Republican Party in Santa Rosa calls for audit

The reason for this is “increasing data traffic on the websites,” according to VR Systems.

Members of the Santa Rosa County Republican Executive Committee cannot accept explanations from Florida Secretary of State or Ben Martin, COO of VR Systems, that a simple “glitch” caused election officials’ websites to crash across the state on Tuesday.

“This is a serious security issue that should be considered a breach of national security,” member Diane Warner said in an email to Tappie Villane, Santa Rosa County’s elections supervisor.

Nine members of the REC gathered Tuesday as Villane and her staff worked to certify the previous week's election results. Warner subsequently contacted the Pensacola News Journal to say the group had contested the certification and called on Villane to conduct a forensic audit of the Aug. 20 primary election results.

She said Villane agreed to ask the state for the requested audit.

However, Villane stated that she did not agree to ask the state for an audit, but merely agreed to forward the group of election observers' request to the state.

“They just asked me if I would forward their request. I forwarded exactly what they sent me,” she said. “If the state decides to do a forensic audit, so be it.”

On Tuesday, election supervisor websites crashed in several Florida counties after the company that runs the sites said they were under “extraordinary strain.”

“We believe that logging enabled as a security measure was the cause of our customers’ issues,” VR Systems, the Tallahassee-based election software company, told the Tallahassee Democrat.

Logging is the automatic recording of all activities on a website, for example who uses it and how, which pages are accessed and which information is downloaded.

“Late in the day, (logging) began to grow exponentially due to increased traffic on the websites,” the company told the Tallahassee newspaper. Even before the first polls closed at 7 p.m., many Floridians were forced to bypass their county election officials' websites and find results elsewhere.

More: County Commissioner Sam Parker of Santa Rosa, 1st District, defeated by Bobby Burkett

In Santa Rosa and Escambia counties, election results were posted on local election supervisor websites later in the evening and were available to the public while votes were being counted, as in any election. However, the exact number of precincts reporting their results was not announced on local websites until later in the evening.

In a press conference, Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd made it clear that there were no problems with the transmission of data or vote counting to the State Department, the Democrat said. He said it was a problem at the county level and there was “no indication at this time” that the technical difficulties were due to a cyberattack.

“This is not a Florida Department of State issue and has no impact on Floridaelectionwatch.gov,” Byrd said at the press conference. “All information and vote totals were reported to the Department of State in a timely manner.”

However, this did not stop the Santa Rosa County REC from constructing a worst-case scenario.

“As Americans, we have a right to secure and transparent elections. The August 20, 2024 'glitch' across the state of Florida proves that we now have a constitutional crisis and national security breach to resolve,” Warner said in her email to Villane. “The outrageously expensive electronic voting systems glitch appears to be an ongoing, recurring nightmare. Please use the blackout glitch as an opportunity to shine a light on truth and transparency and do the right thing.”

Warner told Villane that because of VR Systems' “mistakes,” the supervisor should include in her communications with the state a notice that the primary election certification had been challenged and demand a comprehensive forensic audit that should include the counting of votes from early voting, absentee ballots and in-person voting.

She also wanted Villane to demand a full explanation from the state regarding the VR system failure, including specific details of the failure, “actual technical evidence,” and the names of those responsible for the incident and the party or parties that fixed the problem.

In an updated statement released one day after the August 20 primary election, VR Systems said the outages affected all of its customers' websites hosted by them and they “take full responsibility for them.”

A news agency reported that 61 counties were affected.

VR Systems said the outages were not a sign of malicious activity such as hacker attacks and said the websites had been fully restored: “We have begun working with external technical experts to help us further analyze and optimize our system to ensure this does not happen again.”

In 2016, VR Systems was also the victim of cyberattacks from Russia aimed at influencing the U.S. presidential election, according to published reports and statements from local election officials, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.

Russian military hackers sent phishing emails posing as VR Systems employees to local government organizations, according to leaked National Security Agency documents. In phishing, hackers trick people into opening email attachments that look harmless but actually contain malware.

As reported in June 2017, the information captured in the attack – possibly including email contacts of VR Systems customers – was likely used to launch another hacking operation in the fall. Russian hackers reportedly sent a malicious email from an account called “[email protected]” to as many as 122 local government offices.

Mindy Perkins, CEO of VR Systems, said in a statement at the time that there was no indication that the intended victims had been compromised.

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Republican Party in Santa Rosa calls for audit

The reason for this is “increasing data traffic on the websites,” according to VR Systems.

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Republican Party in Santa Rosa calls for audit

The reason for this is “increasing data traffic on the websites,” according to VR Systems.

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