Oconee County Elections Security might not be as secure as you think.
The Director Kristie Burr gave a speech and it was very informative. While giving the speech someone from the audience asked about a recent Homeland Security audit which is performed on every county to ensure proper security is in place to protect the election. The sad news is Oconee County failed the audit.
She would not elaborate on what was failed due to security reasons she stated.
Public attendance
Mrs. Burr did let the audience know that anyone in the public can attend the counting of the ballots, but they stated that the people would have to look through a window due to security reasons.
Is the internet used during the election?
While the Director did state that the internet was not connected, someone from the audience kept asking until we found out that eventually yes the data is on a computer that is connected to the internet. The Director told everyone that the data from the machines is loaded on a special USB drive that is encrypted to secure the data to transfer to another computer. That computer is used then to transfer the data to SC Elections for the record. As suspected by the audience at a point in time there is an internet connection involved, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a secure internet connection.
Is there fraud?
One person that gave a speech elaborated on the fraud that does go on during election time.
Laura Downing is an accountant and deals with fraud as well, so she was able to give a very good presentation on the issues. She talked about her struggles to get information about the voting machines and no answer to the FOIA requests.
Points of weakness
As anyone that takes security training they make it a point to ensure that the person taken the training knows that often times it is a human that is a point of failure, either by not following policies and procedures for good security, or by social engineering to get you to do something that as pointed out doesn’t follow the proper security and procedures. Even the best security system is no good if the people in the organization doesn’t know how things work, and proper security practices, as well as following procedures.
