PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - Rhode Island officials are moving to secure the voting process ahead of elections this year.
Democratic Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea said Wednesday at the Statehouse that Rhode Island has taken several steps since 2016 to ensure the security of elections.
They include the adoption of a new audit system highly recommended by federal authorities, Gorbea said.
The state will also roll out automatic voter registration in the spring, and it has replaced its paper poll books with an electronic system that officials said will be more efficient. All staff in the state department will also be tested and trained on how to identify phishing emails, Gorbea said.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has notified 21 states that they were targeted by hacking efforts possibly connected to Russia in 2016. A leaked National Security Agency document from 2017 also said Russian military intelligence had attempted to hack into voter registration software used in eight states.
Gorbea said she received a classified briefing this year from the Department of Homeland Security on the Russians’ efforts. She reiterated Rhode Island was not one of the 21 states targeted.
“But that doesn’t mean we’re in the clear,” she said.
Gorbea and Judge Stephen Erickson, a member of the Board of Elections, said the state already has among the most secure elections systems nationwide because its uses paper ballots and has the new audit system.
“When you look at those two things, we can say we are proud of what we’ve done,” Erickson said.
The audits would provide a more statistically accurate validation that the paper ballots were counted correctly, according to John Marion, the executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island, a government reform advocacy organization. Marion worked with Gorbea’s office to introduce the legislation, which was passed in October.
The law called for fully implementing the systems in 2020, but the elections board is authorized to conduct the audits beginning this year.
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