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Thursday, September 14, 2017

Legislators consider improving Maryland election security after hearing with state voting board

ANNAPOLIS, Maryland — Maryland legislators learned last week the state’s electronic balloting system may need better security measures to protect voters’ information and that the lawmakers must be the ones to add those protections.

The state’s electoral board told lawmakers Sept. 6 that they are powerless to make those changes, and that any security changes must directly come from the legislative body.

Last year, the state’s Board of Elections voted 4-1 to certify a new voting system for online ballots, even though experts in cybersecurity and computer science publicly objected. While nearly all states have a system in place for signature verification, the Maryland General Assembly did not vote last year on the topic so there was no verification system in place, leaving them Maryland as the only state in the nation without one, according to a report last year by Capital News Service.

State officials last week acknowledged the importance of election security in the wake of the 2016 presidential race, after which reports indicated that Russian hackers obtained information from the Democratic campaign illegally. Former director of the FBI Robert Mueller is leading a Justice Department probe into the Trump campaign’s potential possible collusion with the Russians.

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6 comments:

JoeAlbero said...

Interesting, very interesting!

Anonymous said...


What did I just say about Maryland? Oh, yeah, a day late and a dollar short, which is SOP for the state.

Anonymous said...

Just clean up our rolls and see to it that we have NO fraud in the voting. Go back to paper ballots.

Anonymous said...

So their going to hide and ditch the corrupt voting system and implement a new one, just ahead of the federal voter fraud investigation. Maybe now the criminal regime will loose its grip, and it'll reveal the old song about 3 counties dictating the entire state....was just a fairytale....

Anonymous said...

VA got rid of all their electronic voting booths because of the vulnerability by hackers. Unbelievable!

Steve said...

If the State's Electoral Board is powerless to make needed changes, why do we pay them? They are asking the people who benefit from fraudulent voting to make the changes?????

Interesting, indeed!