Protecting our elections
Maxwell: Florida must prevent threats (from here and abroad).
Three weeks ago, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced plans to investigate the “vulnerabilities” in Florida’s election systems.
It was big news. Yet hardly anyone noticed.
Chewing up the news cycle that day instead were reports that President Trump had stormed out of a meeting with Nancy Pelosi and that porn star Stormy Daniels’ former attorney was accused of defrauding her.
Listen, I get the fascination folks have with Trump, Pelosi and porn (three words that should never, ever be used in the same sentence).
But this election-hacking thing is a big deal. And too few people are paying attention.
Don’t take it from me. Take it from Robert Mueller — who stressed that, despite all the noise surrounding his Justice Department investigation, the “central allegation” was clear: “there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election. And that allegation deserves the attention of every American.”
And I’ll be candid with you folks: It’s not just the Russians I’m worried about.
If there are ways to hack our election system, I’m also worried about red-blooded Americans. Because they can be horrible people, too. Especially when they’re running for office and hiring consultants.
So if you’re telling me there’s a chance some domestic lowlife could possibly muck around with our elections …
“Yes, there could be potential problems.”
Those were the terribly unreassuring words from Ion Sancho, who ran Leon County’s elections office for nearly three decades and generally plays the role of chief election-security doomsayer in this state.
Plus, Sancho added that, if
someone did to pull off a hack, “It would never be uncovered.” Well, that’s freakin’ terrifying. To be clear: We don’t have evidence of nefarious forces changing any elections results.
Then again, we don’t really know what they have done to our elections systems, because the feds won’t tell us.
First they said Russians hacked “at least one” Florida county. Then they said it was two … but wouldn’t say which two … or exactly what happened.
But they still want you to have confidence in this country’s electoral system.
DeSantis seems to know that’s not how it works — which is why he ordered his Secretary of State to search for weaknesses and come up with better protections.
“Public faith in our elections is the bedrock of our democracy,” DeSantis wrote in ordering the review, “and we must do everything within our power to preserve the integrity of our elections systems.”
Amen. But how the state conducts that review is crucially important.
For starters, this investigation needs to involve people more techno-savvy than those who normally work in the Secretary of State’s office.
It’s nothing against the employees there. I’m sure they are fine people. (Well, most of them anyway. Maybe not the ones involved in the former secretary’s effort to ban college students from being allowed to early-vote on college campuses. But I’m sure the others are swell.)
Still, if you want to develop cutting-edge cyber-defense systems, you need people who are experts in that — not the folks who normally oversee library services and “Florida folklife.”
Sancho suggested DeSantis tap some of the brightest cyber minds in the state’s university system — the ones teaching our next generation of programmers (and maybe hackers).
That makes sense. Maybe a handful of private industry phenoms as well. (And I’m not talking about people who work for the companies that sell elections equipment. Of course they’d argue their equipment is breach-proof.)
The bottom line: DeSantis’ effort to look for vulnerabilities will only be as good as the people he asks to lead it.
The good news, Sancho says, is that Florida’s ballot-counting and tallying devices aren’t connected directly to the Internet. He says they never should be. Sancho also says the state needs systems that can run quick and thorough audits and leave voter-verified paper trails for every vote cast, including those cast on touch screens.
Details matter. “Sometimes you’ll hear people talk of glitches,” Sancho said. “There’s no such thing as a glitch when it comes to elections.”
It looks like DeSantis gets that. He described the his effort to ensure secure elections as a “top priority.”
And assembling a group of independent outsiders who have serious cyber knowledge and security clout will guarantee it actually is.