The Department of Homeland Security this weekend urged states take steps to make sure their election systems are secure from hackers. Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap says federal officials are overreacting.
“They are talking about security breaches when they don’t really understand the systems themselves. They sort of assume it’s the same type of data breach you see with one of the large data brokers,” he says.
Dunlap says Maine and many states use a paper-based system that can’t be hacked. He says the online part of the system is the centralized voter registration list, and it has state-of-the-art protection. Even if breached, Dunlap says that database has nothing to do with the vote tallying process, which is decentralized and paper-based.
