The state is armed against the falsification of votes

While they were preparing for one of the most anticipated mid-term elections in years, with memories of Russia's interference in 2016, Connecticut election officials said that they were confident of being able to prepare safe and unaltered elections on Tuesday.

Connecticut is one of the leading countries in election security, said Susannah Goodman, director of the election security program of the non-partisan election monitoring organization, Common Cause.

"Connecticut has always had paper (ballots). They conducted these audits (post-election). The other thing is that Connecticut does not allow Internet voting, "Goodman said. "Thirty-two states allow certain subsets of voters to send ballots over the Internet. And it's a huge problem. "

Connecticut was one of the 21 targets of Russian cyber-attacks in the 2016 election. But its closed-loop system was able to thwart the attempt. Connecticut voting machines are not connected to the Internet, which reduces the fear of piracy. The paper ballots allow officials to check the election results.

"We do not anticipate any computer problems," said Ron Malloy, Democratic Registrar of Voters in Stamford and senior brother of Governor Dannel P. Malloy. "I do not see how that will happen."

On polling day, a team composed of officials of the secretary of the state office, the state police, the F.B.I. and the National Guard will monitor Connecticut's electoral systems, ready to act if necessary.

At their spring conference and training, local voters saw greater emphasis on strengthening electoral systems against hacking and phishing, said Linda Grace, the Republican voter registrar for Bridgeport. Registrars now use more secure passwords and two-factor authentication to access electoral systems.

Although all voter registration offices (there are two in each city) receive training, electoral practices vary slightly from one city to another, depending on local issues, including the size of communities and their budget.

Stuart W. Wells III, a Democratic registrar in Norwalk for the last 10 years, downloads the list of Norwalk's 53,000 constituents daily and examines it for possible unexplainable changes, as do representatives of the Norwalk. 39; State. The voters list is a part of the electoral system that is on the Internet servers.

"It's the canary in the kind of coal mine," said Wells. "If we saw many changes that we could not explain, we would tell the state immediately. We get a good early warning that way. "

Regional election observers

In Fairfield County, however, government councils have chosen to bypass an electoral bulwark – a regional election observer.

The West Connecticut Governing Council – which includes Greenwich, from East to Westport and north to New Milford – and the Connecticut Metro Government Board – the Bridgeport area – have both decided to not employ a regional monitor of elections in 2018. The other seven state COGs all hired monitors, according to the secretary of the state office.

In Connecticut, where elections are held by local officials in 169 cities, regional election observers ensure that pre-election preparations are satisfactory. help when problems arise on polling day; and help verify the election results. This fall, the secretary of the state office received a $ 5 million federal grant, part of which was allocated to regional election observers' compensation to enable them to provide additional cyber security training to local clerks. .

"The Secretary of State can not spend a lot of time on each (city)," said Galen Wells, Regional Electoral Observer for the Naugatuck Valley. "If you have people who have problems, you can spend a lot more time with them and get to know their problems."

Wells was a regional controller for the Western Connecticut COG in 2016 and 2017, when the position was fully funded by the state legislature. She was paid $ 11,000 a year, she said.

"Leaders have discussed this issue and have decided that municipalities that feel they need a regional election observer (in 2018) can contract as they please," said Francis Pickering, Executive Director of Western Connecticut COG. "We interviewed all the voter registration offices in the region, which is essentially the result of this survey."

The COG Bridgeport metro has never hired a regional election controller. The COG board did not want to hire a controller without a permanent source of funding from the state, fearing it would become an unfunded mandate, said Matt Fulda, COG Executive Director.

Perceptions of the vote

Mary Ann Doran, Republican Registrar of Electors in Danbury, said she was more concerned about fraudulent voting than about cybersecurity.

"You can pick up a mail in my address, go to the polling station and vote for me," Doran said. "I know that after talking to my election officers during the training, we ask them what constitutes an acceptable piece of identity, that is their main concern."

Many studies on electoral fraud have been conducted by universities and the media and have concluded that the incidence of electoral fraud is extremely low. News21, a national survey journalism project funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, found that 56 cases of non-citizens who voted between 2000 and 2011.

Nevertheless, discussions of electoral fraud and electoral security issues have contributed to a deterioration in public perception, said Secretary of State Denise Merrill, who wants to be re-elected.

"Every day, someone asks me if his ballot will be counted and is it safe?" Said Merrill, past president of the National Association of Secretaries of State and Secretary of State. current Chair of the Cyber ​​Security Committee. "I think in Connecticut, people feel a little better, but at the national level … it was the true goal of the Russians."