House Republicans demand DC address election security following voter database hack

House Republicans sent a letter to the District of Columbia Board of Elections on Thursday demanding the body address a breach of the voter database from October, alleging the board failed to notify registered voters for over two months.

In the letter, Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI), chairman of the House Administration Committee, and Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL), chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Elections, criticized the board of elections for failing to realize the full extent of the “troubling” breach until “two weeks later and waited 2.5 months to notify affected registrants.”

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“For Americans to have confidence in our elections, they must have reason to believe that voter databases and voter information are safe, secure, and not susceptible to malicious access or manipulation,” Steil and Lee said.

In October, the D.C. Board of Elections said it learned of a threat actor known as RansomVC, which claimed to have breached 600,000 lines of voter data, including those related to Washington. The board later said records of fewer than 4,000 voters were affected and that a breached server contained a copy of the board’s voter roll, per NBC 4 Washington. Voters were not notified of the breach until Dec. 22, the House committee said.

The voter roll consists of personal information such as “partial Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, dates of birth and contact information such as phone numbers and email addresses,” according to the board.

The Republicans said the hack raises the possibility of maligned actors replacing voter information with false names, removing voters from the roll, and improperly or falsely marking a ballot’s return status, among others.

“Finally, even if none of these worst-case scenarios is realized, this data breach and other recent breaches in Washington might very well create a bad perception among voters that elections in the District of Columbia are not secure, reducing both voters’ confidence in the election system and their likelihood of participation,” the House members wrote.

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House Republicans are asking the board to answer several questions, including what steps the board is taking to investigate the breach, how and when the board notified voters, and whether the board has confirmed no changes were made to voter information in its database.

“This breach of the Board’s records makes this leak at least the second time this year that D.C. government systems were breached by malicious actors. This is unacceptable,” Steil and Lee wrote.