Tuesday’s primary election is almost at the 10-year mark since Russian hackers gained access to Illinois’ voter data – a watershed moment in election security – that to this day prompts a simple question: is my ballot secure?
Securing your vote is not as easy as simply posting up some election judges, keeping uniformed officers awake and having a day’s supply of I Voted stickers.
November 2016 is an election that lives in Illinois infamy.
As voters cast ballots in bowling alley precincts, while pool players called the corner pocket and at the neighborhood laundromat, state election officials were on the lookout for Russian intruders.
A few months earlier, in the summer of 2016 at the State Board of Elections in Springfield, Illinois’ voter registration database was broken into from afar. According to a Justice Department report -prepared by special counsel Robert Mueller – in “June 2016, the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence) compromised the computer network of the Illinois State Board of Elections…exploiting a vulnerability in the SBOE’s website.” The Russian GRU “then gained access to a database containing information on millions of registered Illinois voters.”
Illinois election officials say Russian hackers viewed voters’ personal information – but that no data left the building.
Regardless, the breach resulted in tens of millions of dollars in security upgrades.
“It’s really a different environment today than what we saw 10 years ago,” said State Board of Elections official Matt Dietrich.
One big change is voting by mail. Nearly 650,000 people have already mailed in paper ballots; it’s what many experts consider the most secure way to vote.
“We like to remind voters that in Illinois, there’s a paper record for every single vote that is cast. And that is a tremendous point in our favor as far as election integrity goes,” said Dietrich. “What that means is that if there were ever to be a problem, theoretically, we could rerun an entire election the day after Election Day because we have those paper records.”
In Chicago, a city that some consider America’s historic home of corrupt elections, from graveyard voters to car trunks jammed with ballots from non-existent “river wards,” an all-paper voting system is also now in favor.
“We are an all-paper ballot state. So no matter which way that you vote, voting by mail, early voting, or voting on Election Day, there is a paper ballot,” said Max Bever, spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections. “There’s a paper that that voter can look at their choices, double-check that before they cast that ballot. So no matter what audits that happen after election day, for possible recounts, any type of needs, there’s always going to be that paper ballot trail,” Bever told NBC Chicago.
“You can’t really hack a piece of paper,and you can’t hack a pencil. And so as long as we’ve got hand-marked paper ballots and humans to count those if need be, I think we can trust the results,” said former White House cybersecurity advisor Jake Braun, who wrote the book, “Democracy in Danger: How Hackers and Activists Exposed Fatal Flaws in the Election System” and now teaches at the University of Chicago. Braun said hand-marked paper ballots are the way to defeat electronic election thieves.
“A nation-state adversary like Russia could absolutely get into our voter registration databases and the machines and so on,” Braun said. “Any piece of technology is hackable. So this isn’t like casting aspersions on the companies that make the voting technology or the people who administrate it at the state or county or city level. This is really just about the fact that technology is vulnerable, and so therefore, it can be hacked.”
Securing your vote is just as crucial in a low-turnout primary, according to election cyber expert Braun. He said foreign hackers like to use off-year elections for testing new break-in tricks. And Braun said overseas adversaries aren’t pro-Democrat or pro-Republican.
But, Braun said, they are pro-chaos in America.
Hence then, the article about it s been a decade since russians attacked illinois voter registry is your info safe now was published today ( ) and is available on NBC Chicago ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( It's been a decade since Russians attacked Illinois' voter registry. Is your info safe now? )
Also on site :
- LA28 ticket registration nears deadline as first Olympic qualifiers emerge
- En medio de la crisis, el Gobierno de Cuba anuncia reformas económicas aunque persisten los obstáculos
- What do you need to vote in Illinois? What you can take into the ballot box with you