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DHS Is Behind On Efforts To Defend Against Cyber-Tampering In Elections

Darron Cummings
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AP Photo
Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap says Maine is not alone in having problems getting their clearances.

As part of an effort to strengthen its defense of the nation’s election system from cyber-tampering, the Department Of Homeland Security (DHS) has designated a list of individuals in each state for clearance to receive classified information about suspected attacks.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, though, says federal officials aren’t up to speed on warning state election officials, and are making it tough for states to bolster their own systems. Collins says she asked DHS officials recently about how the process of clearing state officials to receive classified information was proceeding, and says she was surprised by the answer.

“Only 20 of the 150 officials who had been designated to receive full clearances had received them,” she says.

Each state is slated to have three officials with clearance. Currently, Maine has one that the feds have identified for clearance, and Secretary of State Matt Dunlap is not one.

Dunlap says Maine is not alone in having problems getting their clearances, as he learned at a conference of State Election Officers last week.

"It’s still very, very slow,” he says. “And as we get into the fall elections I know there are a number of jurisdictions that have not competed that process, and there are still concerns that there are outside actors that are putting bugs into our systems without our knowledge, but Homeland Security may be aware of it and not telling us.”

Dunlap says states that use electronic voting machines connected to the internet are more vulnerable to attack than others. Maine uses paper ballots and scanners, which are not connected to the internet. But Dunlap says the state’s centralized voting list is vulnerable, as are the systems used to allow military and others living overseas to vote in Maine elections.

“We predicate our plans not on the premise of if we ever get breached, but it’s a matter of when we get breached,” he says. “And we have security plans to deal with those things. It hasn’t happened to us yet, but looking across the country, it’s a matter of time.”

Dunlap says his office is preparing plans on how to use the more than $3 million allocated to the state to bolster election security. He says some of the money may be used to buy new ballot scanners, some for training and some to continue to upgrade security equipment and software for the central voter registry.

Collins says as states design their new security plans, they’ll need much better information sharing from the federal government.

Credit Andrew Harnick / AP Photo
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AP Photo
Collins says federal officials aren’t up to speed on warning state election officials, and are making it tough for states to bolster their own systems.

“If we can’t communicate to the top election officials the nature of the threat, it makes it very difficult for them to make the right decisions on how to harden their systems,” she says.

Dunlap’s office has asked the feds for more time to draft its plan to spend the security funds, citing delays associated with setting up the new ranked-choice voting system for last month’s primary.

Journalist Mal Leary spearheads Maine Public's news coverage of politics and government and is based at the State House.