Local districts crucial to security of elections

Hacking reports cause push to modernize vote

CONYERS, Ga. — Last November, election officials in a small Rhode Island town were immediately suspicious when results showed 99 percent of voters had turned down a noncontroversial measure about septic systems.

It turned out that an oval on the electronic ballot was misaligned ever so slightly and had thrown off the tally. The measure actually had passed by a comfortable margin.

The scary part: The outcome might never have raised suspicion had the results not been so lopsided.

Amid evidence that Russian hackers might have tried to meddle with last year’s presidential election, the incident illustrates a central concern among voting experts: the huge security challenge posed by the nation’s 10,000 voting jurisdictions.

While the decentralized nature of U.S. elections is a buffer against large-scale interstate manipulation on a level that could sway a presidential race, it also presents a multitude of opportunities for someone bent on mischief.

The Homeland Security Department has been working with states and counties to shore up their election systems against tampering.

Colorado and Rhode Island have adopted more rigorous statistical methods for double-checking the votes, while others are making or weighing changes to their voting technology.

“Always, there’s been a hypothetical. But clearly, now it is a real threat,” said Noah Praetz, election director for Cook County, Illinois. “The fact that we now have to defend against nation-state actors — Russia, China, Iran. It’s a very different ballgame now.”

Last year, Homeland Security disclosed that 21 states’ election systems had been targeted by Russian hackers. There was no evidence they actually penetrated the systems. Experts likened the activity to a burglar jiggling a doorknob to see if it is locked.

After the “hanging chad” debacle in Florida threw the 2000 presidential election into confusion, Congress designated $3 billion to help states modernize their election systems.

But those machines are now more than 10 years old. A 2015 study by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School found that more than 40 states were using machines that were no longer being manufactured, and some election officials had to go onto eBay to find replacement parts, including modems to connect to the Internet.

David Goldman The Associated Press Renee Phifer, left, Rockdale County board of elections assistant director, demonstrates a new voting machine Oct. 19 at a polling site to Kelly Monroe, investigator with the Georgia secretary of state’s office, in Conyers, Ga.