State fights cyberattacks — without any help from D.C.
California election officials are guarding their voting machines and registration lists against Russian hackers — although no one has spotted any.
“I operate under the assumption that hacking is actually happening and California is a target,” Secretary of State Alex Padilla says.
“This year, there’s a big focus on several congressional races that could determine the House majority. The stakes in California have national implications.”
But would the Russians actually try to change election outcomes?
“I have no doubt that if they could, they would,” says Padilla, a Democrat who’s heavily favored to win re-election in November.
Hacking into California’s voting system and altering votes, however, is considered by most experts to be practically impossible. That’s because voting machines aren’t hooked up to the internet. State law forbids it. A hacker might attack one machine but couldn’t reach into the entire vote-collecting system.
Voter registration lists are different, however.
“People are registered online. Records are connected to the internet. And hackers could break into those,” says Matt Bishop, a UC Davis computer science professor. “They could create chaos by disenfranchising voters.”
Why would Russians want to do that? To tick off Americans and undermine the credibility of U.S. elections — to further divide us and exacerbate political polarization. This was their goal in interfering with the 2016 presidential election — that and helping President Trump beat Hillary Clinton, who really irked Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Fomenting discord also is achieved by spreading false information — “fake news” — on social media, including directing people to the wrong polling places, telling voters the election is on a different date and saying provisional ballots aren’t counted.
“Well over 90 percent of provisional ballots check out and are counted,” Padilla says.
National security officials revealed last year that Russian hackers tried to break into 21 states’ election systems in 2016.
California apparently wasn’t one, despite an initial report by the Department of Homeland Security.
“Our notification was not only a year late,” Padilla complained at the time, “it also turned out to be bad information.”
“Late” was common for the Obama administration in defending against cyberattacks in 2016.
“While the Americans dithered, the Russians feasted,” New York Times national security correspondent David E. Sanger wrote in his new book, “The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age.”
In Sacramento, Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature recently appropriated $134 million to upgrade county voting systems and defend them against hackers.
Padilla criticized the Republican-controlled Congress for rejecting a $250-million appropriation that would have helped states protect their voting systems.
“Intelligence officials have been crystal clear: our democracy is, and will continue to be, under attack by Russia and others,” he said in a statement.
Republicans claimed the money for cyberattack defense wasn’t needed.
“I know what we need for safe and secure elections, and that’s voter ID,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
After Trump got fewer popular votes than Clinton, but won the presidency in the electoral college, he claimed millions of people voted illegally. He created a commission to prove his fantasy, but had to shut it down when no evidence was found.
“Voter fraud gets talked about in partisan circles and in the heat of campaigns,” Los Angeles County Voter Registrar Dean Logan says, “but it’s just not borne out to be factual.”
What’s factual are Russian cyberattacks. California isn’t dithering.