The Iowa Secretary of State’s Office is conducting a series of workshops through this week to help counties prepare for 2020 elections. Incident Response Plan seminars take county auditors and staff, IT administrators and emergency management coordinators through a variety of scenarios that could disrupt elections, including natural disasters, power…
Secretary of State Paul Pate’s office will provide $1 million to Iowa counties to assist them with cybersecurity resources ahead of the 2020 elections, Pate announced on Thursday. The investment comes as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Iowa’s Office of the Chief Information Officer are preparing to conduct…
Secretary of State Paul Pate’s office will provide $1 million to Iowa counties to assist them with cybersecurity resources ahead of the 2020 elections, Pate announced on Thursday. The investment comes as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Iowa’s Office of the Chief Information Officer are preparing to conduct…
Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate has hired Jeff Franklin as the chief cybersecurity officer, Pate announced on Thursday morning. Franklin has served as the State of Iowa’s Chief Information Security Officer for the past 10 years. In his new role, Franklin will lead efforts to protect Iowa’s elections in…
Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate was elected president of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) during the organization’s summer conference, after winning the NASS IDEAS Award for the election cybersecurity initiative, “Partnerships Pay Dividends: A Roadmap to Election Cybersecurity”. Secretary Pate will serve as the NASS President…
Lauren Johnson, a former campaign assistant during her time working in South Carolina, came back home to Iowa knowing she would be witnessing the forefront of the election cycle. Now working in the nonprofit sector, Johnson didn’t realize she would struggle to keep track of all caucus events once they…
Microsoft is releasing an open-source software development kit called ElectionGuard that will use encryption techniques to let voters know when their vote is counted ahead of the 2020 election cycle, reports Iowa Public Radio. ElectionGuard will allow officials and third parties to verify election results to make sure there was no…
Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s campaign is working with an unnamed hologram company to begin remotely campaigning as a 3-D hologram as early as June, Yang told the Carroll Daily Times Herald. Yang, a New York businessman known for advocating a universal income policy, said he would continue scheduling in-person…
An election cybersecurity initiative by the office of the Secretary of State is one of three finalists for the National Association of Secretaries of State’s 2019 IDEAS Award, Secretary of State Paul Pate announced this week. The initiative organized a collaboration between auditors and information technology staff of all 99…
Nearly 140 West Virginian citizens living abroad in 29 countries cast their ballots via blockchain on Tuesday, the largest pilot test of blockchain voting ever, reports the Washington Post. Yet, security experts still worry the technology contains vulnerabilities that will risk election integrity in the case of broader use. …