Election Officials Combat Voter Safety "Disinformation"
Voters cast their ballots in Mattoon in 2018. (Source: Journal Gazette-Times Courier)
A “viral” tweet over the weekend with about half-a-million views of an attached video is drawing bipartisan condemnation from election officials across Illinois. The tweet was posted by Jennifer Cohn, a self-described “election integrity advocate, writer, and freelance journalist,” who apparently resides in California. She is listed on the website of Protect Our Votes, which claims to be a “group of concerned citizens, from many industries and backgrounds, that are researching election results through both data analyses and the historical study of voting machines.”
Cohn’s tweet asked the Illinois State Board of Elections “why have you left the wireless modems in IL’s precinct scanners despite the knowledge that they connect the scanners & county central tabulators to the internet?! Why do u [sic] allow counties to use them on election night?!”
State Board of Elections spokesman Matt Dietrich responded. We are including his full response for transparency:
“That tweet is incorrect and irresponsible. Incorrect because no tabulators in Illinois have internet connectivity. They use a cellular signal to send a one-way, handshake encrypted transmission of UNOFFICIAL results on election night. These systems are used by a handful of jurisdictions (Cook, Chicago and some of the collar counties; I’m not sure at the moment which ones) for the sole purpose of providing unofficial results as quickly as possible on election night.
It’s irresponsible because putting out this kind of incorrect information needlessly makes voters worry and undermines public confidence in the election system.”
Deputy County Clerk for the Cook County Clerk’s Office, which covers all of suburban Cook County outside the City of Chicago, John Mirkovic, called the claim in Cohn’s tweet “totally false.”
“Data that is transmitted from the polling place is unofficial election results, which are encrypted and transmitted using a secure one-way cellular network that is not accessible to the public,” he says. “The tabulators are delivered to a central location that places them directly within our secure network for tabulation.”
Mirkovic also clarified that the term “voting machines” often refers to a “ballot marking device,” which allows voters to fill out a paper ballot which are then printed and fed into a traditional tabulator. He says those also cannot receive data from the internet.
The rebuke of the claim is bipartisan. We contacted Republican and Democrat County Clerks from around the state to clarify if and how their machines connect to the internet.
“[Our machines] are tested internally prior to the election and then a public test is also performed,” says Republican Macon County Clerk Josh Tanner. “That machine is not connected to the internet. Results from the election are tabulated after the polls close and are stored on a removable drive which is only accessible by staff in my office. The scanner is delivered to my office after the polls close and we will open it and retrieve the results.”
Tanner says results from the cards of each tabulator are uploaded to a computer not connected to the internet, often referred to as “air gapped.” He says using a computer that never connects to the internet prevents any outside tampering in the hard drive of the computer.
Democratic St. Clair County Clerk Tom Holbrook, a former State Representative, says none of the optical scan tabulators or touch screen machines are tied to the internet in “any way.”
“Even our election results are done offline and the information is then uploaded to our website,” he said.
Illinois’ voter security has been called into question following a Russian hack of the State Board of Elections voter database in 2016. No votes were ever compromised.
Neither Ms. Cohn or Protect the Vote responded to questions from The Illinoize.
Tanner added that even if someone were to hamper with a computer or voting system, the state mandates post-election tabulation of paper ballots, and the state requires those figures to match.