COLUMBUS — VR Systems, the Florida elections software company reportedly hacked by Russia, is not used in Ohio.
So the state was likely not vulnerable to the email phishing scheme that alleged hackers, masquerading as VR, used in trying to dupe elections officials into inadvertently providing access to their systems.
Matt McClellan, spokesman for Secretary of State Jon Husted, confirmed that products offered by VR are not among those certified by Ohio for use in county elections.
“We don’t certify vendors,” he said. “We certify the majority of their products for voter registration and election systems through the Ohio Board of Voting Machine Examiners. ... Our office for a long time has worked on cybersecurity, long before it became a story ahead of the 2016 election.”
A federal contractor from Georgia has been charged with leaking a classified National Security Agency document to The Intercept, an online news outlet that published a story detailing the suspected hack. The report raised concerns about software vendors and voting machines that are not connected to the Internet and are, therefore, less vulnerable to hacks.
RELATED: The Intercept story on election hacking
Dan Tokaji, law professor and voting expert at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, said he could not assess the risk attached to such a phishing attack, but said the potential damage if a phishing attack was to compromise election machine or voter registration software would be “enormous.”
“I’m not saying that either of these things happened, and I can’t in any kind of reliable way estimate the risk of their happening,” he said. “But there’s no doubt in my mind that the state and local election officials, as well as vendors, must look at this very carefully.”
State Rep. Kathleen Clyde (D., Kent), the sole Democrat running in 2018 to replace Mr. Husted, noted there are a numerous vendor points of contact within the election system.
“We need to make sure we have the protocol in place to ensure we’re working with local elections officials to be constantly aware of these problems and are updating our processes for ensuring the absolute integrity of our system,” she said.
She was critical of Mr. Husted’s decision last year to decline assistance from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security before the presidential election. The department had raised concerns about potential risk to states’ elections infrastructure, but Mr. Husted balked at the idea of federal intervention in state-run elections.
Ohio recently moved to online registration. Voters have been able to update their registration information online for several years.
State Rep. Dorothy Pelanda (R., Marysville), one of two Republican secretary of state candidates, said she understands that no elections system in states served by VR are believed to be compromised.
“Of course, voter fraud is on the minds of people, and if there is genuine belief of fraud, it can have a chilling effect on voting,” she said. “I will look carefully at the facts, but so far they have not detected any kind of hacking.”
Contact Jim Provance at: jprovance@theblade.com or 614-221-0496.
First Published June 7, 2017, 4:12 a.m.
