Election officers in Mississippi’s most populous county needed to scramble to finish required ballot employee coaching after an early September breach involving county computer systems.
In Hinds County, such coaching is often accomplished by early October earlier than a November normal election, based on Election Commissioner Shirley Varnado. As a substitute, workplace employees members labored proper as much as Thursday’s deadline to complete the coaching after Varnado mentioned they have been unable to entry their computer systems for about three weeks.
Mississippi has a normal election Tuesday with key races comparable to governor and secretary of state — the state’s high election official.
Hinds County is house to the capital metropolis of Jackson. The county has some 167,000 registered voters and is a key supply of Democratic votes. In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden received the county with 73% of the vote, whereas Republican Donald Trump acquired 57.5% statewide.
Federal authorities have been investigating after county computer systems have been compromised for a interval in early September, Hinds County Board Legal professional Tony Gaylor mentioned in an electronic mail Friday. Gaylor mentioned the county’s laptop community was “functioning once more” and declined extra remark, citing the continued investigation.
Messages searching for data from the county administrator weren’t returned.
The cyber incident induced a slight delay within the county’s potential to course of voter registration varieties, based on Circuit Clerk Zach Wallace, whose workplace handles this election course of. Inside a couple of days, staffers have been in a position to make use of laptops not affected by the breach to hook up with the state system for registering voters. Wallace mentioned all functions have been processed earlier than the Oct. 10 deadline.
Varnado mentioned the county was “on observe” for Tuesday’s election and no different points have been anticipated.
The county encountered one other hiccup on Oct. 26 when the secretary of state’s web site was briefly inaccessible. Throughout that point, based on Varnado, election employees have been unable to confirm voter registration data for ballot staff, who’re required by legislation to be registered to vote within the county the place they work. Varnado mentioned they’ve since verified this data.
Points with the state’s community have been resolved and entry to the statewide election administration system was restored, based on state election officers.
