“If a local election system is hacked, you should notify the state system, and you probably should be notifying all state systems to let them know this breach was made so we can all take action to prevent it from impacting us,” Condos said.
An elections commission set up by President Donald Trump has garnered opposition from states such as Vermont, but the Democrat founder of a national, nonpartisan elections watchdog group says voter fraud — especially regarding the use of absentee ballots — is a serious problem that needs to be investigated.
Controversial comments Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos made about a voter fraud lawsuit in the Northeast Kingdom aren’t sitting well with one of the attorneys in the case.
Among the election vulnerabilities discussed at Tuesday’s briefing were Vermont’s AccuVote-OS vote tabulators. The ballot-counting optical scanners are used in all New England states, including most towns in Vermont.
Vote tabulation machines can be hacked to switch votes without officials knowing it, but one town clerk in Vermont says she’s never heard of the vulnerability and received no guidance from the Secretary of State’s office for how to spot it.
Vermont’s secretary of state says the election system is secure after hackers breached databases in Arizona and Illinois, but the ballot-counting machine at the center of the state’s voting process offers little reason for confidence.