Confirmed: Russians Attempted To Hack Voting Systems Of 21 States, List Revealed

In June 2017, The Department of Homeland Security revealed to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the voting registration systems of 21 states were targeted by Russian hackers, USA Today reported. Since then, election officials from each state have been asking whether or not their state were among the affected states. It wasn’t until today, nearly three months after the revelation, that the state officials were informed of their status.

The Associated Press has reached out to election officials in all 50 states and confirmed all affected states. The AP has reported that, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin make up the 21 states. Of those states, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin are considered to be the some of the most important battleground states in determining the outcome of the U.S. election.

Election department heads for many of the states targeted have expressed outrage in the fact that it has taken so long it be informed of the possible breach. “It is completely unacceptable that it has taken DHS over a year to inform our office of Russian scanning of our systems, despite our repeated requests for information,” said Alex Padilla, California Secretary of State in a public statement. She went on to say, “The practice of withholding critical information from elections officials is a detriment to the security of our elections and our democracy.”

It is important to remember that just because hackers attempted to gain access to state voting registration systems, it does not mean that the attempts were successful. In fact, out of the 21 states targeted, only one, Illinois, is believed to actually have a voting system breach. Again, even though there was a possible breach, there still isn’t any strong evidence it made any impact in the state’s election.

Now that the problem and the states impacted by it are known, how can this be prevented in the future? NPR, National Public Radio, has reported that since the election, elected officials from every state have created a 28 member coordinating council, in order to share security information and offer assistance. The members will include one from each state, plus three federal agency representatives. NPR also states that top election officials from all 25 states are in the process of obtaining security clearances, in order to prevent future delays of important secured election information.

[Featured Image by Gaston De Cardenas/Getty Images]