in the integrity of America’s elections. “How can an adversary take what happened in Iowa and pour gasoline on it?” Bill Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, told reporters at a briefing. Evanina’s comments came as he unveiled a strategy document aimed at guiding the government’s national security priorities over the next two years. The document identifies the U.S. economy, infrastructure, democracy and supply chains as areas being routinely targeted by foreign governments and in need of heightened protection. Election security, particularly combating foreign influence in U.S. politics, accounts for one of the counterintelligence community’s top priorities as voters head to the polls this year. A malfunctioning app used by the Iowa Democratic Party caused a delay in the reporting of caucus results last week and fueled calls for a recanvassing. Because of the delay and after observing irregularities in the results once they did arrive, The Associated Press says it cannot declare a winner.

Iowa: How the Iowa Caucuses Became an Epic Fiasco for Democrats | Reid J. Epstein, Sydney Ember, Trip Gabriel and Mike Baker/The New York Times

The first signs of trouble came early. As the smartphone app for reporting the results of the Iowa Democratic caucuses began failing last Monday night, party officials instructed precinct leaders to move to Plan B: calling the results into caucus headquarters, where dozens of volunteers would enter the figures into a secure system. But when many of those volunteers tried to log on to their computers, they made an unsettling discovery. They needed smartphones to retrieve a code, but they had been told not to bring their phones into the “boiler room” in Des Moines. As a torrent of results were phoned in from school gymnasiums, union halls and the myriad other gathering places that made the Iowa caucuses a world-famous model of democracy, it soon became clear that the whole process was melting down. Volunteers resorted to passing around a spare iPad to log into the system. Melissa Watson, the state party’s chief financial officer, who was in charge of the boiler room, did not know how to operate a Google spreadsheet application used to input data, Democratic officials later acknowledged.

Nevada: Election Security Institute Criticizes Newly-Unveiled Nevada Caucus App After Iowa Disaster | Hunter Moyler/Newsweek

An institute that studies election security criticized the Nevada Democratic Party for planning to use a digital tool for its caucuses, arguing that Nevada was likely to run into many of the same issues that Iowa did with its voting app last week. The Open Source Election Technology (OSET) Institute began its Twitter thread Sunday with a link to a story from The Nevada Independent, which detailed how the Nevada Democratic Party (NDP) will be using a digital “tool” on the day of that state’s caucuses on February 22. The Independent reported that NDP staffers made a distinction between its tool and the app that was used by the Iowa Democratic Party for their caucuses on February 3. A faulty app that was not tested properly and had coding issues led to delays of the Iowa results. “Deja Vu; this time in NV,” OSET’s first tweet read. “Let’s be clear from the start: their’s is an ‘App’ and no designation of ‘tool’ changes that. Let’s stop playing word games here. The fact that its pre-loaded & may not use mobile connectivity is the only ‘difference.'” The institute dismissed the NDP’s distinction between an “app” and a “tool,” arguing that any difference between the two was superficial.

Nevada: Democrats Canceled Their Caucus App. But That Poses Its Own Problems. | Kaleigh Rogers and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux/FiveThirtyEight

A week ago, Nevada Democrats were planning to use an app for their caucuses on Feb. 22. The chaos in Iowa has put an end to that. The Nevada Democratic Party confirmed to FiveThirtyEight that it has “eliminated the option of using an app at any step in the caucus process,” Molly Forgey, the party’s communications director, said Friday. The app that was going to be used was reportedly developed by Shadow Inc., the company that developed the infamous app for the Iowa Democratic Party. But that doesn’t mean Nevada is out of the woods. Scrapping the app could also lead to some complications thanks to a new addition to the Silver State’s caucuses this year: early voting. The Nevada Democratic Party hasn’t yet revealed what it plans to do instead — “At this time, we’re considering all of our options,” Forgey said — though using paper and phoning in results seems like an obvious solution. But the party’s plan to introduce early voting this year — slated to start on Feb. 15 — relied heavily on a functioning app, and it’s unclear how those votes will now be incorporated during the in-person caucuses.

Nevada: Democrats fret about another tech disaster in Nevada caucuses following the mess in Iowa | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Democrats who are still reeling from last week’s Iowa debacle are increasingly worried about another technology disaster in the next caucus state: Nevada. Nevada Democrats initially forswore using apps after a coding error and rushed design choices threw the Iowa contest into chaos. They backpedaled over the weekend, though, and said precinct leaders will be given an iPad-based tool to sync early voters’ preferences with choices from people who come to the Feb. 22 caucuses, the Nevada Independent’s Megan Messerly reported. And in an echo of Iowa that is giving heartburn to some, the state party hasn’t said who built the app or how it’s being tested and vetted for security vulnerabilities. “I volunteered to do this because I’m a loyal Democrat, and there’s nothing more I want to do than defeat Donald Trump,” Seth Morrison, a caucus volunteer, told Megan. “But if we allow this to go down and it’s another Iowa, what does this do for my party?” The concerns come as Democrats are struggling to prove they have the tech and cybersecurity savvy to endure another presidential race four years after Hillary Clinton’s campaign was upended by a Russian hacking and disinformation campaign focused on smearing her and aiding Donald Trump.

Oregon: Two counties offer vote-by-mobile to overseas voters | Andrew Selsky/Associated Press

Two Oregon counties are offering the opportunity for U.S. military members, their dependents and others living overseas to vote in special elections this November with smartphones, officials announced Wednesday. While some technology experts have warned that such systems could be insecure, the two counties have already advised hundreds of registered voters living overseas about the option to cast ballots using blockchain-based mobile voting. Oregon residents normally vote by mail. Jackson County Clerk Christine Walker expressed confidence in the system and said it will help ensure that the votes of those overseas will be counted. She noted that overseas mail systems can be unreliable and that she was very worried that Washington’s threats to pull the United States from the United Nations’ postal agency would prevent voters overseas from casting ballots. “We need to make sure that our military and overseas voters have the not only ability to vote, but they can easily access their ballots in a safe manner,” Walker said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “There was a potential crisis going on.”

Israel: Data of All 6.5 Million Voters Leaked | Daniel Victor, Sheera Frenkel and Isabel Kershner/The New York Times

A software flaw exposed the personal data of every eligible voter in Israel — including full names, addresses and identity card numbers for 6.5 million people — raising concerns about identity theft and electoral manipulation, three weeks before the country’s national election. The security lapse was tied to a mobile app used by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party to communicate with voters, offering news and information about the March 2 election. Until it was fixed, the flaw made it possible, without advanced technical skills, to view and download the government’s entire voter registry, though it was unclear how many people did so. How the breach occurred remains uncertain, but Israel’s Privacy Protection Authority, a unit of the Justice Ministry, said it was looking into the matter — though it stopped short of announcing a full-fledged investigation. The app’s maker, in a statement, played down the potential consequences, describing the leak as a “one-off incident that was immediately dealt with” and saying it had since bolstered the site’s security. The flaw, first reported on Sunday by the newspaper Haaretz, was the latest in a long string of large-scale software failures and data breaches that demonstrated the inability of governments and corporations around the world to safeguard people’s private information, protect vital systems against cyberattacks and ensure the integrity of electoral systems.

Nevada: Democrats Test a Caucus Plan ‘Without Something You Can Download on Your Phone’ | Jennifer Medina/The New York Times

After abandoning plans to use the same kind of app that led to a debacle in Iowa, Nevada Democratic officials are testing backup plans this weekend as they attempt to come up with a clear alternative for their own state caucus, which begins in less than two weeks. Though party leaders in Nevada are now vowing not to use any kind of app to tally the results of their Feb. 22 caucus, it remains unclear what they will put in their place. “We are not using an app, we are not using something you can download on your phone,” said Alana Mounce, the executive director of the Nevada Democrats. But what they will use instead is still unknown and presidential campaigns are increasingly anxious about what will happen when early voting begins next weekend. The Nevada Democrats began testing backup procedures Friday, but state party officials declined to give any details on what they were testing, other than to say that it would not be a phone-based app. By Tuesday morning, even before the full scope of the chaos in Iowa had become clear, state party officials scrapped their plans to use an app made by Shadow Inc., the same firm that created a caucus app for Iowa.

National: Senate panel wants politicians to put party aside for election security. Fat chance in 2020. | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

A long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report admonishes politicians to forget about politics when dealing with election interference operations and to exercise maximum restraint before suggesting an election was hacked or corrupted.

Good luck with that.

“Restraint” is not the operative word in the Trump era. The bipartisan report arrived just days after President Trump’s 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale suggested without evidence on Twitter that a long delay in reporting Iowa caucuses results was because of a #RiggedElection. In fact, the count was marred by technical issues. And while the Republican-run committee states “the President of the United States should take steps to separate himself or herself from political considerations when handling issues related to foreign influence operations,” Trump has not been living by that mantra. Nor has he been “explicitly putting aside politics when addressing the American people on election threats.” The president has openly contemplated accepting dirt on his opponents from foreign nations in the 2020 race — and cast doubt on the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered on his behalf in 2016. And the Senate acquitted the president just this week after the House impeached him for pressuring Ukraine’s leader to help dig up dirt on the family of a political rival, former vice president Joe Biden.

National: Iowa Breakdown Reveals Broken Election Technology Ecosystem | Alyza Sebenius and Bill Allison/Bloomberg

The chaos at the Iowa caucus has been blamed on a small startup called Shadow Inc., but what happened this week is also emblematic of wider problems plaguing the world of election technology. It’s hard to get sophisticated technology companies to build such technology because most buyers have small budgets, and disappear after Election Day. In a four-year presidential election cycle, one campaign’s killer app is woefully obsolete by the next. So political parties and campaigns often create the technology themselves or hire small firms to do it for them. “The tech companies with depth of knowledge and understanding tend to shy away from building critical voting systems,” said Charles Stewart III, a professor and elections scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Editorials: Iowa’s message for the other states: Be ready for everything to go wrong | Lawrence Norden/The Washington Post

Just when you thought the Iowa caucus debacle couldn’t get worse, it went full Murphy’s law. On Thursday, Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, called for a full recanvass of the results. Immediately, the Iowa Democratic Party responded that it would do so if a campaign requested it. As we all know now, the human and technical mistakes in Iowa were legion. Yet one overlooked fact in coverage of the meltdown is that the caucus was run by a state political party — not professional election officials. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t important lessons for all the other primaries and caucuses in the weeks ahead. Here are the four most important things election officials can do to keep the 2020 election cycle free, fair and secure. Don’t roll out untested technology in a big election. As an election professional from Ohio recently told me, “Macy’s wouldn’t roll out new cash registers on Black Friday.” There is a ton of new technology, from voting machines to electronic pollbooks, being employed in 2020. And for the most part, it is long overdue. For years, we have neglected our election infrastructure in the United States, with states using voting machines and registration databases with unnecessary security and reliability flaws. The key, however, is to test out this technology in low-stakes, low-turnout elections throughout the year — a best practice that the Iowa Democratic Party ignored.

Editorials: How to Prevent the Next Election Meltdown | Richard L. Hasen/Wall Street Journal

Will your vote be fairly and accurately counted in the 2020 elections? It’s a question on a lot of people’s minds after this week’s fiasco in the Iowa Democratic caucuses, and it reminds us of a troubling fact: Nearly two decades after the Florida debacle over the 2000 presidential vote, too many places in the U.S. are still vulnerable to an election meltdown. Such anxieties add to well-founded concerns about the possibility of cyberattacks on our voting systems, by Russia or other malign actors. What’s worse, in today’s hyperpolarized, social-media-driven environment, such voting problems provide sensational grist for conspiracy theories that may further undermine Americans’ confidence in the fairness and accuracy of the 2020 elections. Over the past decade, a familiar frame has developed in the contentious debate over voting rules: Republicans express concern about voter fraud and enact laws supposedly intended to combat it; Democrats see these laws as an attempt to suppress Democratic votes, press for measures to expand voting access and rights, and worry about cyberattacks intended to help the GOP at the polls. It is an important debate, in which I have taken part, but it misses a deeper, more urgent reality: Most American voters in 2020 are much more likely to be disenfranchised by an incompetent election administrator than by fraud, suppression or Russian hacking.

Georgia: State officials partner with Georgia Tech for voting security | Albany Herald

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is launching a partnership with Georgia Tech, the Georgia Institute of Technology, to combat cyber threats to Georgia’s election system. This new effort will provide Georgia with the cyber expertise necessary to stay ahead of the continuously evolving threats to our voting infrastructure. “I am thankful to be working with a premier academic institution like Georgia Tech, whose cybersecurity program is ranked second in the nation,” said Raffensperger. “Together, we will be able to combat the growing cyber threats to our voting system and Secure the Vote in Georgia.” Georgia Tech officials said such security is a focus of the university.

Iowa: Democrats to undergo independent review of caucus chaos | Thomas Beaumont and Seth Borenstein/Associated Press

Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price, under immense pressure following the state’s presidential caucus debacle, said Friday that an independent review will determine what caused the problems that led to a dayslong delay in reporting the results, inconsistencies in the numbers and no clear winner. “We will be undergoing an independent, forensic review,” Price told reporters Friday in Des Moines. “What went right? What went wrong? Start to finish.” But almost nothing went right Monday night, first when an app local Democratic volunteers were to use to report the results from almost 1,700 precincts failed, and then when a massive backlog of phone reports and inquiries followed. It brought the reporting of the results of the leadoff presidential nominating contest to a standstill. It took until Thursday for the state party, which operates the series of statewide political meetings, to issue what it said are complete results.

Nevada: Caucus will use new ‘iPad tool’ they swear isn’t an app and things don’t sound great | Marcus Gilmer/Mashable

Oh lordy, here we go again. The Nevada State Democratic Party is planning to use a new app for the state’s caucus on Saturday, Feb. 22, just days after it abandoned the app that threw the Iowa caucus into chaos. Adding to the fun: Nevada Dems are refusing to call it an app. Per the Nevada Independent, the “new caucus tool that will be preloaded onto iPads” was introduced to volunteers at a training session on Saturday. According to a video used in the training session that the Independent viewed, the instructor “tells volunteers that the new mechanism ‘is not an app’ but should be thought of as ‘a tool.'”

Nevada: Democrats debut to volunteers new iPad-based ‘tool’ to calculate math on Caucus Day in the wake of Iowa fiasco | Megan Messerly/Nevada Inpedendent

Nevada Democrats are planning to use a new caucus tool that will be preloaded onto iPads and distributed to precinct chairs to help facilitate the Caucus Day process, according to multiple volunteers and a video recording of a volunteer training session on Saturday. The new tool will help precinct chairs fold in the results from people in their precinct who chose to caucus early with the preferences of in-person attendees on Caucus Day by calculating the viability threshold and carrying out the two alignments in the caucus process, according to the volunteers and the video recording. Details about the tool come two days after Nevada Democrats said that they would not use any apps for their Feb. 22 caucus after a coding error in a similar program used by Iowa Democrats delayed the release of results from that state’s nominating contest earlier this week. In the video, a party staffer tells volunteers that the new mechanism “is not an app” but should be thought of as “a tool.”

New Hampshire: New Hampshire is not Iowa, but some voting concerns remain | Ethan DeWitt/Concord Monitor

It’s not clear exactly where the trouble started in Iowa. Perhaps it was user error that caused many of the precincts to report irregular vote totals in last Monday’s caucus, prompting Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez to call for a partial re-canvass. Perhaps it can all be attributed to technical failures with a mobile reporting app. It could have been partly related to unfamiliarity with new caucus rules that added increased reporting requirements. Whatever the cause, the effect of the days-long delay in results was clear. Candidates were left frustrated, party officials ashamed and voters confused. This week, New Hampshire’s governor and secretary of state called a throng of reporters to the State House and took to a podium, anxious to promote a counter-message: No worries here. “Given the news and uncertainty out of Iowa, it’s important that we assure the public that the systems we have in place here in New Hampshire are truly beyond reproach,” said Sununu.

Ohio: Overseas voters could be blocked by security measures meant to stop hackers | Rick Rouan/The Columbus Dispatch

Cybersecurity measures meant to keep foreign hackers from accessing government websites could make it harder for overseas civilian and military voters in some countries to determine how to cast their ballots. At least one voter eligible to cast a ballot in Franklin County recently could not access the county Board of Elections website because it had blocked all traffic from Brazil. Security filters that block international traffic would affect a relatively small number of Ohioans. Overseas voters from Ohio requested about 9,600 ballots in 2018, and only about 7,500 of them were returned, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. But government agencies increasingly are looking to balance access for those who need it versus protections from hackers in other countries as public officials put a higher premium on cybersecurity, particularly around elections systems. Voting rights groups have raised the issue with Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office. LaRose issued a sweeping security directive last summer for Ohio’s county boards of elections in preparation for the 2020 election.

National: The Iowa caucus app isn’t the only new election tech | Rebecca Heilweil/Vox

Election security in the United States seems more precarious than ever. As the November 2020 election grows closer, states and counties have charged ahead with their own plans to secure — and improve — their voting systems. Congress, meanwhile, has failed to send much-needed reforms to the president’s desk. Anxiety over the mechanics of this year’s election has spiked following the disaster that was the Iowa Democratic caucus. While there’s no reason to believe that the very poorly developed app used in the caucus was hacked, the fiasco does have lawmakers spooked on a number of fronts, as it’s increasingly becoming clear that the integrity of the nation’s elections can be compromised in a variety of ways. In fact, after the phone number for reporting precinct results was posted online, supporters of President Donald Trump managed to flood phone lines and interfere with the counting of results, according to Bloomberg. You could say the country is more vulnerable to election interference than ever. Some worry, with good reason, that the worst is yet to come.

National: The progress the government has made on election security | Andrew Eversden/Fifth Domain

The latest Senate report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, released Feb. 6, contained several broad recommendations for how the government can improve effectiveness in securing American elections. While the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s third volume lists seven recommendations for correcting shortfalls made by the Obama administration in responding to Russian election interference, the federal government has already made progress in several of the recommended areas since the committee started its report. The committee recommends that the executive branch “bolster” partnerships with countries considered “near abroad” to Russia. The bipartisan report states that Russia has been using these countries as a “laboratory” for perfecting information and cyber warfare. For example, in the military conflict between Ukraine and Russian, Russian-backed hackers have targeted the government and shut down the country’s power grid. Expanding partnerships with such countries will “help to prepare defenses for the eventual expansion of interference techniques targeting the West,” the report read.

National: Election Security 2020: States Take Cybersecurity Measures Ahead of November | Adam Stone/StateTech Magazine

In the Buckeye State, officials are doing more than just keeping an eye on the upcoming national elections. As the threat of cyber tampering looms large, state and local leaders are working diligently to ensure voting is secure. “We want to set the tone for the rest of the nation,” says Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who in June issued a 34-point directive to guide state, county and local efforts on election cyber strategies. It calls for the use of event logging and intrusion detection tools, along with segmentation — disconnecting voting apparatus from external networks. “We want to make sure our boards of elections aren’t leaving a door opened by being attached to other, less secure assets,” LaRose says. Ohio may be out in front, but it is hardly alone. Authorities in all 50 states are taking steps to not only to secure the vote, but to ensure that the public perceives that vote as valid. They are getting help from the federal government, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an operational component under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Experts say the aggressive action is justified, given the high likelihood that adversarial nations and other bad actors could try to tamper with the election.

Verified Voting Blog: What We Don’t Know About the Voatz “Blockchain” Internet Voting System

The breakdown of the Iowa caucus’s mobile reporting app on February 3 highlights the risks of implementing new voting technologies that rely on the internet. Verified Voting advocates for the responsible use of technology in elections, and as President Marian K. Schneider noted, “The good news is that {Iowa) didn’t use (a mobile app) for…

Iowa: Caucus app is latest example of politicos building faulty technology with disastrous results | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

The Iowa caucus debacle is just the latest example of politicos building faulty technology — with serious political consequences. Professional technologists shuddered at the apparent incompetence and hubris as details emerged yesterday about the Iowa Democratic party rushing a contract for its caucus results app with a little-known tech company founded by veterans of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, pushing the app out faster than it could be responsibly built and rejecting opportunities for testing and security vetting. The resulting implosion of the app from Shadow Inc. on the first vote of 2020 undermined faith in the electoral process just as Democratic party leaders were trying to restore it. The country is still waiting for the full results. “The most important lesson anyone should take away from this is that if you’re going to use a new technology that you need to very rigorously test it and exercise it and plan for what your backup will be if it fails,” Eric Rosenbach, a former top Pentagon official who leads the Defending Digital Democracy program at Harvard University, told me. “That didn’t happen here, which is disappointing,” he said. “That’s not something that’s good for democracy.” The high-profile coding error, which produced inconsistencies in reported caucus results, was reminiscent of other times when the government or campaigns built digital tools — but the hard work of getting the tech right took a backseat to other priorities.

Iowa: Maker of glitchy Iowa caucus app has Democratic Party ties | Michael Biesecker and Brian Slodysko/Associated Press

The little-known technology start-up under scrutiny after the meltdown of the Iowa Democratic caucuses on Monday was founded little more than a year ago by veterans of Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign who had presented themselves as gurus of campaigning in the digital era. Shadow Inc. was picked in secret by the Iowa Democratic Party after its leaders consulted with the Democratic National Committee on vetting vendors and security protocols for developing a phone app used to gather and tabulate the caucus results. Party officials in Iowa blamed an unspecified “coding issue” with the software that led to it producing only partial and unreliable results. It did not identify the firm that produced the technology, but campaign disclosure reports show that the Iowa party paid $63,000 to Shadow in late 2019. After the company came under withering criticism on social media Tuesday, it issued a series of tweets that expressed “regret” over technical glitches which contributed to a delay in the release of results, but stopped short of apologizing.

Ohio: 8 counties fall short on elections cyber security check up | Laura A. Bischoff/Dayton Daily News

Eight Ohio counties failed to fully comply with a directive ordering local elections officials to tighten and check their cyber security protections, according to Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose. LaRose said on Wednesday that he expects seven of the eight to be in full compliance within a week but he is placing Van Wert County Board of Elections under state administrative oversight because county officials there failed to take the directive as seriously as they should.LaRose said all 88 Ohio counties are 100 percent compliant with orders to conduct physical security checks, personnel background checks, transition to .gov email and website domains and training for staff. The compliance rate for required cyber attack detection and network defense steps is 99 percent, he said. “Ohio is the best prepared state of any state in the nation. That was my goal from the beginning. That’s what we expect as buckeyes, that’s what we expect as Ohioans. We know that the eyes of the world are on us each time we conduct a presidential election in Ohio. When the world is watching, Ohio will be ready,” LaRose said.

Ukraine: Zelensky hopes to hold online voting through smartphone at elections in Ukraine | InterFax