BATON ROUGE, La.—Election officials on the front lines of defending voting systems say they are preparing for a range of challenges ahead of the fall midterms, as they seek to ward off cyber threats and restore voter confidence after a flood of unsubstantiated election-fraud claims.
On the cybersecurity front, Russia, China, Iran and North Korea pose persistent threats along with other concerns including ransomware, said Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency—the U.S. government’s top cyber unit.
Federal and state officials said they aren’t only guarding against cyber threats, but also protecting physical access to voting systems.
“We’re in a mode of constant vigilance,” said Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, whose office in late June issued a third round of cyber- and physical-security requirements, including camera surveillance of election equipment, for the state’s county election boards.
The nation’s secretaries of state, who typically oversee state election systems, met with Ms. Easterly and other federal cybersecurity officials over the past few days at a hotel in Baton Rouge, as part of their annual bipartisan summer gathering.
The 2020 election season saw a flood of unsubstantiated election-fraud claims pushed by former President Donald Trump and his allies as they disputed Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory. Audits and state investigations didn’t find evidence of problems that could have altered...
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