VIRGINIA, USA — Nearly four years after Russian intelligence scanned Virginia’s election infrastructure, looking for vulnerabilities to eventually exploit, election officials said the Super Tuesday primary state is no longer "in the wilderness" with intelligence sharing, and is better prepared to defend the vote against malicious actors.
"This will be the most secure primary Virginia has ever had, and Virginians should know we’ve shored up our state voting systems," state Elections Commissioner Christopher E. Piper said. "At this point, we’re more concerned with disinformation spreading on social media, rather than a hack interfering with the vote."
Russian hackers conducted a scan of Virginia’s election websites in the summer of 2016, a move the Department of Homeland Security eventually traced back to GRU, the Russian military spy agency.
The effort was first reported by WUSA9, and did not result in the breach of any sensitive voter information in the commonwealth.
Instead, officials described the effort as a "jiggling of the handle," of a locked front door, with Russian hackers unable to access Virginia’s online election infrastructure.
State authorities were unaware of the scan, until the FBI sent what is known as an urgent FLASH alert nationwide on Aug. 18, 2016.
In the intervening years, documents show Virginia outspent fellow top-tier Super Tuesday states in federal election security funding, including amounts spent by California, Texas and North Carolina.
According to electronic records, California, the biggest prize of the March 3 primary states, spent under $67,000 of its most recent $34.5 million federal election security grant.
Virginia spent more than $2 million of its funds awarded under the same grant, disbursed through the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission in the summer of 2018.
But the head of elections in Virginia stressed that the state’s spending on new security contracts, auditing, and emergency planning is only half the battle.
For the first time, Commissioner Piper made it clear that Virginia will now play an active role in identifying misleading social media posts – memes and messages with the potential to misinform voters.
Officials began flagging false posts online in 2019, with companies like Facebook removing the misinformation within 24 hours.
Below are excerpts of the latest conversation between WUSA9 reporter Mike Valerio and Commissioner Piper on the state of Virginia election security, with responses minimally edited for length and clarity.
Hacking vs. Disinformation Spreading
Valerio: Since 2016, when Russia entered the equation, Virginia’s Department of Elections now communicates frequently with DHS, the FBI, and Virginia State Police about election security. Tell me your thoughts on potential harm we see now from online disinformation?
Commissioner Piper: I think we’re prepared from an election administration standpoint. We’ve done all the hard work up front. The one thing that is out of our control is this disinformation and the misinformation you see on social media.
Commissioner Piper: In some ways, we’ve been able to work with the social media companies to address that. And we do communicate with them on a regular basis. But we can’t stop it before it happens.
Valerio: You mentioned there was a specific instance where Facebook helped you shut down disinformation rather quickly in the not-so-distant past.
Commissioner Piper: Just before the 2019 general election, a well-meaning individual posted that you needed a Real ID, in order to vote in Virginia. That’s obviously false, and we have a long list of identifications that you can use, it doesn’t have to be a Real ID. As soon as we saw that, it’d been shared 4,000 times. And we notified Facebook immediately. Facebook within 24 hours took the post down, and all 4,000 of those shares.
Commissioner Piper: And that’s going to continue. If we see information like that, that’s just plain wrong, sometimes it’s well-meaning individuals that just didn’t understand the whole process, we can get that worked out with the social media companies.
No More All-Electronic Voting Equipment, with Machines Never Connected to the Internet
Valerio: This will be Virginia’s first presidential primary in recent history where all-electronic equipment is tossed out.
Commissioner Piper: I think that the biggest thing you’ll notice, is that in 2017, the State Board of Elections decertified all electronic voting machines. So now, it’s 100 percent voter-verified paper ballots. That leaves an auditable trail that we can ensure, should anything wrong, we have the ballots there themselves that can be recounted if needed.
Commissioner Piper: On Election Day, no electronic poll books are connected to the Internet, whatsoever. No voting machines are connected to the internet. And so, there’s no concern from that perspective at all. The poll books are loaded in the days before the election, and then they’re not touched until on Election Day. So, we have confidence in how they work, and that they’re protected from hackers.
Early Caucus Chaos Not Expected in Virginia
Valerio: There’s a big difference between how Virginia does things and what we saw in Iowa, with the Democratic Party trying to transmit caucus results by app.
Commissioner Piper: An app in Virginia was never on the table, at all. Because the state runs the primary, the parties have no involvement in how it’s administered. When elections are run by the state government and trained elections officials, you see a successful primary like New Hampshire. And we expect to see a lot more of those successful primaries going through the rest of the election year.
Results Will Be Submitted Over the Phone
Valerio: So how are Virginia’s results on Tuesday actually submitted?
Commissioner Piper: The polling places contact the local registrar’s office. And the local registrar’s office is responsible for entering that into our election night reporting system.
Valerio: It’s an old-fashioned phone call, right?
Commissioner Piper: Old fashioned phone call, for the most part, localities do it in various ways. But no. There’s no app that’s being used to transmit that information.
Virginia’s Election Security Spending
Valerio: Virginia spent $2.2 million of its $9 million grant so far. Why not all of it, since we’re closing in on the general election?
Commissioner Piper: There was the initial work up, if you will, the buildup. And then we had to procure the software and the various things. So, you’ll start to see that number tick up in the next reporting cycle. We wanted to be deliberate.
Commissioner Piper: We wanted to make sure that we didn’t just throw money, good money after bad. We wanted to ensure that we were making the right investments in our future, because this problem isn’t going to go away. 2020, when it’s over, that doesn’t mean everybody is suddenly going to say, ‘oh well you know, we’re done.’
Commissioner Piper: It’s going to be a continuing problem. And so, we can’t guarantee that federal funding will be coming, so we invest the money wisely. And then, make sure that we still have some, so we can continue to face the threats as they evolve.