Collier County, Fla.'s Voting Machine Replacements Won't Necessarily Bolster Security

The replacements are being made as part of a routine maintenance plan to upgrade to the latest technology.

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • linkText
  • Email
(TNS) -- Collier County will replace many of its voting machines this year.

The equipment, which includes electronic voter identification systems, audio machines and touch screens that help many with disabilities vote, dates back to 2006.

The replacements won't necessarily bolster security.

They are being made as part of a routine maintenance plan to upgrade to the latest technology, said Trish Robertson, spokeswoman for the supervisor of elections office.

"We've had this equipment for quite some time," she said.

Collier County was one of at least eight Florida counties that received suspicious emails tied to what U.S. intelligence officials said was a Russian effort to disrupt the presidential campaign.

The emails weren't opened, and the county's voter registration data wasn't hacked.

Just before the election, the Florida Division of Elections, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security held a conference call with all 67 of the state’s election supervisors to discuss the possibility that their systems could be hacked and warn them that Russian hackers might try to disrupt the presidential election.

The county’s vote tabulation software is less vulnerable to hacking because it isn't connected to the internet. It is in a standalone, closed system that can only be accessed by six people — the supervisor of elections, her chief deputy and four computer technicians.

But the county’s voter registration data is networked.

No new security measures have been put in place, Robertson said.

"It's something that all elections offices are looking at and paying attention to," she said. "Especially as we get closer to the election, we'll continue looking at it. We do have pretty robust county email servers with strong security and spam filters."

©2017 the Naples Daily News (Naples, Fla.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • linkText
  • Email