Is Your County Elections Clerk Ready for Russian Hackers?

The head of every U.S. intelligence agency says Russia attempted to penetrate elections systems nationwide during the 2016 presidential election, and will try again during this year’s midterm elections.

In a decentralized election system with more than 10,000 separate jurisdictions, the onus for security is on local officials.

“That keeps me awake at night,” said Nancy Blankenship, the clerk for Deschutes County, Oregon.

Blankenship, like thousands of other county clerks, is the chief elections official for her area. It’s not so much the threat of foreign hackers changing votes that concerns Blankenship — Oregon is not only a vote-by-mail state, but also does its ballot counting without an internet connection — it’s the possibility that hacking could undermine public confidence in the system.

There are three major local cybersecurity threats during elections, said Maurice Turner, a senior technologist at the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C.:

Hackers could break into statewide, online voter registration databases to either steal personal information or change names, addresses or party affiliation to create confusion and discourage participation on Election Day.

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