Russians tried to hack election systems of 21 states in 2016, officials say

MADISON, Wis. — Russians attempted to hack elections systems in 21 states in the run-up to last year's presidential election, officials said Friday. 

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security notified states of the attempted breaches on Friday, said Michael Haas, director of the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The attempt in Wisconsin was unsuccessful, he said. 

Homeland Security officials said the effort was conducted by “Russian government cyber actors," according to Haas. He said he did not know which states other than Wisconsin were part of the hacking attempt.

According to the Associated Press, states that were targeted included some key political battlegrounds, such as Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

The AP contacted every state election office to determine which ones had been informed that their election systems had been targeted. The others confirming were Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas and Washington.

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Homeland Security officials first reported in June that election systems in 21 states had been targeted during a hearing before the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. At that hearing, Haas told the committee he had concluded Wisconsin was not one of the targeted states, at least in part because Homeland Security had not alerted him to any attempted breach. 

State officials are seeking more information about the incident and why they were not notified sooner, Haas said.

“This scanning had no impact on Wisconsin’s systems or the election,” Haas said in a statement. “Internet security provided by the state successfully protected our systems. Homeland Security specifically confirmed there was no breach or compromise of our data.”

Tom Evenson, a spokesman for Gov. Scott Walker, said the announcement "confirms what we already knew, which is Wisconsin held an honest and fair election with no interference."

The hacking attempt was on the state's voter registration system, not voting machines. Had hackers taken over the voter registration system, they could have suspended people's registrations, creating confusion and long lines at the polls.

They also could have gotten information about individual voters, such as addresses or birth dates. The system does not include full Social Security numbers for voters, though it does have the last four digits of those numbers for some voters.

Attempts by Russians to interfere with last year's election have caught the attention of federal prosecutors and congressional investigators. 

Cybersecurity experts raised alarms after the election that Wisconsin was vulnerable to attacks, prompting Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein to fund a statewide recount. The effort ultimately confirmed Donald Trump as the winner of the state's popular vote. State election officials also said no signs of hacked web systems or offline voting devices were found.

In March, the USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin reported on records showing alerts about hackers targeting state government systems in Wisconsin. Those alerts spiked near Wisconsin's April 2016 presidential primary and the November 2016 general election, the documents released under the state's open records law showed.

Cybersecurity experts called the timing of the spikes suspicious, in light of hackers targeting election systems in other states last year. But Wisconsin officials in March downplayed the alerts, saying that election systems weren't specifically targeted or compromised.

Steve Michels, a spokesman for Walker's Department of Administration, said both in March and on Friday that the number of attempted hacks on state systems last year was "typical."

In the run-up to last year's election, the state "partnered with the FBI, federal Department of Justice and Homeland Security to review processes, conduct assessments and evaluate response plans," he said by email. 

The disclosure to the states by Homeland Security comes as a special counsel probes whether there was any coordination during the 2016 presidential campaign between Russia and associates of Donald Trump.

Russia has denied hacking the election.

Trump won the election and calls the Russia story a hoax.

Contributing: The Associated Press