The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is criticizing a Tuesday NBC news report declaring that Russians penetrated the security of the Alaska Division of Elections and elections computers in six other U.S. states.
In a statement released late Tuesday, acting DHS press secretary Tyler Q. Houlton said NBC’s report was based upon preliminary documents that have been superceded by new information. Because of that, Houlton said, the report is wrong.
“We have said it before and will say it again: in no case is there any evidence that votes were changed or that Russian actors gained access to systems involved in vote tallying. Once again, reports using anonymous, outdated, and incomplete information are being misconstrued as fact,” Houlton said in a statement emailed to the Empire.
Tuesday’s report cited three unnamed intelligence officials and classified documents developed by the Obama administration, then concluded that the election systems of seven U.S. states had been “compromised” by Russian officials.
The article concluded that the states (in addition to Alaska) were Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Texas and Wisconsin. The article, again citing the unnamed officials, said some states were compromised worse than others, with activity ranging “from entry into state websites to penetration of actual voter registration databases.”
“We have no intelligence – new or old – that corroborates NBC’s reporting that state systems in seven states were compromised by Russian government actors,” Houlton said.
Josie Bahnke, director of the Alaska Division of Elections, said Tuesday afternoon that the state has no new information beyond what it learned in September 2017. In that month, state officials were told by Homeland Security that Russian agencies visited publicly accessible websites belonging to the Division of Elections about the time of the fall 2016 presidential election.
• Contact reporter James Brooks at jbrooks@juneauempire.com or call 523-2258.
