Situation Room: The case of a New Mexico candidate sentenced to 80 years for orchestrating targeted violence toward election officials serves as a warning against complacency.
Resource Library:Personal Security for Election Officials: Protecting Yourself and Your Family suggests actionable strategies that can make a difference immediately.
Planning Desk: Prepare a plan now to test the overall election process and verify that interfaces, equipment, and processes will meet expectations and ensure data integrity.
An Election Defeat Led to Targeted Shootings and Murder-for-Hire
Even in a period when we have experienced increased political violence in our country - assassinations, attempted assassinations, and efforts to violently reject election results - most of the anger directed at election officials has been limited to threats without escalating into physical attacks.
Last year’s sentencing of a disgruntled candidate, who responded to his 2022 loss in a New Mexico state legislative race with a series of shootings, stands as a stark reminder that threats sometimes do foretell real acts of violence.
Solomon Peña received 26% of the vote in his campaign against a sitting member of the state House of Representatives. He blamed election officials for his loss. In the weeks after, he visited two of the county commissioners who were later targeted. They would vote on whether to certify the election, and he urged them to reject it. The day of the first shooting, ... READ MORE HERE.
The Situation Room focuses on real security incidents and threats in the news relevant to election security. To review previous issues, see thenewsletter archive.
Personal Security for Election Officials: Protecting Yourself and Your Family
CSSE recommends physical changes like adding a security camera or modifying landscaping, seeking advice on home security from law enforcement, and having candid discussions with family, friends, and neighbors. It also provides options for self-defense that may give you confidence in volatile situations.
Security on the Commute
Tips include making your vehicle more anonymous and your route less predictable to outsiders, using a dashcam to record situations that develop, seeking an escort to and from the parking lot, and sharing your location with someone trusted.
Privacy, Cybersecurity, and Personal Information
This section urges you to consider ways that an antagonist could learn about you and your vulnerabilities, whether through social media posts, bumper stickers, or even toys or other items left in the yard.
Each section includes suggestions you can adopt now and heightened security options you should consider if threat levels rise, all of which can immediately strengthen your personal security profile.
The Resource Library section of the newsletter spotlights election security resources. All highlighted resources are available online in the Resource Library.
Week E-16: Testing the Entire Election Process
Part 1: Pre-election Testing of Software
Election administration relies on a complex web of technologies, systems, and processes that share and transfer data. Every point that creates, stores, or transfers election data introduces a security boundary. Validating and testing those boundaries before an election maintains data integrity, prevents misconfiguration, and ensures resilience.
Testing is a core security function as much as an administrative one. Over the next four editions, we’ll review testing of election technologies, systems, and processes throughout the course of the election.
Kennesaw State University
Pre-election Testing
Pre-election testing is one of the most effective ways election offices can reduce risk and confirm that their systems are secure, accurate, and ready for use.
Every election office across the country tests election equipment, yet pre-election testing involves more than just the logic and accuracy (L&A) of the voting system. It confirms that all election-related software, hardware, data transfers, operational workflows, and reports are configured correctly and function as intended prior to deployment. Both system-specific validation and end-to-end workflow should be tested to ensure that data created in one system can be accurately and securely received, processed, reported, and documented in the other related systems.
Systems that should be tested include:
Candidate Filing: candidate entry, withdrawal, office assignment, ballot order, and data export.
Voter Registration: voter status, precinct assignment, district coding, ballot style assignment, absentee or mail ballot status, and exports used by other systems.
Election Management: election setup, ballot creation and layout, equipment programming, tabulation and reporting configurations, audit logs, user access, and media creation.
Election Reporting: results upload, aggregation, display, public reporting, file formatting, and reconciliation with official tabulation reports.
Validate that each system is running the approved software version and is configured properly. This may include running a hash validation and comparing it against the certified or approved software’s hash value. Document any mismatch, and prohibit use of any component that cannot be validated until resolved.
Confirm that candidate, contest, precinct, district, ballot style, and voter registration data flow accurately between systems.
Verify that ballot files, election definition files, voter files, UOCAVA ballot packages, and results files can be created, transmitted, received, opened, and reconciled.
Ensure that the results reporting application accepts only authorized files, displays accurate test results, labels test data clearly, and does not expose unofficial or live data prematurely.
Test email and electronic file transmission procedures, including naming conventions, encryption or secure transfer requirements, access permissions, confirmation of receipt, and retention of sent and received records.
Apply to all identified redundancies and backups as documented in emergency preparedness protocol and Incident Response Plans.
A Testing Plan needs to:
Identify the office or staff lead responsible for coordinating the pre-election testing schedule.
Confirm which systems and software components require hash validation, who will perform the comparison, and how to resolve mismatches.
Determine whether testing will include vendor participation, public observation, or coordination with state or local election officials.
Approve standard test scripts, expected-result files, documentation templates, and issue-resolution procedures.
Establish deadlines for completing initial testing, correcting exceptions, retesting, and final certification for election use. Any jurisdictions facing the possibility of last-minute redistricting should account for this in their pre-testing timeline.
Although some technologies, systems, and processes may require election-specific databases or files to be created before testing can commence, election officials do not need to wait for the formal pre-election testing timeframe to begin preparing or conducting tests. Prepare equipment now to avoid being rushed once data is available for testing.
As election offices prepare for the busy months ahead, thorough testing remains one of the most effective security safeguards available. Each validated workflow, confirmed data transfer, and verified software component strengthens the integrity of the election and reduces the risk of disruption. By approaching testing as a core security function, jurisdictions reinforce trust in the electoral process and ensure they are ready for the demands of each election.
