Are Kansas elections secure? Audit exposes weaknesses in system

TOPEKA (KSNT)- State auditors released the final part of an election security audit in Kansas last week, exposing weaknesses in county practices.

"We're simply reviewing whether these counties had controls in place that would support election security...," said Andy Brienzo, Principal Auditor for Kansas Legislative Division of Post Audit.

The audit was requested by legislators. Brienzo presented findings to the state's Legislative Post Audit committee on Thursday.

The item in question was whether Kansas had adequate policies and practices that ensure the accuracy and security of devices used to calculate votes.

Auditors reviewed 15 of the state's 105 counties, which were selected based on location, the number of voters and the types of voting machines used.

Auditors reviewed whether 13 counties had policies and practices that aligned with 55 best practices and state laws during the 2022 primary or general elections. According to their brief, they reviewed Chase County and Ford County’s policies but couldn’t verify their practices because they sealed most of their 2022 election documentation.

"What we kind of expected going into this is that counties would have comprehensive, unified, regularly updated policy and procedure manuals that captured what the county election officer expected in terms of security controls that should be in place.... and we found that none of the counties we reviewed had that," Brienzo said.

CAVEATS

One of the caveats noted is that their conclusions are based on either the documents counties provided or our own observations. They said in some cases, county election officials told them they had controls in place during the 2022 elections that aligned with best practices but couldn’t provide documents or show us during our visit.

Auditors noted that some counties may have indeed followed best practices in 2022 but weren’t counted as doing so because the Post Audit team couldn’t verify this. They don’t know how common this might have been.

The scope of the audit was also limited.

"We didn’t evaluate whether counties’ security controls worked as intended or otherwise how they might have affected the 2022 elections. For example, we reviewed whether counties kept lists of the people who were given keys to secure storage facilities. But we didn’t determine whether these lists were limited to only the appropriate staff. As such, we can conclude on whether the counties have controls to track who has access but not whether they’re appropriately limiting this access.

We didn’t evaluate whether the 2022 elections in the counties we reviewed were correctly tabulated or accurately reflected the will of the voters in those counties. Such determinations were outside the approved audit scope.

Our audit scope focused on the 2022 elections. We talked to county officials about what 2020 election documentation might also be available. But we couldn’t review 2020 documentation because county election officials had sealed or destroyed it by the time we began our audit work, in alignment with state and federal law."

Kansas Legislative Division of Post Audit

RESULTS

Auditors concluded that Kansas counties have many practices for ensuring the accuracy and security of elections, but they’re also missing or have weak practices in several important areas. They said that means security isn’t as good as it could or should be.

In their brief, auditors stated that no county in the sample had adequate practices for all the best practices and statutes we reviewed, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the elections aren’t secure.

They said that following federal guidance on best practices is a "good goal to strive for," but it's not realistic to expect counties to perfectly achieve them all. That takes money and resources that some counties, especially smaller ones, may not have.

"I would say, yes, at every level we need more but those are hard decisions they have to make locally," said Bryan Caskey, State Election Director for the Kansas Secretary of State's Office.

Caskey addressed concerns over findings in the audit.

Auditors said the issues they identified could be tied to insufficient guidance and oversight at the state and county level.

Caskey said the Secretary of State's office plans to look at additional rules and regulations ahead of 2024 to increase the safety of the state's elections.

"Our Office has continually and will, even more so, provide white papers and examples of best practices that we receive from federal agencies, but there's not a single list that everyone agrees... 'if you do this, you're going to be absolutely secure,'" Caskey said.

For a full breakdown of the election security audit, click here.