In the months leading up to the midterms, Ohio election officials tried to make their computer systems harder to hack.
They role-played how to handle cyberattacks and received help from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
They say last week鈥檚 vote went off without major cybersecurity problems. Now they have to prepare for an even bigger election鈥攖he 2020 presidential race.
Getting Up To Speed On Cybersecurity
Before the election, the state required local boards , so to speak. It was part of a in the wake of email hacking in 2016.
Boards say that focus paid off. The Scioto County Board of Elections in southern Ohio bought a better firewall system, director Julia Gearheart said.
鈥淎s soon as we installed it, and up and running, they found that we were actually getting a hit from Germany,鈥� Gearheart said.
That hit, she said, turned out not to be suspicious.
鈥淎nd, of course, it was stopped immediately, but there was someone that was trying to peek in on us,鈥� she said.
She said board staff learned other things, too鈥攍ike why they shouldn鈥檛 charge their phones by plugging them into computer USB ports. There鈥檚 a risk that malware could travel from a phone to the network.
Boards sought outside opinions from experts like Paul Weingartner, who chairs the computer network and cybersecurity program at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College.
鈥淭his was, as my understanding was, kind of the first baseline that the state was going after to see where all the counties kind of stood,鈥� Weingartner said. 鈥淎nd there鈥檚 quite a bit of diversity in the six that I saw.鈥�
He said some boards worked more closely with county governments, using stronger firewalls and sharing IT staff. Other boards, he said, had less sophisticated firewalls.
鈥淪o still a firewall, yes, that鈥檚 good, but not one that can actually detect any inbound threat,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t just does its basic filtering kind of in a very simplistic way.鈥�
Weingartner said the state could help boards work with counties to strengthen those protections.
The secretary of state鈥檚 office this year to sign up for . The agency reports if a firewall is doing its job. Boards also started receiving about potential threats to computer systems.
Overall, Lorain County Board of Elections Director Paul Adams said, local election officials have learned a lot this year.
鈥淚 see, over the next couple years, leading up to the next presidential election, that boards of elections are just going to continue to hone those skills,鈥� he said. 鈥淏ut there was certainly a learning curve for election administration officials to process all of this information before all the deadlines.鈥�
Halting Misinformation Online
Hacking isn鈥檛 the only online threat that election officials have to worry about. There鈥檚 also the spread of misinformation on social media.
Franklin County received its share of that on Election Day.
A video posted online that day showed a vote cast for Mike DeWine on a Columbus voting machine. It panned to a paper receipt recording a vote for his opponent, Richard Cordray.
鈥淲hen we were made aware of that, at probably about the three o鈥檆lock hour, kind of went into crisis mode reviewing the video,鈥� Franklin County Board of Elections spokesman Aaron Sellers said, 鈥渦ltimately, pretty quickly determining that there was a paper jam in that particular machine.鈥�
Meaning the machine did not flip a vote, but instead showed an old receipt. The board put out a statement debunking the posts.
"Franklin County Board of Elections Clarification on Social Media Video Making the Rounds" 鈥� Franklin Co. Boe (@FranklinCoBOE)
The Ohio Secretary of State鈥檚 Office said it flagged the video for social media platforms. Facebook and Instagram took it down, according to a company spokesperson. Twitter did not remove the video, which has been viewed more than 100,000 times on the platform.
Installing New Voting Machines
In the coming months, county boards will be buying new voting machines with state money.
That鈥檚 a step forward, according to Candice Hoke, the co-director of the Center for Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.
鈥淎t the same time, it could be a step backwards if the types of voting systems that are purchased are machines that rely on computers more rather than less,鈥� she said.
Boards are considering buying hybrid machines that use touchscreen devices to mark paper ballots, .
Election boards plan to use their new machines in next year鈥檚 elections. It鈥檒l be a trial run for 2020.
Copyright 2021 90.3 WCPN ideastream. To see more, visit . 9(MDA5NTM4MTIyMDE0MTg3NDc2MTVlZjdmNQ001))
