Florida Governor Says Russian Hackers Breached 2 Counties In 2016

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Russian hackers breached the systems of two county elections systems in Florida in 2016, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday at a news conference. DeSantis said no data were tampered with and vote tallies were not affected.

The intrusions, which had not ever been publicly confirmed, were first disclosed in special counsel Robert Mueller's report about Russian interference in the 2016 election last month.

"I recently met with the FBI concerning the election issue mentioned in the Mueller report," DeSantis said. "Two Florida counties experienced intrusion into the supervisor of election networks. There was no manipulation."

DeSantis said he could not disclose which counties' networks were compromised, but he said the voter data that the attackers gained access to was already public.

"Nothing that affected the vote count," DeSantis said.

One sentence in the Mueller report prompted DeSantis' meeting with the FBI: "We understand the FBI believes that this operation enabled [Russian military intelligence] to gain access to the network of at least one Florida county government" during the 2016 election.

The mention that Russian hackers had accessed Florida networks came as a surprise to many in the state.

"I haven't heard even a whisper" about such a breach, said Paul Lux, president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections in an interview with NPR last month.

To break into the Florida elections systems, the Russian hackers used a spear-phishing campaign, where they used email addresses designed to look like a voting system vendor to trick the election officials into giving them access to their networks.

A leaked document from the National Security Agency in 2017 identified the company as Florida-based VR Systems.

The campaign was detailed in an indictment filed last summer by Mueller's office:

In or around November 2016 and prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, KOVALEV and his co-conspirators used an email account designed to look like a Vendor 1 email address to send over 100 spearphishing emails to organizations and personnel involved in administering elections in numerous Florida counties. The spearphishing emails contained malware that the Conspirators embedded into Word documents bearing Vendor 1's logo.

Last year, former Florida Sen. Bill Nelson warned that Russia had "penetrated" Florida's voter registration systems, but election officials denied that vehemently at the time.

Then-Gov. Rick Scott, who defeated Nelson in the Senate race, decried Nelson's claims and said they "only serve to erode public trust in our elections at a critical time." </s> A federal judge ordered nearly three dozen counties in Florida to provide ballots in Spanish ahead of the 2020 election, calling the issue a “fundamental right” for the state’s voters.

U.S. District Judge Mark Walker expanded an earlier injunction on Friday, requiring 32 additional counties to provide the Spanish-language ballots by March 2020, the start of the state’s presidential primaries.

The decision arose from a lawsuit filed by the groups LatinoJustice, Demos and other voting rights organizations that said up to 30,000 Puerto Ricans living in Florida faced unlawful hardship casting a ballot because of language barriers.

“In today’s decision, the court recognized that Spanish-speaking voters are not second-class citizens and should not have to wait for their voting rights to be fully protected,” Stuart Naifeh, a senior counsel at Demos, said in a statement. “For democratic participation to have any meaning, voters must be able to exercise their right to vote in a language they understand.”

The Orlando Sentinel notes that most counties in Florida provide support for voters in Spanish, including phone assistance and language-specific sample ballots or registration materials, but the plaintiffs argued that wasn’t enough.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) last month ordered the state to begin expanding access to voting booths to Spanish speakers as the suit was making its way through the court system.

“It is critically important that Spanish-speaking Floridians are able to exercise their right to vote without any language barriers,” DeSantis said in a statement last month. “These fellow citizens should be able to fully participate in our democracy, which is why I am directing the Department of State to address voting accessibility issues for Florida’s Spanish-speaking community statewide.”

While Walker praised DeSantis’ move, the judge said it was premature to determine if the governor’s efforts would provide appropriate access in line with the Voting Rights Act and that an injunction was necessary to protect any election that happens before such rules go into effect. The judge issued an early injunction last year ahead of the 2018 election, but that ruling only mandated that sample ballots be printed for Spanish speakers.

“This case is about the fundamental right to cast an effective ballot,” Walker wrote. “Compliance with this Order is not optional. While the vast majority of supervisors of election are upstanding professionals who follow the law and court orders, do difficult but necessary work under tight timelines, and are often subjects of multiple bouts of litigation, there may be some who selectively interpret parts of this Court’s orders or otherwise avoid compliance. This Court will not hesitate to use every tool the law provides to enforce this Order.” </s> (Reuters) - Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams admitted defeat in her effort to become the first black female U.S. governor on Friday, but said she planned to sue the state over voting problems and “gross mismanagement” of the election.

Abrams’ announcement effectively hands victory to Republican Brian Kemp in a bitter race that has drawn national attention both for her historic campaign and for Kemp’s role as the state’s top election administrator.

Abrams accused Kemp of using his position as Georgia Secretary of State to interfere with the vote - an allegation he has strongly denied.

“To watch an elected official who claims to represent the people in this state baldly pin his hopes for election on the suppression of the people’s democratic right to vote has been truly appalling,” Abrams told supporters in Atlanta.

“So let’s be clear: This is not a speech of concession, because concession means to acknowledge an action as right, true or proper,” she said.

State officials were expected to certify Kemp as the winner as soon as Friday night.

“The election is over and hardworking Georgians are ready to move forward,” Kemp said on Twitter. “We can no longer dwell on the divisive politics of the past but must focus on Georgia’s bright and promising future.”

Kemp, 55, resigned his post as Secretary of State after the Nov. 6 election and did not oversee the final ballot review.

Abrams, 44, had considered a court challenge to force a runoff, which is allowed by state law if neither candidate gets a majority of the vote. Initial results showed Kemp just over that threshold.

Instead, she said she would sue the state for what she called “gross mismanagement of this election” and to protect future elections. She said she would start a new organization, Fair Fight Georgia, to advocate for voting rights.

Voters in Georgia reported long lines at polling places as aging technology was swamped by the volume of people seeking to cast ballots. Prior to election day, groups has sued to prevent Kemp from throwing out more than 50,000 voter-registration forms that had been put on hold because personal information did not exactly match state databases. The lawsuit alleged that the “exact match” law disproportionately affected black voters.

Abrams’s announcement comes as several other races across the country remain unresolved.

In neighboring Florida, election officials were slogging through a hand recount of ballots to determine who won a hard-fought U.S. Senate contest.

Outgoing Republican Governor Rick Scott held a narrow lead over incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson after an electronic recount was completed on Thursday. Officials have until noon on Sunday to tally any votes missed by electronic voting machines.

Scott’s campaign has called on Nelson to drop out, saying it was mathematically impossible to make up the difference of about 12,600 votes, 0.15 percent of the more than 8 million ballots cast. Nelson’s lawyer, Marc Elias, has said he expects Scott’s lead to ultimately disappear as the recount continues.

On Friday, a federal judge rejected one of the limited paths to carry Nelson’s chances forward. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee denied an appeal by Nelson’s supporters to allow mail-in ballots that arrived after the state deadline to be counted.

In another tight Florida contest, Republican Ron DeSantis appeared to secure the governor’s seat over Democrat Andrew Gillum after the electronic recount showed DeSantis with a 0.4 percentage point lead, outside the threshold to trigger a hand recount. The state is scheduled to certify results on Tuesday.

Scenes of thousands of people across the state reviewing ballots brought back memories of Florida’s 2000 presidential recount, which ended only after the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in, effectively handing the presidency to Republican George W. Bush.

The result of the Nelson-Scott race will not change the balance of power in the Senate, where Republicans extended their lead in the Nov. 6 midterm vote, while Democrats took a majority in the House of Representatives.

Along with the unresolved Florida senate race, Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi is headed to a Nov. 27 runoff against Democrat Mike Espy after neither candidate secured a majority of the vote in a four-way race.

About 10 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives remain up in the air. </s> TALLALHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — The Latest on the potential recounts in Florida's U.S. Senate and governor elections (all times local):

The deadline to submit unofficial vote tallies in Florida's election has passed.

County elections supervisors had until noon Saturday to submit results. Now the state must announce whether recounts are needed in the U.S. Senate and governor races.

As the deadline arrived, Republican former U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis led Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum by less than 0.5 percentage points in the governor's race, which would require a machine recount of ballots.

In the Senate race, Republican Gov. Rick Scott's lead over Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson was less than 0.25 percentage points, which would require a hand recount of ballots in which tabulation machines couldn't detect a vote. </s> The Mueller report confirmed at least one Florida elections office was compromised by Russia during the 2016 vote.

This Thursday the FBI will hold a classified briefing with members of the Florida congressional delegation to discuss the hacking.

Former Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho told the Florida Roundup why the FBI has not been transparent.

“The FBI actually lied to the 67 supervisors of elections and the secretary of state staff that was on that call,” said Sancho.

“The penetration had already taken place, but the FBI did not want to inform the Russians and so they didn’t inform us.”

According to Politico, Governor Ron DeSantis is also expected to meet with the FBI.

Last month DeSantis expressed frustration that Florida officials didn’t know more about the incident. </s> MIAMI — The race for Florida governor appears headed for a recount, as Democrat Andrew Gillum continues to gain on Republican Ron DeSantis during the tallying of the final uncounted ballots cast in the midterm elections.

Gillum, the outgoing mayor of Tallahassee, conceded the race Tuesday night before 11 p.m. after results appeared to show him too far behind his opponent to make up the difference. DeSantis, a former congressman, gave his victory speech shortly after.

But thousands of votes remained untallied. And over the next 36 hours, the margins gradually shrank.

As of 9 a.m., DeSantis’ lead was just 42,948 votes out of 8,189,305 ballots cast — equal to 0.52 percent of the vote. Concession speech or no, Florida law requires an automatic machine recount in any race where the margin of victory is within one-half of 1 percentage point.

By 2 p.m., Gillum gained on DeSantis by another 4,441 votes, and now trails by only 0.47 percent.

Thousands of ballots still remain uncounted, so it’s too soon to say whether a recount will indeed happen in the race for governor. Florida’s 67 elections supervisors must send their unofficial numbers to the state by 1 p.m. Saturday, and campaign volunteers were scrambled around the state Thursday as supervisors prepared to examine provisional ballots cast by voters with unresolved issues at their polling places.

Late Thursday morning, Gillum campaign spokeswoman Johanna Cervone said the campaign was prepared for a recount effort.

“It has become clear there are many more uncounted ballots than was originally reported,” she said in a statement. “Our campaign, along with our attorney Barry Richard, is monitoring the situation closely and is ready for any outcome, including a state-mandated recount.”

The race for Agriculture Commissioner and U.S. Senate also appear headed for recounts, although those races are closer and could force the state to conduct recounts by hand, which is required when the margins between two candidates are within a quarter of a percent.

Voters have until 5 p.m. to address any outstanding problems with their provisional ballots.

But all eyes were on Broward County, which according to information published by the Florida Division of Elections has yet to report all its early voting and absentee voting totals. Broward is a Democratic party stronghold. </s> On Saturday, the Florida secretary of state announced that the races for governor, senator, and agriculture commissioner are all officially headed for a recount. According to the Washington Post, Republican Rick Scott’s lead for Senate has shrunk to just over 12,000 votes, while gubernatorial candidate Republican Ron DeSantis is leading by about 33,000 votes. The Florida election has once again gained national attention as accusations of fraud and problems with ballots have brought the races to the forefront of the midterm elections.

In his race against Democrat Senator Bill Nelson, Governor Rick Scott leads by just 12,500 votes. Rick Scott’s campaign has accused Broward County election supervisor Brenda Snipes of election fraud after she was forced to admit that she had counted about a dozen rejected ballots.

“Three days after Election Day, the vote tally continues to change and Supervisor Snipes still refuses to explain where and how the new votes came to light,” the campaign said. “The public deserves a clear and direct answer.”

After vote counts were made public, Scott’s campaign called for Nelson to concede the election and spare the cost of a recount, but Nelson stayed the course. Meanwhile, Scott escalated tensions by claiming, without evidence, that “left-wing activists” were attempting to steal the election.

President Trump has joined in the accusations, spending the past few days tweeting about the midterm elections, calling into question the results.

“Law Enforcement is looking into another big corruption scandal having to do with Election Fraud in Broward and Palm Beach. Florida voted for Rick Scott!” he tweeted on Friday.

Trump suggested that the narrowing margin between Scott and Nelson is attributed to fraud.

“Rick Scott was up by 50,000+ votes on Election Day, now they “found” many votes and he is only up 15,000 votes. ‘The Broward Effect.’ How come they never find Republican votes?” he said.

The race for governor between Representative Ron DeSantis and Democrat Mayor Andrew Gillum has a wider gap, but is still within the margin for a recount. The president commented on the race, saying that Gillum had conceded the election, but was now “back in play.” “This is an embarrassment to our Country and to Democracy!” he wrote.

The Florida Department of State, which is run by individuals appointed by Scott, said that no evidence of criminal activity was found. After the news of the Florida recount was announced, Trump once again took to Twitter to call the process an attempt to “steal” the election. “Trying to STEAL two big elections in Florida! We are watching closely!” he said.

Andrew Weinstein, a representative for the Democratic Lawyers Council, countered Trump’s claims of fraud, saying that more Democratic votes have been counted in the past few days as the Broward County results come in because there are more Democrats in that county.

“Florida has never had a full statewide recount. It’s about to have three,” he said. “Buckle up.”

Florida has until Thursday to complete the recount. </s> Broward and Palm Beach County elections officials were still counting votes on Thursday morning, and questions continued about why more than 24,000 people voted for governor but not Senate in Broward.

The elections office counted 22,000 ballots Wednesday, continuing late into the night. In total, more than 695,700 Broward ballots were counted by 1 a.m. Thursday.

Fred Bellis, elections operations coordinator, said the office would continue to count ballots Thursday after breaking for a few hours overnight to give employees some rest.

With close margins in the U.S. Senate, agricultural commissioner, and governor races, large numbers of uncounted ballots in the Democratic heavy Broward could make a difference in whether or not those races lead to a recount.

Palm Beach County had also not finished counting mail-in vote results Thursday morning, according to the Florida Division of Election website. Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Under Florida law, a machine recount is conducted when the margin of victory is 0.5 percent or less. If the margin is 0.25 percent or less after the machine recount, a manual recount is conducted. The U.S. Senate and agriculture commissioner races are both within in a recount. The difference in the gubernatorial candidates Ron DeSantis and Andrew Gillum was .52 percent Thursday morning.

Both parties on Wednesday had lawyers at the supervisor’s voting equipment center in Lauderhill.

The Broward elections office plans to review provisional ballots at 5 p.m. Thursday and have first unofficial results by 1 p.m. Friday. Provisional ballots are given to voters whose eligibility can not be determined at the polls. g

Of the Broward ballots already counted, more than 24,000 people voted for a governor candidate but didn’t vote for a Senate candidate, according to county results Thursday morning.

More than 690,000 people voted for governor in Broward in Tuesday’s election, while more than 665,000 voters cast ballots for Senate, preliminary county election results show.

The difference was nearly even between the Republican and Democratic candidates.

Gillum received more than 10,200 votes than Nelson, while DeSantis also received more than 10,400 votes than Scott.

Some voters said that they don’t remember seeing the Senate race on their ballots or that they almost missed it.

For the midterms, Broward’s discrepancy among the number of votes wasn’t just in the Senate and governor races.

More people in Broward voted for the state’s commissioner of agriculture, chief financial officer and attorney general positions than they did for the Senate, according to the preliminary county results.

There is a caveat: The state data released Thursday did not include votes for write-in candidates for Senate. In the largest counties, that could affect the differences by as many as 2,000 total votes.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates. </s> Judge requires ballots in Spanish in more Florida counties

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — More Florida counties must provide election materials and ballots in Spanish, a federal judge has ruled.

An order Friday from U.S. District Judge Mark Walker expanded a temporary injunction that he had granted ahead of last fall's elections.

Under Walker's latest order, election supervisors in 32 more counties must provide ballots in Spanish by March 2020 when the presidential primary election is held. Fifteen counties already do so, and Walker's order would raise the total to almost four dozen of Florida's 67 counties.

"This case is about the fundamental right to cast a ballot," the judge wrote.

If a county holds an election before next March's primary election, elections supervisors must provide sample ballots in Spanish, according to the order.

The order also requires election supervisors to provide information in Spanish on their websites, recruit bilingual poll workers and have a bilingual hotline to assist Spanish-speaking voters during early voting.

The judge's order was in response to a lawsuit filed last year by a coalition of Latino civic groups as well as Puerto Ricans who had moved to Florida after Hurricane Maria in 2017 and said they didn't understand English well.

"I will not be able to vote effectively without access to Spanish-language elections materials," said one of the plaintiffs, Marta Valentina Rivera Madera, in a declaration filed in the case.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last month directed the Florida Department of State to start rule-making that would expand the availability of ballots and elections material in Spanish throughout the state for the 2020 election cycle and beyond.

More than 4 million of Florida's 20 million residents speak Spanish at home, according to U.S. Census figures from the 2017 American Community Survey.

"Florida has a significant Spanish-speaking population and our state is home to many Puerto Ricans who moved here after the devastation of Hurricane Maria," the Republican governor said last month. "These fellow citizens should be able to fully participate in our democracy."

The judge praised the state's efforts to update rules expanding access to Spanish-language election materials, but he said there was no way of knowing when they would be finished. An order was necessary to ensure compliance with the federal Voting Rights Act, he said.

"What is clear is that the rules are currently not in place and elections will be held between now and then," the judge wrote.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announces that Russian hackers accessed voter databases in two Florida counties prior to the 2016 presidential election. No data or vote tallies were affected.