Election administrators are worried about "insider threats" to the election system from local officials who remain loyal to Donald Trump.
Officials who gathered for the National Association of Secretaries of State’s summer conference told Politico that cases in Colorado, where a county clerk was indicted for giving unauthorized access to voting machines, and others in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio had raised concerns about upcoming efforts to undermine election security.
“What’s clear is this is a nationally coordinated effort,” said Michigan secretary of state Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat. “It’s multi-year, multi-faceted … not just pressuring election officials, but pressuring local elected officials as well.”
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New Mexico secretary of state Maggie Toulouse Oliver, also a Democrat and former president of NASS, cited a vote last month by a heavily Republican county to refuse to certify election results in her state, saying it could set off a "domino effect," which Kentucky's secretary of state Michael Adams confirmed.
“I read something in Politico about what’s going on in some other state and then three days later, we get the same thing in our state,” said Adams, a Republican.
Election officials are already moving to improve security, especially in states that experienced breaches in the past, and they're also circulating new guidance about who is authorized to access voting equipment to prevent accidental breaches.
“A hacker can try to enter through your door,” said Ohio secretary of state Frank LaRose, a Republican. “You got to constantly remind people, because human nature is ‘Oh, yeah, let I’ll somebody in the building.’”
Voting machines and ballot tabulators are almost never connected to the internet, but internal computer networks and voter databases are vulnerable to cyber attacks, and secretaries of state are working with state and federal agencies to protect those systems.
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“If you click on a bad email? We’re only as good as our weakest link,” said Minnesota secretary of state Steve Simon, a Democrat. “It can be some county far away. It’s always possible that it could set in motion some unintended consequences that could affect other places.”
Fallout from the 2020 election has driven out many election officials and poll workers, who have been subject to violent threats and harassment, and their replacements broadly lack experience and may have ulterior motives -- especially in states like Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico, where election deniers have advanced in races for state legislatures and secretary of state.
“We were very fortunate in 2020 that no sitting secretary bought into the Stop the Steal effort,” said Michigan’s Benson. “I don’t think we’ll get that lucky again.”
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