The Wisconsin Elections Commission is moving ahead with plans to use a $7 million federal grant to update its security software, fill six new technology positions and train clerks throughout the state about best security practices during elections.
The commission's plans call for software upgrades that will allow the commission to monitor the elections system, which has come under scrutiny recently after news surfaced that Russia had meddled in the U.S. presidential election in 2016.
The state aid is part of $380 million that Congress approved in March under the Help America Vote Act, which in part will help improve election security.
Reid Magney, a public information officer for the Elections Commission, said it's not clear yet how all the money will be spent in Wisconsin, but the commission will seek advice from election officials and the public about other ideas to ensure security with the primary election less than a month away.
Approved by the Department of Administration in June, an estimated maximum of $2.4 million will be spent on six information technology positions with contracts through 2022.
Technical upgrades will make it harder for malicious or inadvertent activity the sabotage the system, Magney said. One of these upgrades is multi-factor authentication, which means clerks need to use more than a username and password to log into the system.
Oftentimes that comes in the form of a code that users have to punch in to log on, but Magney said the commission is exploring other options because not all clerks have cell phones.
Magney said the funds also will attempt to train about 3,000 election officials and their staff members who use the WisVote system, which is the software for election administration. Another effort will allow clerks to get advanced spam email protection, a service which is already available to commission staff.
Training will also be made available to elections clerks by commission members, and the hope is that those trained will relay the information to their own staff, Magney said. The elections commission staff members were trained through the Defending Digital Democracy project at Harvard Kennedy School of Government's Belfer Center in Boston.
Magney said some of this information will be regarding using secure passwords and spotting phishing emails.
Concerns over elections being compromised arose after Russians were found to have scanned Wisconsin's systems twice in 2016, Magney said. But he added that the state's firewalls are scanned 9 million times each year from people and systems around the world.
"Our systems are strong and protected," he said, likening these scans to a burglar driving around a neighborhood and seeing bars on windows or alarms activated in homes that they aren't able to access.
Magney said Wisconsin's systems were safeguarded before 2016, but noted these funds help the commission focus efforts even more on security where the system might need some help. For example, one of the challenges the commission faces is that some clerks in smaller municipalities don't have dedicated technology departments to support them.
"That means their software could be old, their antivirus protection could be out of date," he said. "We're looking for ways to support them within the constraints of our own small staff and budget."
Even still, Magney said Wisconsin's decentralized system means that if hackers do get access to one clerk's login information in a system of 1,853 municipalities across the state, the hackers would have access only to information about that municipality and no others.
"We have ways to detect malicious changes to the system and the ability to restore any unauthorized changes," he said.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 1:42 p.m. Thursday, July 19.