Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Florida fury after fresh claim of a 2016 cyberattack

Susan Bucher, Palm Beach County voting

The supervisor of elections in Palm Beach County caused a stir this week when she said the agency's computer system had been hacked during the 2016 election. But Susan Bucher (above), who headed the office then, said that was not true.

Saul Martinez/Getty Images

Just a few weeks before the Florida presidential primary, the elections supervisor for the state's third biggest county has dropped an election security bombshell.

Wendy Sartory Link says she was told the Palm Beach County elections systems were hacked during the 2016 presidential election but the attack was never reported to state or federal authorities.

The claim immediately became embroiled in controversy, however, because the person in charge of the office at the time, Susan Bucher, denied the attack occurred and the agency's former head of information technology won't comment because he is facing unrelated criminal charges.

The contradictory stories have left other political leaders in the state perplexed.


Florida is the biggest state in the country where the presidential contest could go either way in November, and the 219 delegates that will be distributed after the March 17 primary are the fourth-biggest prize of the Democratic nomination contest. And it has already been identified as one of the few places where Russian operatives are definitively known to have hacked the last presidential contests — infiltrating the computers at election offices in two counties.

But news of those hacks was not revealed until last year when it was first mentioned in the report by special counsel Robert Mueller. State officials were unaware. After meeting with the FBI, GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis revealed that two county offices were the subject of the attacks but he declined to name the counties at the request of federal officials. No votes or voter registrations were affected by the intrusions, officials have said.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

This latest revelation came out in an equally unusual way when Link mentioned it during an editorial board meeting on Wednesday with The Palm Beach Post.

Link, who was appointed in January 2019, said she was told of the attack by the No. 2 official in her office's IT department, Ed Sacerio. Jeff Darter, who was the IT director at the time, was fired after his arrest in November for child pornography possession.

The FBI was called in to investigate the attack but that report is not complete, Link said.

Several officials, including Democratic Rep. Ted Deutch, whose congressional district takes in part of the country, worried that the revelation would raise doubts about the upcoming elections.

Read More

"Vote Here" sign
Grace Cary/Getty Images

The path forward for electoral reform

The National Association of Nonpartisan Reformers hosted its post-election gathering Dec. 2-4 in San Diego. More than 120 leaders from across the country convened to reflect on the November elections, where reform campaigns achieved mixed results with multiple state losses, and to chart a path forward for nonpartisan electoral reforms. As the Bridge Alliance Education Fund is a founding member of NANR and I currently serve on the board, I attended the gathering in hopes of getting some insight on how we can best serve the collective needs of the electoral reform community in the coming year.

Keep ReadingShow less
Peopel waiting in line near a sign that reads "Vote Here: Polling Place"

People wait to vote in the 2024 election at city hall in Anchorage, Alaska.

Hasan Akbas/Anadolu via Getty Images

How Alaska is making government work again

At the end of a bitter and closely divided election season, there’s a genuine bright spot for democracy from our 49th state: Alaskans decided to keep the state’s system of open primaries and ranked choice voting because it is working.

This is good news not only for Alaska, but for all of us ready for a government that works together to get things done for voters.

Keep ReadingShow less
people voting
Getty Images

How to reform the political system to fight polarization and extremism

On Dec. 19, at 6 p.m., Elections Reform Now will present a webinar on “How to Reform the Political System to Combat Polarization and Extremism.”

In 2021, a group of the leading academics in the United States formed a task force to study the polarization of the American electorate and arrive at solutions to the dysfunction of our electoral system. They have now written a book, "Electoral Reform in the United States: Proposals for Combating Polarization and Extremism," published just this month.

Keep ReadingShow less
a hand holding a red button that says i vote
Parker Johnson/Unsplash

Yes, elections have consequences – primary elections to be specific

Can you imagine a Republican winning in an electoral district in which Democrats make up 41 percent of the registered electorate? Seems farfetched in much of the country. As farfetched as a Democrat winning in a R+10 district.

It might be in most places in the U.S. – but not in California.

Republican Rep. David Valadao won re-election in California's 22nd congressional district, where registered Republicans make up just shy of 28 percent of the voting population. But how did he do it?

Keep ReadingShow less