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UrbanObserver

Monday, January 6, 2025

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Election security group praises cybersecurity efforts while criticizing last-minute voting changes

The Center for Election Innovation & Research has some good news and some pointed observations ahead of the November election. In a study of states’ efforts to protect voter registration databases from cyberattacks, the group found that election administrators have made significant progress in protecting voter rolls from outside threats.

CEIR Executive Director David Becker explained that Russian actors briefly accessed Illinois’ voter registration database in 2016. His organization has been investigating states for security protocols in every federal election cycle since then.

“Our country and the 50 states do a very good job of securing voter registration databases,” he explained. “I think that’s one reason why we haven’t seen, as far as I know, any really successful attempts to breach voter registration databases in the last few election cycles after the 2016 red flag.”

But at the same time, election officials are thwarting external threats and undermining voter confidence from within with last-minute, legally questionable audits and policy changes.

“These audits actually show that out-of-state voting is not a problem,” Becker said, “it does not threaten the integrity of our elections, and states already have the tools to detect it and contact voters to confirm.”

“So the question is,” he added, “why are some people pursuing this issue two months before the presidential election?”

Cyber ​​hygiene

CEIR’s study aims to get answers from states about who has access to their voter registration database, how they keep the database secure and how they back up their data. So far, 23 states have responded, but the organization is keeping its names to ensure they don’t blow the whistle on potential security flaws.

CEIR Research Director Chris Mann explained that IT specialists in each state are responsible for the database.

“These are people who are trained professionals and consider the security and maintenance (of voter registration databases) their full-time job, every day, year-round. Many of them have been doing this for years and bring a wealth of experience to the table,” he said.

The CEIR also found that states are actively training their specialists on recent cyber threats and restricting access to the database itself through features such as two-factor authentication.

“The only state that said no doesn’t use multi-factor authentication because they don’t allow any remote access,” Mann said. “They require a physical connection, which is a very strong layer of security so people can’t get unauthorized access to these databases.”

Every state uses some type of intrusion detection system, with most using a network monitoring program known as Albert which was developed for state and local governments. Each state regularly backs up its database, and most encrypt those backups and store copies offline.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose. (Photo by Graham Stokes for the Ohio Capital Journal. Reprint photo only with original story.)

Rejection

While the CEIR praised the state’s election security systems, it criticized attempts to change election policies or audit voter rolls in the face of an critical election approaching.

“Generally speaking, election officials are very skeptical about making any changes — even really good changes — right before an election,” Becker argued, “because there’s always a price to pay for change, and that price usually comes in the form of voter confusion.”

And that’s a familiar refrain. One, in fact, that Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose himself quoted in 2020.defending his decision to limit the number of ballot boxes ahead of these elections. previously found would allow local officials to set up multiple boxes if they had statutory authority to do so. Several courts have found that he did, but Republican officials and the Trump campaign have opposed the idea.

Among the last-minute changes to the current election that Becker cited was a recent directive requiring anyone casting a ballot for someone else to fill out a form saying they were doing so in accordance with state law. The change comes in response to a federal court ruling that Ohio’s attempt to restrict who can assist voters went too far. The decision allows disabled voters who need assistance to vote to select someone of their choice — consistent with long-standing federal law — as long as that person is not their employer or union representative.

In a letter to state leaders, LaRose argued that the benefit, which is available only to disabled voters, could open the door to ballot harvesting.

“This effectively creates an unintended loophole in Ohio’s ballot harvesting law that we must address,” LaRose wrote. “I suspect this is exactly the outcome that (the League of Women Voters) intended. Under the guise of helping the disabled, their legal strategy is to make Ohio elections less secure and more susceptible to fraud, especially with respect to the use of drop boxes.”

LaRose’s directive means anyone returning another person’s vote — even close relatives who are expressly permitted to do so by state law — will have to sign a form attesting that they are complying with the law.

“It seems incredibly burdensome for someone who just wants to take their husband or wife’s ballot to the polls for convenience,” Becker said.

“I don’t know if it will have a dampening effect,” he added. “It’s just not a very strong idea and it has nothing to do with election integrity.”

Becker also criticized efforts by several Republican-majority states, including Ohio, to conduct so-called audits of noncitizens.

He said the audits themselves undermined the arguments in favor of conducting them for two reasons.

First, if they find people to report, election officials clearly have the tools they need to identify bad actors, so why wait until two months before the election? Interestingly, the Motor Voter Act of 1993 prohibits the systematic removal of voters from the rolls within 90 days of an election.

Second, the number of alleged foreigners is “infinitesimal compared to their total voter rolls.” Becker placed particular emphasis on the fact that even these numbers likely exaggerate the problem, since election officials have not actually proven anything.

“So when you look at a state like Ohio, you look at a state like Texas, they are exaggerating what they find,” he said. “These are not foreigners — they are potential foreigners.”

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