INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -
A voting security advocacy group is trying to force a leader of a state
election officials association to release documents on whether she wrongly
asserted that U.S. election systems are safe from hacking.
The National
Election Defense Coalition filed a lawsuit Thursday against Indiana
Secretary of State Connie Lawson alleging she’s violated state law in
denying public record requests since September for her communications about
election security with the National Association of Secretaries of State.
Lawson was the bipartisan association’s 2017-18 president and is currently
co-chair of its cybersecurity committee.
The coalition
argues that Lawson’s public statements have downplayed the vulnerability of
election systems. It pointed to her testimony for a 2017 U.S. Senate
intelligence committee hearing on Russian interference in the 2016 election
during which she said it was “very important to underscore that voting
machines are not connected to the internet or networked in any way.”
Officials in at
least four states - Florida, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin - have
certified election equipment that includes wireless modems, according to the
coalition. Such vulnerabilities are among the election security issues that
the federal government and states have struggled with since the 2016
election, tangled by partisan fighting and the intricacies of state-run
election systems.
“We need to know
why NASS and Secretary Lawson have repeated misinformation about voting
system security that seems to originate from the voting system vendors,”
said Susan Greenhalgh, the coalition’s policy director.
Three little-known
U.S. companies control about 90 percent of the market for election
equipment, but have long faced criticism for poor security, antiquated
technology and insufficient transparency around their proprietary, black-box
voting systems.
Lawson’s office
declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The coalition’s
lawsuit says the multiple denials from Lawson’s office have included
assertions that communication records are exempt from disclosure because the
secretaries of state group is a private organization and some of the
material is covered by federal copyright law or protected by an exemption
for trade secrets. The coalition argues that the association’s status as a
private group is “completely irrelevant” because the documents are being
requested from Lawson’s office, which is a public agency covered by the
state public records law.
The National
Association of Secretaries of State said in a statement that Lawson helped
lead several efforts to ensure election security.
“Our country’s
highly-decentralized, low-connectivity voting process has many built-in
checks and balances to safeguard its structural integrity and is constantly
evolving,” the group said.
Lawson, a
Republican, was also a member of President Donald Trump’s short-lived
election fraud commission that he disbanded in early 2018 amid infighting
and refusals by numerous states to cooperate.
The nation’s
intelligence chiefs have warned that Russia remains interested in disrupting
U.S. elections after a multipronged effort to interfere during 2016.
That included
attempts to hack into the election systems of 21 states.