Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Supervisor Of Elections Says Duval Votes Not Affected By Russian Cyber Attack

VR Systems

Duval is one of the counties that use voter-information software made by Tallahassee-based VR Systems, the company Russia reportedly tried to hack before last year’s presidential election.

According to a leaked National Security Agency document, hackers are believed to have used the company’s client list to target local election offices by sending them phishing emails with malware attached.

Duval County Elections Supervisor Mike Hogan said he’s confident his voter-information machines weren’t affected.  But even if they had been, he said, votes would still have been counted.

“To me, the only thing it could have done was we’d have had a lot of voters going to try to vote, that should have been able to vote but the system was denying them the right," he said. "But again, in Florida, the voter demands to vote, we give them a provisional ballot.”

Hogan said VR Systems notified him Monday of the attempted cyber attack and as far as the company knows, none of its products had been compromised.

VR's EViD machines store voter information; they don’t mark or tabulate ballots. 

Counties in Illinois, North Carolina, Indiana, Virginia and California also have contracts with V-R Systems.

Cyd Hoskinson at choskinson@wjct.org, 904-358-6351 and on Twitter @cydwjctnews

Cyd Hoskinson began working at WJCT on Valentine’s Day 2011.