U.S. Official Confirms That Russia Hacked a "Small Number" of Voter Rolls in 2016
While the Republican Party is so concerned about preserving the sanctity of elections that it is willing to keep as many Americans as possible from participating in them, they have been decidedly less concerned about real, documented security threats to voting integrity. Alarmingly, it seems that even when U.S. officials are aware of such threats, intelligence agencies have been unable to effectively raise red flags.
On Wednesday, Department of Homeland Security head of cybersecurity Jeanette Manfra confirmed to NBC News that although "she couldn't talk about classified information publicly," DHS saw Russia target 21 states' voter registration rolls in 2016. A "exceptionally small number of them," she added, "were actually successfully penetrated."
That "exceptionally small" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here to make this sound like not a big deal, but we're still talking about some number of U.S. states whose voting systems were hacked. And while Manfra clarified that no voter registration rolls were altered by the intruders, that's pretty far from reassuring, particularly given that we about to have another one of these elections in nine months—and that some states apparently haven't done much since to solve the problem(s).
Many of the states complained the federal government did not provide specific threat details, saying that information was classified and state officials did not have proper clearances. Manfra told us those clearances are now being processed.
Other states that NBC contacted said they were still waiting for cybersecurity help from the federal government. Manfra said there was no waiting list and that DHS will get to everyone.
So essentially, in a twist that would look lazy in an episode of Veep, DHS alerted states that there was a threat, but couldn't tell them anything more specific than that because of clearance issues. It is distressing to learn that the branches of government are so poorly equipped to deal with attempts to hack an election that there is no way to actually warn the responsible people when a threat is imminent. It's all the more frustrating considering that, as we know, a great deal of material can seemingly be classified and de-classified if the political will exists to do so.
Donald Trump has made it clear that he's more concerned with self-preservation than maintaining anything resembling democracy in America. But if the U.S. government is going to publish previously-classified information for no other reason than to make Trump look like a victim, then perhaps it can find a way to effectively let states know if someone is trying to compromise their election results, too.
