“We know that phishing is how a significant
number of state and local government
networks become exploited,” Hale told scores of
secretaries of state gathered in the New Mexico
capital city. “Understanding your organization’s
susceptibility to phishing is one of the biggest
things you can do.”
Email phishing schemes haunted the electoral
landscape in 2016. Hillary Clinton’s 2016
campaign chairman, John Podesta, fell for
trick emails on his personal account, allowing
Russians to steal thousands of messages about
the inner workings of the campaign. Targeted
phishing emails also allowed Russians to
gain access to the Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee’s networks and eventually
exploited that to gain entry to the Democratic
National Committee.
In the run-up to the 2020 vote, Iowa Secretary of
State Paul Pate, a Republican, is calling phishing
the No. 1 concern when it comes to securing
election-related computer systems in his state.
Iowa’s 100 county political subdivisions make
the threat especially challenging. He said
his fear is that phishing emails may target
overlooked public employees who don’t have
adequate training.
“If they get into the courthouse, they can
then get into the county auditor, which is our
elections folks — and that’s not a good thing,”
Pate said.
Pate’s agency is fighting back with two-factor
identification requirements for anyone accessing
state voter systems, and mandatory annual
cyber-security training sessions.
Phishing threats lay bare the difficulties of
guarding election systems across large rural
expanses. New Mexico Democratic Secretary of
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