United States Election Officials Meet amid Security Concerns

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Senior US election officials gather this weekend in Philadelphia for further revelations about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and just before the president Donald Trump does not meet face-to-face with Russian President Vladimir Putin

The annual rally has generally been a low-key affair focusing on things such as voter registration and voting devices. This year's meetings of the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Electoral Officers arouse a lot more interest.

The conference is between charges laid Friday against 12 Russian intelligence officers. reports, and the long-awaited meeting of Trump with Putin.

Trump never condemned Russia for interfering in the 2016 elections despite the findings of all US intelligence agencies. In the past, Trump reiterated Putin's denials, but this week he said that he would raise the issue when the two meet on Monday in Finland.

"All I can do is say," Have you? "a press conference in Brussels." And, & # 39; Do not do it again. & # 39; But he can deny it. "

Some of the state officials who run the elections say that it is important that the president takes a firmer stance to prevent public confidence in fair elections being undermined.

, he has the obligation to fix it, and frankly put Putin and any other foreign nation that seeks to undermine our democracy on the fact that the shares will not be tolerated, "said the secretary. California State Alex Padilla, a Democrat, in an interview.

Trump describes the investigation as a partisan attack, but not all Republicans see it as such. This month, Republicans and Democrats of the Senate Intelligence Committee supported the findings of an assessment by US intelligence agencies that Russia has tried to interfere in the 2016 elections and acted in favor of Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton. From this effort, Russian hackers targeted at least 21 states before the elections and reportedly violated the voter registration system in at least one of the states of Illinois. Without denouncing the state, Friday's indictment indicates that Russian intelligence officers stole information from about 500,000 voters on the site of an election council , a violation that was not detected for three weeks.

These attempts prompted the federal and state governments to re-examine electoral systems and strengthen their cyber security.

Federal officials also said that it was possible that malicious software could have disrupted voting or paralyzed computer systems in the next election. At a hearing last week, Texas US Representative, Michael McCaul, called the 2016 election of interference "a provocative attack on our country, and we must not allow that this will happen again. " McCaul, a Republican who chairs the Homeland Security Committee of the House of Representatives, said he thought the country would be targeted again in the mid-term elections in November

"We must be prepared ". , a federal grand jury has indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers accused of hacking the Democratic campaign networks in 2016, then stolen and released tens of thousands of documents

The act of d & # 39; charge says that one of the intrusions came this summer. the software is used to check the voter registration information. The indictment refers to a fraudulent email that Russian agents sent to more than 100 client election manager customers to try to get more information.

"The accusations tell us that … we can no longer deny it in any form" According to Sam Woolley, cybersecurity expert of the Institute for the Future of Palo Alto (California)

the State election authorities must ensure that they have the strongest protections possible for their voting systems. [19659002"Incidentallyisnotthecase"hesaid"Mostoftheoperatinglawsonsecuremachinery"[19659002] Kim Wyman, Secretary of State in Washington, is expected to inform her peers this weekend of how her country is using its National Guard to test and secure cybersecurity.He said that it is important to tell electors that the military does not hold elections and does not have access to electoral data.

"We are perfectly aware of the optics of working with the National Guard," he said. Wyman Republican. laré in an interview. "The idea of ​​all this is to inspire confidence to voters and the public that the system is secure."

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The Associated Press writer Angela Charlton at Paris contributed to this report.