Two States’ Election Systems Have Been Hacked

Initial reports disclosed voter systems being hacked, but that is not accurate…

Initial reports stated Illinois and Arizona’s voter systems have been hacked; however this is not accurate.  The states indeed experienced a hack, but it was of the election systems, not the voter systems.  This hack did include a breach of over 200,000 voter data files.  This lead to concerns about how further breaches could impact the upcoming election.

Washington Post went into great detail in a recent article explaining the difficulty of changing the actual outcome of the presidential election, or any election for that matter.  Here is what you need to know.  First, there are three different systems tied to the voting process, the election systems, voting systems and campaign system.  All of these systems flow into each other, but in various ways.

The votes are actually tallied through the voter system.  In order to breach this system to effectively alter the outcome, it would require significant work due to the multiple security measures that are in place.  First, a public tabulation test occurs to ensure the systems are working properly.  At the time of the live election, the votes are encrypted with multiple layers of encryption, and sent to a central location.  The voting devices are also, not connected to the internet.  To further secure the results, thumb drives are sent to a central location that have been digitally signed with the voting results.  If any of the encrypted results are slow to arrive, or are deemed potentially corrupted, the thumb drive results are used.  One week after the election, the final results are compared to the paper totals, and if any discrepancies are noted, they are looked into further.

Now, I’m not saying it can’t be done.  But I am saying it would be incredibly difficult and require multiple levels of collusion to ensure success, without raising any red flags.

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