Daily Beast: ‘Absurd’: As 2024 Looms, Counties Won’t Update Voting Tech

12.10.2023 / By Kelly Weill
Daily Beast: ‘Absurd’: As 2024 Looms, Counties Won’t Update Voting Tech

Emma Steiner, Information Accountability Project manager at the watchdog group Common Cause, said the Albert plays a role in a broader far-right conspiracy theory about “the role of connection to the internet at polling places.” “It’s all part of this broader narrative that election workers are conspiring against voters, and that voting machines cannot be trusted,” Steiner noted. In actuality, the sensors are passive devices that listen for known intrusions on a county’s internet network, said Susannah Goodman, director of election security at Common Cause. “Elections weren’t declared critical infrastructure until 2017. To us, Albert sensors were a step in the right direction. They won’t stop an attack from happening, but they’ll tell you that bad actors are circling,” Goodman said, likening the sensor to an alarm system. “I thought it was too passive when I first heard about it.” While watchdogs like Goodman describe the Albert as a useful tool for monitoring and sharing threats, conspiracy theories caught the ear of Republicans in Ferry County, where the GOP chair authored a memo casting suspicion on the devices, the CIS, and a CIS co-founder’s work for Democratic presidential administrations.

Emma Steiner, Information Accountability Project manager at the watchdog group Common Cause, said the Albert plays a role in a broader far-right conspiracy theory about “the role of connection to the internet at polling places.”

“It’s all part of this broader narrative that election workers are conspiring against voters, and that voting machines cannot be trusted,” Steiner noted.

In actuality, the sensors are passive devices that listen for known intrusions on a county’s internet network, said Susannah Goodman, director of election security at Common Cause.

“Elections weren’t declared critical infrastructure until 2017. To us, Albert sensors were a step in the right direction. They won’t stop an attack from happening, but they’ll tell you that bad actors are circling,” Goodman said, likening the sensor to an alarm system. “I thought it was too passive when I first heard about it.”

While watchdogs like Goodman describe the Albert as a useful tool for monitoring and sharing threats, conspiracy theories caught the ear of Republicans in Ferry County, where the GOP chair authored a memo casting suspicion on the devices, the CIS, and a CIS co-founder’s work for Democratic presidential administrations.

 

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