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.
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.