Cybersecurity experts say President Trump’s voter fraud panel’s request for voter roll data could make the information more vulnerable to hacking or digital manipulation.
According to a report by Politico Saturday, digital security experts believe the voter roll request could offer a well of information valuable to hackers and cyber criminals.
“It is beyond stupid,” said Nicholas Weaver, a computer science professor at the University of California at Berkeley told Politico.{mosads}
“The bigger the purse, the more effort folks would spend to get at it,” said Joe Hall, another expert at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “And in this case, this is such a high-profile and not-so-competent tech operation that we’re likely to see the hacktivists and pranksters take shots at it.”
At least 29 states are pushing back or outright refusing to comply with the Trump administration’s request for voter registration data.
The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, formed by Trump to investigate his widely debunked claim that millions of illegal votes cost him the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election, sent letters this week to the 50 secretaries of state across the country requesting information about voters.
The letter, signed by commission vice chairman and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), asked for names, addresses, birth dates and party affiliations of registered voters in each state. It also sought felony convictions, military statuses, the last four digits of Social Security numbers and voting records dating back to 2006.