Local voting districts seen as crucial to election security

Associated Press

CONYERS, Ga.

Last November, election officials in a small Rhode Island town were immediately suspicious when results showed 99 percent of voters had turned down a noncontroversial measure about septic systems.

It turned out that an oval on the electronic ballot was misaligned ever so slightly and had thrown off the tally. The measure actually had passed by a comfortable margin.

The scary part: The outcome might never have raised suspicion had the results not been so lopsided.

Amid evidence that Russian hackers may have tried to meddle with last year’s presidential election, the incident illustrates a central concern among voting experts – the huge security challenge posed by the nation’s 10,000 voting jurisdictions.

While the decentralized nature of U.S. elections is a buffer against large-scale interstate manipulation on a level that could sway a presidential race, it also presents a multitude of opportunities for someone bent on mischief.

With a major election year on the horizon, the Homeland Security Department has been working with states and counties to shore up their election systems against tampering.

States vary widely in what they are doing to tighten security. Colorado and Rhode Island have adopted more rigorous statistical methods for double-checking the votes, while others are making or weighing changes to their voting technology.

Last year, Homeland Security disclosed that 21 states’ election systems had been targeted by Russian hackers. There was no evidence they actually penetrated the systems. Experts likened the activity to a burglar jiggling a doorknob to see if it is locked.

In the U.S. – from presidential races down to school board contests – elections are run to a very large degree by local governments, usually counties. County election offices across the nation oversee some 109,000 polling places and more than 694,000 poll workers, and rely on a patchwork of voting technology, such as optical scanners and touchscreens.

Small counties are less likely than the larger and wealthier ones to have cybersecurity expertise and the latest technology.

A 27-member council has been formed with representatives from federal, state and local governments. The group had its first meeting last month in Atlanta, and a key priority is establishing a process for sharing intelligence.