Illinois election officials: ‘Very likely’ state was target
Illinois election officials believe their agency “very likely” was the target of a hack of voter data referred to in an indictment of Russian intelligence officers handed up Friday.
The indictment, part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, alleges that two officers of the Kremlin’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) stole personal data from around half a million voters from an unnamed state board of elections.
Based on information in the indictment, Illinois State Board of Elections spokesman Matt Dietrich said Friday that officials believed the Illinois agency is the one identified in the indictment only as SBOE 1.
“We think it’s very likely that we are SBOE No. 1,” Dietrich said in Springfield. “We have not received any confirmation from the Department of Justice on that, but based on the circumstances described in the indictment, we think it’s pretty likely that that’s us.”
“We never had anything on paper until today and even then we don’t have a firm statement from DOJ saying yes it’s us, although we think it’s more than likely that it’s us,” he added.
The dates reported in the indictment — a hack attempt launched in
July 2016 and reported in August — match the reported dates of the attack on Illinois’ election system.
The number of voters whose information the indictment lists as compromised by the hack on SBOE 1 — “approximately 500,000 voters” — is substantially larger than the 76,000 voters identified and notified by the state in the wake of the attack. Dietrich speculated that federal prosecutors might be using a standard defined by the Federal Criminal Code, as opposed to Illinois’ Personal Information Protection Act, to reach that higher number.
Democrats said the indictments should serve as another alarm bell.
“The 2018 elections are just four months away. It is past time for President Trump, his inner circle, and congressional Republicans to stop accepting Russian President Putin’s brazen denials and take this threat to our democracy seriously,” U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said in a statement.
Dietrich cautioned there was no reason to believe that the integrity of the vote count — as opposed to voter information — had been compromised.