Cyber ​​soldiers battle hackers to protect voter integrity in New Mexico

On an early October afternoon, in a dull, beige office at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, two uniformed soldiers sit at desks, their eyes scanning computer monitors. Both are members of a team coordinated by the New Mexico Air National Guard Cyber ​​Unit that helps ensure election security in New Mexico. Right now they're engaged in what's called “active threat hunting” – looking for signs that someone, somewhere, might be trying to break into one of the state's election systems.

“We're looking for malicious activity,” said Master Sergeant Ray Torres, a security guard who works with the New Mexico Secretary of State's Office and the Department of Homeland Security to protect elections.

While it is impossible to hack into voting machines that are “air-gapped” — meaning they are never connected to the internet — voter rolls and other components of voting infrastructure are available online.

With this knowledge, foreign adversaries have attempted to interfere in American elections in recent years. And the frequent and false claims by Donald Trump and others in the Republican Party that the 2020 presidential election was stolen have become a rallying cry for his supporters. Election officials know it is imperative to preserve the integrity of the vote — and counteract widespread disinformation that reinforces lies about rigged election results.

“The military is impartial,” Torres said. “We can’t show any favoritism. We’re just making sure the election is fair.”

Torres describes the threats his team looks for, explaining that some hackers “just want to wreak havoc.” But some state actors may want to get a foothold on the network to see what they can find and then use that information to potentially announce the result of an election.” Many bots, he says, are automatically blocked by software. “What we're really looking for is a 'zero-day exploit' – something never seen before in the wild, a new vulnerability or a strategy to break into the system.”

New Mexico's online systems weren't always so secure. “We've had nation states snooping on our websites and our online systems,” said New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, whose office is responsible for running elections. As far as she knows, the first time this happened was in 2016. The country looking around? Russia.

“The actual election results were not affected, but that was a major concern,” she said during an interview in her office in Santa Fe. “Our cybersecurity posture has improved dramatically since then.”

The secretary's office has its own election security program, which Toulouse Oliver calls the “first line of defense.” The numerous activities include: conducting post-election audits to ensure that the vote count is 100 percent accurate; to require the use of paper ballots; and certification of voting machines. Her office also works closely with a number of partners, including the New Mexico Department of Information Technology, as well as federal agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the Department of Justice.

According to Toulouse Oliver, most real risks to election integrity come from politically motivated efforts to disenfranchise voters or spread disinformation that influences the way people vote. “It is almost impossible to tamper with a voting machine that is actively used in an election,” she says.

On Election Day, paper ballots are scanned into air-gapped voting machines. When polls close, the memory cards on these machines are uploaded to another air-gapped system before the results are entered into an internet-connected system – “so we preserve the records,” says Toulouse Oliver. In addition to counting votes, the machines store a digitally scanned image of each ballot in case something happens to the paper originals.

While the statewide rules follow best practices recommended by the U.S. Election Election Assistance Commission, Santa Fe County goes a step further. According to County Clerk Katharine E. Clark, officials use ballot tabulators with GPS trackers so they know if the tabulators were taken somewhere they shouldn't be.

“We have built redundancy into the system,” says Toulouse Oliver. “A lot of people think that this is what I think needs to happen to make elections more secure – in fact, all of this is already happening. “No, we’ve already thought of that!”

Left: New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver. Right: A patch received by Toulouse Oliver from the New Mexico Air National Guard, who is working with her office on election cybersecurity. Michael Benanav/Searchlight New Mexico

Disinformation and conspiracy theories

In 2020, New Mexico was one of seven states where Republicans formed slates of surrogate voters who believed Trump should have received all of their state's Electoral College votes. New Mexico is also home to prominent election deniers and conspiracy theorists.

The best known is probably former Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin, founder of the group Cowboys for Trump. In March 2022, he was convicted in federal court for his involvement in the January 6, 2021 insurrection in Washington, D.C. and sentenced to 14 days in prison. Griffin was later expelled from the county commission and barred from holding future office. A ruling by New Mexico's First District Court found that he had violated the Insurrection Clause of the 14th Amendment by, among other things, “joining and inciting the mob that attacked and … seized the Capitol grounds.” Just days ago, a federal appeals court rejected Griffin's attempt to overturn one of the charges on which he was convicted – trespassing.

Another prominent figure is David Clements, a former assistant professor at New Mexico State University who travels the country with his wife Erin, sharing his theories about election integrity and rigged voting machines while insisting that Trump won in 2020.

These claims are notoriously difficult to combat.

“Social media is very easy, very inexpensive and you can say pretty much whatever you want,” says Toulouse Oliver. Her office has tried to get ahead of some common disinformation topics by creating a website that addresses them — including answering the claims made in a widely debunked film called “2000 Mules.” (The film falsely alleges that in 2020, pro-Biden organizations paid people – so-called “mules” – to illegally deliver ballots to ballot boxes in crucial swing states, costing Trump the election.) Find another page You tips for identifying AI-generated deepfake photos and videos that can be used to show a candidate doing or saying something they never did or said.

Of all possible types of voter fraud, New Mexicans tend to be “most concerned about the possibility of a non-U.S. citizen voting,” according to a 2022 University of New Mexico report on election security and administration . More than a third of voters believe this happens at least some of the time, the report said.

“I understand why voters are worried about this, especially with elections coming up, but we have seen and the evidence has shown that it is extremely rare,” says Toulouse Oliver. A study by the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan institute, examined 42 precincts nationwide after the 2016 presidential election and found that “0.0001 percent” of votes cast represented “ineligible non-citizen votes.” In all but two of those jurisdictions, the number of suspected non-citizen voters was “zero,” according to election administrators.

“The reality is that undocumented immigrants don’t want to be on the government’s radar,” says Toulouse Oliver. Legal immigrants “do not want to register or vote because doing so may affect their ability to become citizens – not only will they be removed from the voter rolls, but they will also be deported.” I want voters to understand that the likelihood of that “This kind of activity has less impact on the outcome of an election than walking out the door and being struck by lightning.” It's a bright and sunny day outside.

High security, low voter turnout

In some ways, New Mexico's electoral system is one of the best in the country. It ranks first, according to MIT's 2022 Election Performance Index, which ranks states on the expediency and integrity of their elections. “I’m pretty proud of that!” says Toulouse Oliver, laughing. The state's biggest weakness is voter turnout, which at 46.7 percent is just below the state average of 47.5 percent. In 2020, the last presidential election, voter turnout was just over 61 percent — still several points below the national average for that year of nearly 68 percent.

Toulouse Oliver wants these numbers to be higher. “Yes, I’m a member of the Democratic Party, but I’m also a small Democrat,” she says. “I firmly believe that if more people come to the polls – with very different views, ideological backgrounds and personal backgrounds – that means we will elect more people who better represent us as the new Mexican people. I think that’s a good thing.”

She wants to reassure people that the state takes election integrity “extremely seriously” and is working directly with county officials, county managers and regional homeland security offices. “Even though it is a small county, we are working to make sure everything is safe at this level. I think people should be very confident that their election officials, both local and state, are making election security a top priority,” she says.

Back in Kirtland, the Air National Guard will remain focused until Election Day. “We have a great group of people who have been doing this for years,” Sgt. Torres said. “We have a lot of expertise and are improving every year.”

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