Here & Now

WI To Improve Election Security After Attempted Russian Hack

Frederica Freyberg:

Did they or didn’t they? Did the Russian government target Wisconsin’s elections in 2016? A week ago, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the Russian did scan Wisconsin’s election system looking for vulnerabilities in the voter registration database. Then this week Homeland Security changed its story telling Wisconsin officials the Russians actually targeted the state Department of Workforce Development. But by week’s end, Homeland Security doubled back and said no, it was also the election system. So what gives? Reid Magney is the Public Information Officer for the Wisconsin Elections Commission. And thanks for being here.

Reid Magney:

You’re welcome.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what does give?

Reid Magney:

What gives is that there has been some definite confusion this week, but the bottom line is that nobody got hacked. No information was stolen. No penetration was made. The state’s IT infrastructure protected Wisconsin’s elections systems. It appears, though, that the Russians were looking for sort of other possible entrances. What we understand from Homeland Security, now finally, is that they may have been like try the door over here instead of the main door. See if we can learn anything about how this door works before we try this door. But in the end nothing happened. They were looking at an IP address where there was no server attached to it.

Frederica Freyberg:

Bottom line, they tried but they didn’t get in.

Reid Magney:

Correct.

Frederica Freyberg:

But meanwhile the commission’s chairman said this “Either they were right on Friday,” this being Homeland Security “and this is a cover-up or they were wrong on Friday and we deserve an apology.” Why would it be a cover-up?

Reid Magney:

I don’t think it was a cover-up. DHS is a really, really big government agency. A lot of bureaucracy. And what we’ve learned is that there are the people who worry about the cyber threats, who are looking at IP addresses and doing things like that. Then there’s intelligence people on the other side and everything sort of needs to get put together. And, you know, you’re not always talking to the right people. But as the week has gone on, my boss, Michael Haas, has been talking to people with some very long titles. And he’s gotten some apologies from them for how this all happened. So going forward, I think we’re in a good place.

Frederica Freyberg:

What concerns are there that this kind of who’s on first response on the part of the feds to Russian interference reduces public confidence in our election system?

Reid Magney:

It’s unfortunate that we couldn’t have been on the same page. That we didn’t really learn about — it really took us about a year to find out really what happened. The Homeland Security is learning about elections. They know how to defend the airports. They know how to protect us from a lot of other terrorist threats. Elections, which they’re just getting into, is a new world to them and we’re very decentralized. Things don’t work the way that maybe they expected they worked. And we’re learning to communicate about that, too. So we’re going in a really good direction. I’m sorry that it was a little bit herky-jerky.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what is Wisconsin doing to maintain the security of our vote now and going forward?

Reid Magney:

We’re doing a lot of things. We’re developing a — we have one plan in place now that we put out before last November's election. We’re working on a new plan that’s really going to look at what are the best practices for election security all over the country. We’re going to basically take those best ideas and make sure that they’re in our plan. That we have not overlooked any single thing. If there’s something we can’t do or we’re not doing, we understand why we’re not doing it. Because it won’t work with our particular system. We’re doing things like encrypting our state voter registration database. We’re going to go to things like not needing just a user name and password for the clerks who use that system to get into it. Sort of multi-factor authentication. We’re going to look at a number of other things. So the system that we have now has worked really well and we’re going to make it even better.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Reid Magney, thanks very much.

Reid Magney:

You're welcome.