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Elections office gets security upgrade funds

By Kile Brewer
Posted 8/1/18

GREEN COVE SPRINGS – Elections in Clay County should be more secure than ever with federal grant money being spent locally on both physical and cyber security.

Following recent attacks on voter …

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Elections office gets security upgrade funds


Posted

GREEN COVE SPRINGS – Elections in Clay County should be more secure than ever with federal grant money being spent locally on both physical and cyber security.

Following recent attacks on voter registration systems in Illinois and Tennessee, the federal government handed down $381 million across the nation in an attempt to securely lock down the entirety of the election process. The creation of the Elections Infrastructure subsector following the 2016 election cycle allows the federal government to spend money on elections, not just the states.

The state of Florida was granted $19 million of the federal money and Clay County Supervisor of Elections Chris Chambless was awarded $138,740. According to Chambless, this money will be put to good use, though the process in Florida remains more secure than others by design.

“I can’t speak to other states, but I will tell you that in the state of Florida, we again have a paper ballot and I can reproduce the election over and over and over again,” Chambless said. “The most compelling argument against the insecurity of an election here, is that after an election is completed there is a mandatory audit that takes places of randomly selected precinct and contest that is not known by anyone. This physical hand counted audit of that precinct and contest would illuminate any irregularities.”

Though Florida hasn’t seen the same intrusion that has happened in other states, Chambless said there is still a need to look forward and make the process as secure as currently possible.

“Everything is hackable, what makes it not hackable is physical security and cybersecurity,” Chambless said. “But start thinking about the process called zero day. The reason antivirus is able to detect malicious or bad signatures is because they have been used before, and in best systems those signatures are updated in real-time. What happens when you’re the first, and the script is first being used on you, this is known as a zero day threat.”

The grant will fund the incorporation of the state-of-the-art Albert network monitoring system that will identify any threats to the voter registration records should someone try something like what was done in Illinois or Tennessee.

Though the office is implementing greater physical and digital security, Chambless maintains that the actual voting process is and has always been completely secure. The machines, which are sealed and locked when not in use, work offline, and are never connected to any network where they could be accessed remotely. Also, the fact that all the ballots are marked paper ballots allows them a greater freedom for reproducing results without even using the machines if it were necessary for the integrity of the process. He said that the biggest factor in 2016 election, and the one that was most common, was social media campaigns to bring about political polarization among the population.

“Our systems are tested for 100 percent accuracy, not 99 percent or one or two ballots,” Chambless said. “At the end of the day, I just don’t know how you would be able to change the accuracy. I think the larger motive was to cause social discourse or this whole idea of corrupt government, elections bought and paid for, and those things are very hard to combat against.”

Though many of these types of attacks happen without warning, Chambless said that the new systems being put in place will offer greater protection for the process, in the same vein as the large steel bollards that line the outside the office which would stop a car from ramming through a building.

“Everyone should be very impressed and proud with resources that we have deployed here in Clay County,” Chambless said. “It’s no longer if, it’s now becoming when [an attack will be attempted], and it would be prudent for any government agency to adopt that same philosophy.”