Election Security Across The States As Voters Prepare To Hit The Polls

With Meghna Chakrabarti

With the midterms on deck is there a security plan in place to protect your vote against foreign interference?

Tim Starks, covers cybersecurity for Politico and writes its Morning Cybersecurity newsletter. (@timstarks)

Eric Rosenbach, co-director of Harvard’s Belfer Center and director of the Defending Digital Democracy Project. Former assistant secretary of defense for Homeland Security and Global Security, and former chief of staff to the secretary of defense. (@ERosenbach)

Marian Schneider, former Pennsylvania deputy secretary for elections and administration, and now president of Verified Voting, a national election integrity advocacy group.

USA Today: "Midterm elections are four weeks away. Russian hacking is not the only worry ahead." — "Four weeks from Election Day, it's hard to be confident that every eligible American who wants to vote will be able to do so, and that every vote will be recorded accurately.

"Hacking has gotten the most attention since the 2016 Russian attacks on the presidential race. In July, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats warned that the 'lights are blinking red again.'

"Along with possible foreign interference, other problems — some the fault of federal and state inaction — loom over this crucial election."

The Daily Beast: "U.S. Still Hasn’t Finalized Election Security Plans—and the Midterms Are Weeks Away" — "The midterms are less than a month away. But working groups inside the intelligence community charged with overseeing election security are still trying to finalize plans for countering foreign interference in the 2018 elections, three senior officials involved with the efforts told The Daily Beast.

"The issue came up in a meeting this month that included current senior intelligence officials and former officials who were asked to attend and provide advice. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency were pinpointed as two of the departments that had made the most progress. The Department of Homeland Security, however, is lagging behind, according to officials inside the meeting."

NBC News: "DHS finds increasing attempts to hack U.S. election systems ahead of midterms" — "The Department of Homeland Security says it's working to identify who — or what — is behind an increasing number of attempted cyber attacks on U.S. election databases ahead of next month's midterms.

"'We are aware of a growing volume of cyber activity targeting election infrastructure in 2018,' the department's Cyber Mission Center said in an intelligence assessment issued last week and obtained by NBC News. 'Numerous actors are regularly targeting election infrastructure, likely for different purposes, including to cause disruptive effects, steal sensitive data, and undermine confidence in the election.'

"The assessment said the federal government does not know who is behind the attacks, but it said all potential intrusions were either prevented or mitigated."