Conspiracy-promoting sheriffs claim vast election authority
The sheriff in Kansas' most populous county says he took it for granted that local elections ran smoothly — until former President Donald Trump lost there in 2020. Now he's assigned detectives to investigate what he claims is election fraud, even though there has been no evidence of any widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines in 2020. Calvin Hayden in Johnson County, which covers suburban Kansas City, isn't the only sheriff in the U.S. to try to carve out a bigger role for their office in investigating elections.
news.yahoo.comFederal program offers new cybersecurity tool for elections
Through the federal program, officials expect to have this deployed in at least nine additional states by November. Officials said the effort was just the latest in steps taken to shore up cybersecurity since the 2016 presidential election. But cybersecurity experts say the threat has hardly been dulled. David Levine with the Alliance for Securing Democracy told committee members that many local election offices lack the resources to boost cybersecurity defenses. The coronavirus has exacerbated the problem by forcing a number of states to divert election security funding to cover other unanticipated costs stemming from the pandemic, Levine said.