KEXP Presents Mind Over Matters; Sustainability Segment: Kirstin Mueller

this is diana when your host on the sustainability segment of mind over matters and katie x the seattle ninety point three of them on a mobile app and on the web at expedia know archie my guest this morning is kirstin mueller election security chair for the league of women voters of washington kristen mueller is here to evaluate the security of washington state elections and to make recommendations about how our election security can be improved welcome thank you happy to be here we begin by saying a few words about the league of women voters of washington yeah i'd be happy to do so the league of women voters is a not for profit and non partisan organization that encourages activity and informed participation in government for the league x and support are in opposition to the issues that we have studied and where one of the largest organizations both in the state and in the country dedicated to a campaign of making democracy work so you wear a couple of hats when hattie is water services so this is registering people to vote and eighteen in candidate forums that the other highly whereas advocacy

unit says things like electoral reforms the environment and safety just to name a few what this election security what is the league's definition so for taking that day thirty thousand foot approach to defining election security were wanting to make sure that every vote is counted and that every vote is counted as cast to go back a little bit stale how the league operates when we're steady an issue usually we put several years into studying both sides before arriving at a position and with election security and our position is that voting systems should be secure or accurate re cannibal audible in transparent we also have a position that it would or should have a voter verified paper ballot a record that is a representation that can be used for audits recounts and we also have a position that no aspect of the voting system should be connected to the internet so when the

league is talking about election security that's the foundation our operating from overall how secure are washington state elections to what extent can we rely on the accuracy of the vote totals reported by election officials so i wanted to have approached this round the perspective as well washington is doing ray but then also where we have room for improvement so a lot of reports that are coming out nationally and a similar message and that is that the best way to secure an election and is to use paper ballots and that way we have a record of all the votes but then also to perform a statistically based post election riots of the ballots and assist to check for any errors are possible hacking so if we take those two principles and apply them to washington washington is a vote by mail state so pretty much most voters are returning their ballots over male drop boxes in person which is great but

there is an exception to that and that is what the practice of email about return it's a common misperception that this is limited to voters who are overseas or service or military but in fact that's not the case is available to any voter in washington so that's definitely an area for concern i emailed our return and that's an area where we're not meeting the paper ballot criteria and then looking at post election on its allies trains than folks fear the word audit their eyes kind of glee is over they and they are you know elections this is actually really exciting and really important softer votes are counted there needs to be a way to check that the election outcome is correct that the tabulation machines to their job and that's where the audit comes in and so clearly in washington and the auditors are the action directors are performing een a couple different types of audits they're doing what are called logic inaccuracy tests and this is where they're basically checking meek women that it's counting accurately with the sprouts and then also during the actual election they

are doing what they call a random machine on it and this is where they're taking to make sure that during the actual counting process be a hand count that the machines are tabulated correctly so it's great washington's doing both of those that these audits are just a snapshot in time they're not looking at the entire election and so we have some exciting news ahead of us in washington and that in twenty nineteen are steve it's gonna have their capability of performing on a cold a risk limiting audits and these are described as the gold standard because for a random sample of balance it would give us either high statistical confidence that the outcome of the election is correct or ill crack the outcome if it was actually wrong and so this is definitely an area to keep a close eye on in the coming months and also an area of improvement for washington washington state compare with other states and the us in regard to election security that one report that does a great job of preparing the state's was put out by the center for american progress and it's

titled election security and all fifty states this report evaluates paper ballots post election on its reconciliation or parts a whole bunch of other elements of running an election so in this require washington state received a great and see celebrated states you now through they each year after green scale the seeds that performed better than washing tan have more robust post election nights the seats include new mexico rhode island colorado along with the others and again there is the issue of email about return in washington and that also affected her grade and when talking about you know about return no other state is as lenient as washington no other state allows all voters to utilize this ballot return the fed and in fact nineteen states don't allow for any emailed our return in the states that do allow for a limited to very specific circumstances the states that receive grades indian half on the reports include fourteen

states that either completely lacked a paper ballot for honesty or i'm part of this deed and unfortunately with the state's if there's no paper ballot there's nothing on it to the state have a lot of work to do we've been doing to this point what policies are currently in place to keep washington state elections secure washington has a number of policies in place to keep election secure the fact that washington is mostly paper based is a really important policy has been in place for quite a long time decades and the fact that we are performing equal in tax and logic and accuracy testing is really important there was a recent legislation passed that requires thirteen system vendors to report any breaches to the secretary of state whether the breach involves elections directly or urge boaters personal information in this law allows a secretary of state to use their discretion about whether to decertify that voting system and under in addition in washington has excellent excellent collection reconciliation reports cities are where account for

all the ballots why ballots were rejected how ballots are received in the these reports are really detail they have dozens of criteria and my knowledge no other state really comes close and so these are just a couple of ways that washington already has policies in place that helped maintain election security i'm diane hein in my guest is kristen moeller election security chair for the league of women voters of washington because the security of washington state elections and how election security can be improved and you attended the sustainability segment of mind over matter is almost empowered yet either ninety point three after my mobile app and on the way and that k x p don't know it what steps are currently being taken by government officials to make washington state elections more secure our state is taking action in quite a few ways the department of homeland security has offered states free risk vulnerability assessments as well a

cybersecurity resilience really is and washington has said that they will be participating in those the state is also going to be working with the air national guard to assess her owner abilities so it's leading the way is one of the states are taking advantage of those services recently the election assistance commission has released federal funds that states can use specifically for election security cyber security post election riots and washington will be receiving over a million dollars in this area from what i've learned the secretary of state's office means to use a large portion of these fans to set up permanent cyber security positions within their office necklaces counties with implementing best practices there's also an area where election officials in washington are participating in what's called them as i sat in that stands for multistate information sharing and so that's an aol for increased information sharing around cybersecurity prevention and

protection response and recovery as well as he ii sac which is more election specific threat intelligence so there are many ways that washington is taking on the challenge of cybersecurity in elections how likely a target is washington state for hacking of elections by outsiders you know i think that's a really difficult question to answer the fact that we have a lot of safeguards in place in mostly paper based and having a selection on its i think makes us less of a target than some other states which are entirely reliant upon voting machines that don't produce a paper record but then as far as some other areas go it's hard to really know what an outsider would want to attack in a washington elections now is are certain race or focused on and how would that race outcome benefit and there's a lot that goes into wayne that just a few words about the evidence for hacking of state election systems overall from what's been released quite a few states

had their systems scanned and so i've heard this described as somebody's knocking on the door and jingling they're done on to see if it unlocked and i believe they have said that around twenty one states have that happen with one state actually being in some way breached as far as actual vote totals being changed to my knowledge there's been no reports of that but there's also they know until it that's where as anybody really actually works so a lot of these machines haven't undergone you know a full cybersecurity rubio of their software to look and see if there was any malware on the machines so yes there's no evidence but have we really checked for the evidence they key threats to let insecurities and washington state in what ways are we most vulnerable so today even a little bit more about the concern with returning a ballot over email to start with email is not encrypted so that's why folks i always say never some important personal information such as credit card

information or social security numbers and so when i voted ballot gets attached tiny now there's a few ways that things can go wrong there could be malware and the first computer there could be malware in their email clients as the vote gets transmitted over the internet there could be what are called man in the middle a tax and that these are actually really scary because there'd be no way for the voter to know or for the election officials know if i'm a ballot was manipulated in transit there's also the additional is you know that attach bella files can carry malware and so in particular with the pdf file tape when an election official clicks on it now about attachment and its downloaded onto their computer that malware can then spread on to the network and so and county is i have learned to not isolate their collection computer network or they're downloading these ballots from other parts of their county network so in theory yeah downloaded

malware could spread to other parts of the county one of the pieces of advice that department of homeland security provides is that election officials should never click on links or downloads from and trusted email addresses and unfortunately with the mail ballot return the practice happens thousands of times each election to what extent do washingtonians vote by email how widespread is it actually so it depends on and which election year looking out for a fairly large elections take for example the november twenty sixteen election i believe it was over seventeen thousand voters return there about it via email attachment and as far as a brainy now which ones were in state versus overseas military i believe that's details on the reconciliation reports it's all broken down so if you're looking at it from the big picture of percentages i believe you know well over i wanna say ninety percent of voters in washington are burning be a paper ballot with a small percentage voting the email what are the

key reasons that someone would choose to vote by email well i think you know on the one hand he now offers a high level of accessibility for voting and so if you're in a situation where you know he waited to the last minute and you need a better balance and how your emails read they're a tiny computer you can send it out so i can see there is you know hugely accessible means of voting but then that also needs to be weighed with a security standpoint and so is that accessibility year really something that's acceptable when the security risk is so high is there some way to make the email voting more reliable because they're either overseas military may rely on e mail there's a few different ways to look at this back again two thousand and ten there was the federal move act which requires that all states provide overseas military service voters

with their ballot forty five days prior to an election and men in washington in particular we allow for those ballots to be counted if they are received up until the day before certification and so as long as they're signed or postmarked by election day and so for a lot of these folks backing good at fifty to sixty five the window are returning about it via mail so there is a pretty large in a window they're operate from another thing to consider too is that there was a study recently done by the military where most ballots mailed from major military bases around the world can be returned on average of two to four days and so when we're talking about the need for it now i think there are a lot of other acceptable ways ever dream about it quickly and the stage and you just underscore the rules for returning e mail ballots sherry snow in washington state a few are a military

service overseas voter and you signed up as such three or county auditor election director's office then you can return your ballot female of tough men with no other criteria if you are an in steve voter and you return your ballot every email you also have the additional criteria of needing to mail in your physical paper ballot in order for your vote to count so as elementary seen the requirement for the paper ballot for in state voters in that the paper ballot as never compared to the nobel in because their law requires to maintain voter privacy very anonymity they don't want them compared you can tell if what it was sending email is the same as what's on the paper the other is you know is that what the paper ballot in washington the lie is the first ballot that is received is the ballot that's counted and so free e mail ballot returns it's going to be the e mail ballot that's counted paper ballots serves no role to provide security it's not functioning as the actual so it's

your turn to the sustainability segment of mind over matter of some caveats the seattle many point three of them by mobile app and on the web at atx theda doherty i'm diane horn and my guest is kristen moeller election security chair for the league of women voters of washington our topic is the security of washington state elections and how election security can be improved in terms of security and email just how easy as it to have an email it's going to the election office so and there's a few different ways that it can happen and so let's talk about one way at the league of women voters demonstrated back in a meeting that we organized by the office of the secretary of state legislators aids where we showed a mandate that i believe it's called it pass and t p hack and so this is where after somebody seeing our clients now where it can be installed to change how that he now exits the client and

travels across the internet and so a malicious hacker or somebody can basically a route the email to go through their server which can then change a ballot before it heads along to the election official and so this is one of those tapes of attacks where the voter when he met there send email would see their intact but looking completely normal as they filled it out but in fact the ballot received by the election official like entirely different there are a lot of different shades of the new attacks that would require quite a lot of effort and time to pull off an america quite a few that are easier things like denial of service attacks where it would be hard for somebody to send in their email valid if they email address of election officials is being hit really hard really quite a number of different ways an attack can be mastered are there are additional threats to washington state election security besides email voting is to speak about it from many security concerns steam clean there is very

ability in cyber security practices county to county and i think that can be viewed as a security concern it's often stated that a secure system is only secure as its weakest link and i think the office of the secretary of state is in progress with taking a number of steps to address these concerns recently during an annual all election officials conference they spent an entire day at focusing on cybersecurity changes that can be implemented immediately by election officials and also the plane that's in the works to incorporate and how cybersecurity positions available to help county is to me not have the resources for in house it staffer cyber security professionals and this is really going to make a difference for implementing best practices to a wide as well as you know being consistent and it'll be a really important improvement there what are your recommendations for making washington state elections more secure what are the most

important steps to take ideally we should have a voter verified paper ballot on record for all voters and to speak to us a little bit more they're close elections all the time if we think back to two thousand and four are rossi gregoire this is an election that came down to somewhere around a hundred votes and during that election they had the paper everyday voted on papers so we're able to be competent in the ultimate outcome if we think about today where tens of thousands of votes or possibly been sent over email we might not have that confidence in a close race if you know a lot of these ballots are being exposed to the internet and so you know if at all possible if you have the option and choose to use a paper ballot it also advocate that people talk to their county auditors about the option to perform risk for many not ants which administered to be violated and twenty nineteen so this type of odd a can catch and correct incorrect election outcomes with other audits are not designed to deal

they're also designed to be cost effective and efficient and people can advocate that their county participate and if they're not participating why not what are the barriers and how can we help to problem solve those barriers this early neil this home states can spend millions and millions of dollars buying different tapes of voting equipment installing the best firewalls the net new monitoring systems and much of this is necessary in much a call that there's always going to be a vulnerability is no system can never be one hundred percent secure it's just not possible but the thing is is that's a sense that utilize paper ballots ii and risk limiting on its allow for election officials to not only catch errors hour hikes or any sort of malicious tampering and it also allows them to recover quickly so these two elements are absolutely necessary regardless of the other safeguards that we put in place in regard to

the e mail are there steps being taken to limit the use of e mail voting to my knowledge the secretary of state's office is currently talking about this and not aware of what action they're going to take and i know it is a topic that they are aware of and working to address helping listeners get involved if they are interested in election security so a way to recommend going to our web site builder levy debut a dot org and primary you can sign up for our newsletter you can also find our contact information if you want to reach out with specific questions this is a topic where highly passionate about and we welcome and others looking to get involved so how did you become involved in security issues with the league of women voters honestly i come from a background a curve not being an advocate of all i was not participating outside a voting and really didn't have an issue that i was passionate about it called that in the aftermath that then twenty sixteen election an end all of

the events that surrounded the recounts and wisconsin man and michigan and pennsylvania i began to realize there was a real problem that when election outcomes are basically not trusted we were incredibly inefficient and costly and pursuing recounts and right around that time there was an article it now in usa today put out a couple of statisticians that talked about how risk limiting on its could be a solution to giving people more confidence in our elections also being cost effective and efficient so after reading this i reached out to the league of women voters of washington as they already had in depth report exactly on that topic published back in two thousand and nine and so the league basically took me under their umbrella and they have been great in getting the word out and educating others and advocating in this area in the state legislature in addition to election security where else is only focusing its efforts this

past legislative session there were a whole handful of great bills that passed but there were a few that didn't pass that we're stopped working on to one of those is campaign finance reform and so with this bell we're hoping to show which people are or corporations are behind political spending right now in washington and political action committees can hide behind and my question is when you see a commercial on tv and it says paid for by a certain pack well this would change it so that the actual individuals or corporations would need to be shown as the payers and not another political action committee and other aereo were working on is the revolving door in the legislature and this is where crimea legislators can retire from the house or the senate and immediately become a paid lobbyist and come back and start latinos who maybe they were just you know the supervisor of the boss of previously so you want to close this revolving door and tighten up those rules we're

also working on alternative voting methods legislation and so this includes things like ring trace thirteen and soon enough thirteen other methods such as star voting and giving mr localities the option to incorporate those should they desire we're also interested in pursuing more public financing of elections and washing tan until enough of the model that seattle set what's the message you'd like to leave our listeners with elections irish absolutely in bed backbone of our democracy so get out there and vote this is especially true for young folks because it's generally thought that young folks we now are active in demonstrating in making their opinion and on social media but that doesn't translate into a mode and so a lot of the elected officials don't necessarily listen to the position of younger people young people do truly have a powerful voice for change if a vote and so also i would say get involved in the league we work on a lot of different issues if

you're frustrated at getting involved with the league can be very therapeutic will thanks so much for being here christine at pain you were just listening to kirsten mueller election security chair for the league of women voters of washington for more information check on the web and al debbie of the derby at a doubt orgy don't forget to return your ballot for the primary elections in washington state by tuesday august second the deadline is tuesday august senate and for the first time you don't even need a stamp sustainability is one interviews are available as podcasts along with katie x these music podcasts go to the pumpkin section of k x these website at kd xv died orgy i'm diane warren thanks for listening and he's made it into the sustainability segment again next week and listener powered ninety point three of them by mobile app and a k e x t dido it