Correction: Election Security-North Carolina story
Hackers with access to electronic voter rolls could throw voting into disarray and damage voter confidence by changing names, addresses or polling places.
On Election Day in 2016, some Durham County voters complained that the electronic poll books registered them as having voted when they hadn't. The company blamed the trouble on poorly trained poll workers and inadequate computer maintenance. A report by a security consultant hired by Durham County's elections board supported that claim.
"We believed then and now that the cause of the problem was poll worker error, and that a forensic analysis would prove it," Martin said in an email. The company remains confident the DHS review will prove its voting software "was not breached or compromised."
Russian-backed hackers probed several dozen state voter registration databases ahead of the 2016 elections, federal authorities say, and gained access to Illinois' voter rolls, though officials say there is no indication anything was altered or deleted. Florida's new governor, Ron DeSantis, said in May that the FBI confirmed hackers also penetrated at least two county networks in Florida. His predecessor, Gov. Rick Scott, unseated Sen. Bill Nelson after slamming the Democrat as "sensational" for saying Russians had hacked systems in Florida.
Florida and North Carolina are among eight states that use VR Systems' EViD electronic polling book software. Lawson, who resigned from the North Carolina election agency last week, said it was installed on off-the-shelf commercial laptops in Durham County.
Election integrity activist Susan Greenhalgh welcomed the forensic exam but lamented that it took a combination of the Mueller report and the 2017 leaking of the classified NSA report that named VR Systems to get here.
Also, it's entirely possible Russian tampering happened but the forensic exam will find nothing, she said.
"Its value is clearly going to be diminished because it took so long to do it," she said. Lawson said he could not say how securely the machines were stored before the state seized them.
Gloss