Wisconsin Among Most Vulnerable Election Hacking States: Report

WISCONSIN — The Committee on House Administration Democrats released a report on Thursday that identified Wisconsin as one of 18 states with election systems that are most vulnerable to being hacked.

In September, officials in 21 states were notified of potential hacking attempts by Russians that officials at the time said were just "attempts."

After initially reporting that Wisconsin was hacked, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reported that Wisconsin's voter registration system was, in fact, not targeted Russian hackers during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, which was narrowly won by Republican Donald Trump.

According to a WISN 12 report, the state Elections Commission had been informed by the Department of Homeland Security that Russian Hackers attempted to exploit apparent vulnerabilities in the state's IT security systems to access the databases.

They were not successful, Department of Homeland Security officials said.

In getting back to state officials, the Department of Homeland Security said an entirely different system had been targeted by hackers - but stopped short of continuing its claim that the Russians were up to no good.

"Based on our external analysis, the WI IP address affected belongs to the WI Department of Workforce Development, not the Elections Commission," Juan Figueroa, with Homeland Security's Office of Infrastructure Protection stated in an email published in a WISN report.

Michael Hass, Wisconsin Election Commission Administrator, had maintained that Russians were not involved in any pre-election shenanigans.

Report's Findings

In the Democrats report, their analysis indicated that post-election audits were designed poorly and do not confirm the accuracy of the election outcome. "In addition, the audits are conducted after the election is certified, so if an anomaly was detected, it wouldn’t affect the election results," the report additionally stated.

The report also asserts that in 2017, Republican Gov. Scott Walker actively undermined election security efforts by issuing a line-item veto of the budget that would have created five additional positions in the state's Elections Commission. The Elections Commission has again requested additional funding for new positions, including one position dedicated to election security. It remains to be seen whether this funding will come through.

According to information provided by the Governor's Office, Walker said: "I object to the level of staffing approved by the Legislature given that the Elections Commission has been operating effectively with fewer staff. Rather than adding five additional permanent FTE positions, I believe that the commission can more cost effectively manage peak workload periods by hiring limited term employees or contractors, as they did during the 2016 presidential election."

The 18 states were classified into the following tiers:

Tier 1: States that have the most serious election security vulnerabilities. These states rely exclusively on electronic voting machines that do not have a paper record. It is nearly impossible to determine if paperless voting machines have been hacked and if vote tallies have been altered.

Delaware
Georgia
Louisiana
New Jersey
South Carolina

Tier 2: States that have significant election security vulnerabilities but may not be planning on using federal assistance to address their biggest issues.

Arizona
Florida
Illinois
Indiana
Kansas
New Hampshire
Tennessee
Texas
Wisconsin

Tier 3: States that have significant election security vulnerabilities and are using their federal funds to address those issues, though they need additional assistance to fully upgrade their election infrastructure.

Arkansas
Iowa
Pennsylvania
Washington

"It is now well-known that Russian hackers targeted voter registration databases in at least 21 states and attempted to access credentials of election technology vendors and election officials," the report says. "If these attacks had succeeded, hackers could have deleted voter registration records, altered poll books, caused chaos on Election Day, and potentially swayed the results of the election. Moreover, the Intelligence Community has warned that foreign actors will likely continue to seek to interfere in our elections."

The report says replacing paperless voting machines with machines that provide a paper trail is one of the most significant steps a state can take to improve election security. An additional step recommended in the report is a post-election audit of the paper ballots. Increased cybersecurity training and upgrading IT infrastructure were also recommended.

Voters that do not have any paper backup have repeatedly been shown to be highly vulnerable to an attack, the report says.

Read the full report here.

Photo by Emily Leayman/Patch