“I voted!” The stickers sit on top of the ballet boxes. | Mark Piscotti / Getty Images
TALLAHASI – A new book by Pte journalist Bob Woodward argues that Russian hackers successfully entered St. Lucy County’s voter files in 2016, a claim the county’s election officials denied earlier in an interview with Politico.
The identities of the two counties accessed by Russians during the last presidential election have remained a mystery, as Special Adviser Robert Mueller revealed in 2019 that Russian hackers had entered the voting registration system in a war-torn state.
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The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security briefed Gov. Ron Descentis and a Florida congressional delegation about the Russian attack in May 2019 and revealed that hackers had accessed files in two counties. No vote was affected, but federal officials said the names of both counties should be kept secret.
Politico identified Washington County in Pennhudley, Florida last year and Washington County as one of two counties.
A high-ranking official privately identified St. Lucy as the second county. But St. Lucy County Supervisor of the election Gertrude Walker and her systems administrator, John Spraddal, told Politico in December 2019 that their system had not been infiltrated.
“I will be the first to know about it. I am an IT person. Spreadlin said in an interview at a conference of state election supervisors held at the Central Florida Golf Resort.
Spraddlin said federal officials did not provide any information to the county to suggest that its systems were compromised during the 2001 election.
“Nothing happened in 2016,” Sperlin told Dal.
St. Lucien – like other counties – received a warning about email phishing designed to be copied by a voter registration system vendor.
“We only knew about the whole thing with those phishing emails,” Spralin told Dale. He said in 2019 that any talk of Russia infiltrating the voter registration system in St. Lucy would be “news for me.”
Walker was sitting next to Spreadlin as he answered questions about the Russians.
Vaker Kar, a Democrat, could not immediately be reached for comment late Thursday night.
State officials received the news with shock.
“This is very, very important to me, especially in this controversial election season, especially in St. Lucy County,” said state Sen. Gail Herrell, who represents the majority of St. Lucy County. “I will definitely reach out to Gertrude Waker to hear directly from him about what he has done to make sure the county election infrastructure is safe.”
CNN reports on an earlier copy of Woodward’s book, saying it identified St. Lucy and Washington counties because Russia had successfully violated two Florida jurisdictions.
Washington Washington County, with about 25,000 inhabitants, is in the middle of the pageant. Trump polled more than 11,000 votes in the county in 2016, with 77 percent of the vote.
Trump won St. Lucy in 2016, less than 50 percent of the nearly 141,000 votes cast. Former President Barack Obama won the county four years ago.
Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) Said the details in Woodward’s book show why local and state officials need to be notified when the electoral system is violated.
“These reports show how much darkness our voters have been kept in the dark by our government regarding election interference and how this confusion helps to destabilize the trust in our democracy,” Murphy said in a written statement. “We will not fight foreign interference if voters are not aware of potential intrusions and cannot take steps to verify the integrity of their voting information.”
Republican Brian Mastst, a Republican, reiterates his call for disclosure of information and asks Walker to report any internal changes he has made.
“At least a year ago, I and most members of the Florida delegation demanded information on this.” “It’s not happening yet so I can’t talk about what I know from the classified briefings.”
Matt Dixon and Mark Capto contributed to this report.
