Tag Archive for: Election

County election machines weren’t connected to internet

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Auditors from a private auditing company, SLI Compliance, do an audit of the tabulation machines and the voting system at the Maricopa County Elections Headquarters in Phoenix on Feb. 9, 2021. The five-member team was spending five days at the Maricopa County Elections Headquarters on the audit.

Maricopa County’s vote-counting machines were not connected to the internet during the 2020 election, an independent review has found, further undercutting claims by former President Donald Trump and his allies that the results were “rigged.”

A trio of technology experts overseen by an impartial special master found no evidence of an internet connection, according to results of the review released Wednesday.

That echoes the county’s long-standing position as well as the findings of independent audits the county conducted a year ago. It also dispels unproven theories from election deniers that the tabulation machines were hooked up to the internet and therefore susceptible to hacking to throw the election to Joe Biden.

Biden won Maricopa County by 45,109 votes, according to the official results.

In a statement, Bill Gates, a Republican who chairs the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, said “the unanimous conclusions of this expert panel should be a final stake in the heart of the Senate’s so-called ‘audit.’

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Independent experts find no foul play in 2020 election

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A new report from an independent review of Maricopa County’s 2020 election equipment supports what the county has said all along: the voting machines weren’t connected to the internet, and the county didn’t try to obstruct the state Senate’s audit or delete data. 

The report comes after the Arizona Senate and the county agreed in September 2021 that three independent computer security experts would review the county’s routers and answer the Senate’s questions in relation to the 2020 general election. Both parties agreed that former Congressman John Shadegg would act as an impartial “special master” to oversee the process. 

Six months later, the findings, which were released late Wednesday, fall in line with the county’s own independent election audits conducted more than a year ago. 

John Shadegg

The Senate’s election review team, headed by Cyber Ninjas, presented its report in September 2021, offering no evidence of widespread fraud. Its ballot hand count found Joe Biden received 99 more votes than the official tally. However, the Senate still wanted to examine the county’s routers and Splunk logs, which it had also subpoenaed earlier in the year. The county resisted, citing security concerns. But, faced with losing hundreds of millions of state-shared revenues for not complying with the subpoenas, the county eventually settled with the Senate to allow an independent review of the equipment. 

Shadegg’s report stated that the team found no evidence that “routers, managed switches, or election devices” connected to the Internet. He and the experts also found no evidence that the county obstructed the audit. 

“The special master and expert panel found no evidence of data deletion, data purging, data overwriting, or other destruction of evidence or obstruction of the audit,” the report stated. 

Maricopa County Board of Supervisors chairman Bill Gates said in a written statement that the report should be “a final stake in the heart of the Senate’s so-called ‘audit,’” pointing out that it concluded the ballot tabulation system was not connected to the internet and that county routers were not connected to the election…

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Election officials want more funds to combat midterm election cyber threats

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Below: This week’s web attacks in Ukraine were the largest the nation has ever faced, and another cyber-focused lawmaker is retiring from Congress. 

Election officials are in a money crunch

Election officials are facing a barrage of cybersecurity threats as the midterms approach.

But chances are slim that Congress will pitch in any money to help out.

Their wish list includes: 

  • More cyber testing for election office computer networks.
  • Cyber training for election workers and volunteers.
  • Better physical security to ensure outsiders and rogue staffers can’t monkey with election machines so they’re unsafe to use.

That’s on top of money they need for a suite of non-cyber challenges, including replacing staff who’ve quit amid a wave of death threats against election workers, inspired by former president Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud, as Mike DeBonis and Amy Gardner report.

The money crunch is a common dilemma for election officials who’ve faced one crisis after another in recent years, including Russian interference in the 2016 contest, the coronavirus pandemic and disinformation campaigns about elections from foreign and domestic sources. 

Congress has kicked in to help — including about $800 million for election security between 2016 and 2020 along with another $400 million to run safe elections during the coronavirus pandemic. But that’s only a fraction of what officials have said is necessary to make elections as secure as possible. 

“When election officials don’t have sufficient funds to run elections, they have to make tough choices and the truth is those choices can adversely impact the accessibility and security of elections,” David Levine, an election integrity fellow at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy, told me.

Election funding proposals have ranged from $20 billion sought by Democratic election officials to a more modest request for $5 billion in the next budget cycle. 

The Bipartisan Policy Center has suggested spending about $400 million annually on elections and focusing on ideas favored by Republicans and Democrats. 

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Russian tech tycoon extradited to US over ‘election hacking’ claims

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A Russian tech tycoon extradited to the United States on securities fraud charges is being targeted because US authorities believe he has knowledge of high-profile Russian espionage operations, his lawyer has claimed.



Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian citizens over the hacking of Democratic party servers during the 2016 election

© Provided by The Telegraph
Robert Mueller indicted 12 Russian citizens over the hacking of Democratic party servers during the 2016 election

Vladislav Klyushin, who ran an IT firm with links to the Kremlin and Russian ministry of defence, faces 20 years in jail for allegedly hacking the quarterly results of publicly traded American firms, allowing him to make millions in illegal trades.

But Oliver Ciric, Mr Klyushin’s Swiss lawyer, told Bloomberg News that his client had been sought by US authorities because they believed he had information about Russia’s attempt to meddle in the 2016 US presidential election, and hoped he would share it to avoid serving decades behind bars for fraud.

He said his client says he is innocent of both insider trading and of “hypothetical election meddling”.

Swiss police arrested Mr Klyushin when he arrived in the country for a holiday with his family in March and, according to his lawyer, was held under unprecedented high security for white collar crime.

Russia and the United States both subsequently filed extradition requests on separate charges of fraud.

The Russian request was rejected, and Mr Klyushin was finally transferred to the United States on December 18.

The insider trading indictment claims that Mr Klyushin and four co-defendents hacked into the servers of two online agencies in order to access the quarterly reports of US publicly traded companies including Tesla before they were released.

They then made $82.5 million making illegal bets on the stock of high-profile companies including Tesla and Microsoft, the indictment says.

Co-defendant has been indicted over Democratic Party hack

One of his co-defendants is Ivan Yermakov, a former military intelligence official who is also one of 12 Russians indicted by US special prosecutor Robert Mueller for hacking Democratic Party computer systems.

His US lawyer has said he intends to contest the charges.

Mr Ciric said his client had been approached by both American and…

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