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Secretary of the State discusses vote security, fraud and hacking

There's a lot of talk about meddling in elections, hacking and voter fraud recently.  Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill is trying to put some concerns at ease ahead of tomorrow's municipal election. 

 

None of the technology used by residents to cast ballots is connected to the internet.  Merrill says the only new technology is the way information is transmitted to her office by Town Clerks and local Registrars of Voters, but it's still input by hand. 

 

With the spotlight on data hacks of Equifax, Yahoo and others, Merrill says a concern she's also hearing from residents is whether their registration information is secure.  All Secretaries of the State were asked by the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to turn over names, party affiliations, addresses, date of birth, the last four digits of Social Security numbers and voting histories back to 2006.  The Commission was formed to root out alleged voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election.  Merrill decided not to turn over the information saying there was no mention of how the COmmission would protect the data.

 

Voters' names, addresses, dates of birth, party affiliations and when and where people voted is publicly available under the state's Freedom of Information laws.

 

Merrill says Connecticut does a good job of protecting the information in the database.  There was a hacking attempt, but the firewall prevented any information from being transmitted.

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