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County election official: Voting equipment safe, secure

Wed, 10/05/2016 - 3:58 pm
newsdesk@grahamleader.com
Despite recent concerns regarding the integrity of voting machines in the United States, Young County Elections Administrator Lauren Sullivan said local voting equipment is safe and secure. In late August, suspected Russian hackers cracked into voter databases in Illinois and Arizona. No changes were made to the election systems in those states. The act was committed instead to cast doubt on the integrity and validity of the election process, Sullivan said. “With the big presidential election, we get people all the time saying that ‘I am going to poke a hole in this somewhere and show that somebody is biased somewhere.’ All that does is really hurt the system and hurt the voters’ confidence in what we do on a local level,” Sullivan said. The voter registration database used in Young County is run through the state, which has its own internal security. The database is contained on an encrypted website that only Sullivan can access, Sullivan said. “The voter registration list and the votes tallied on the machine never communicate with each other, so I never know how a voter votes. I know that they did vote and I know the totals are at the end, but I don’t know how an individual voter votes,” Sullivan said. Other counties can’t access Young County’s system, but all Texas counties use the same state-based database with separate passwords for each county. Sullivan said nothing about the machines even touches the Internet. “I go and order the media that holds all the votes,” she said. “It is FedEx’d to me from the vendor and they are physical cassettes, basically. They are called a mobile ballot box or an MBB. This is what took the place of the metal ballot boxes. These are behind serial-numbered locks on the machines that you would need to knock down a poll worker to get the serial number from.” For the rest of this story, pick up a copy of Wednesday’s Graham Leader, or subscribe to our online edition.