Who’s in charge: Secretary of State Paul Pate, Director of Elections Dawn Williams Iowa uses nothing but paper ballots for all forms of voting, and then tabulates the votes with ballot marking technology or optical scanners. The auditing process has come under some criticism for a variety of perceived flaws, including its scope, which is limited to a…
Who’s in charge: Secretary of State Mac Warner, Manager of Elections Donald Kersey West Virginia is attempting something unprecedented in this year’s 2018 elections: It will reportedly become the first state to allow residents and military members stationed abroad to vote in a general election using a mobile app. Overseas absentee voters will use this app, which is…
Who’s in charge: Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, Election Director Mandy Vigil From a security perspective, New Mexico is entering the 2018 elections from a position of strength. The Land of Enchantment relies solely on paper ballots, using only marking devices and optical scanners to record and tally the votes. Prior to the election, the state was to…
Iran officials are reportedly claiming that a variant of the Stuxnet worm that disrupted their country’s nuclear program in the late 2000s was used in an attack on their telecommunications infrastructure last week. Iran is publicly pointing the finger at Israel, while claiming to have successfully defended the attack, according to multiple news outlets, including…
Who’s in charge: Secretary of State Alison Lundergan-Grimes, Executive Director Jared Dearing Kentucky’s reliance on electronic vote-recording devices with no voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) capabilities makes little horse sense, according to security experts. Citing documentation from Kentucky’s office of the Secretary of State, as well as press releases and news articles from the last six months, the Verified…
Who’s in charge: Executive director, Board of Elections Kim Westbrook Strach North Carolina this year received about $10.4 million in federal funding, which it has allocated chiefly toward modernizing its Statewide Elections Information Management System and migrating it to the cloud. This system reportedly manages voter registration, candidate filing, voting site management, election night reporting and…
Who’s in Charge: Commissioner of Elections Elaine Manlove Delaware may be known as the First State, but it certainly doesn’t come in first when it comes to cybersecurity. To document and tabulate its residents’ votes, the tiny mid-Atlantic state uses the Danaher Shouptronic 1242 – a push-button direct-record electronic solution that does not have a voter-verified…
Although a cloud-based architecture would offer cybersecurity benefits to federal agencies whose systems are in need of digital defense, many government entities are not yet ready to make the migration, based on the results of a new survey. Conducted by Alexandria, Va.-based MeriTalk, a public-private partnership whose mission is to improve the outcomes of government IT,…
It might sound more like a parent scolding his or her child, but reportedly Ecuador recently issued a memo to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, ordering him to mind his manners as a condition for getting his severed internet connection restored. According to an AP report, the memo instructs Assange, a fugitive who continues to seek…
There are 62 counties in New York State, and nearly 1,000 cities and towns within them. Many lack adequate resources to devote to cybersecurity, but New York is committed to making sure these local municipalities are nevertheless protected against digital threats, according to the state’s CISO Deborah Snyder, speaking today at a conference. In a panel…
