Russia Reportedly Compromised Seven States’ Voter Systems Pre-Dating 2016 Election

Increasingly, it would appear that Russian meddling in the American electoral system pre-dates the 2016 election. According to multiple U.S. officials, state websites or voter registration systems in seven states were infiltrated by Russian-backed spies before the presidential race. As NBC News notes, the intelligence had been requested by President Obama in the last weeks in office.

As of January 2017, Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Texas, and Wisconsin fell victim to the cyber breach. However, it appears that none of these states were explicitly notified by U.S intelligence. More specifically, only some of the states were told that foreign entities were trying to infiltrate their systems, but none of them were told that Russia was the foreign entity in question. (WHY THO!?) Anyway, officials say some states were affected more egregiously than others. Mind you, all the federal and state officials who talked to NBC maintain that no voters were deleted from the rolls and no votes were changed.

With the midterm elections just around the corner (eight months and counting), there’s warranted concern about the security American voting systems. As California’s secretary of state, Alex Padilla, notes, "We have an extreme sense of urgency on insuring security of the 2018 elections, because you don't get a chance to do it over.”

Mind you, Padilla is one of those state officials who maintains that there is no evidence that California’s voting system was the victim of a successful attack. It’s worth noting that six of the seven states involved in the breach still deny that their systems were breached, as per their own investigations.