The University of Maryland shut down its voter registration system based on a breech of their student ID system. From The Diamondback: University officials shut down online voter registration system following data breach <read>
[Student affairs vice-president] Zacker said online voter registration caused a significant increase in registered students from the 2008 election, when a total of 2,500 students registered to vote.University officials said they decided to shut down the system because it posed a risk to students’ information. The online registration system functioned by using the electronic signature and social security number saved in the database for the student ID cards, which were compromised in the data breach.
“Following the ID card system breach, the existing infrastructure was determined to be vulnerable and was subsequently shut down,” Chief Information Officer Eric Denna wrote in an email. “The voter registration system cannot work without accessing the ID card system.”…
“They said at this time, ‘No,’ just because security for students is the number one thing, obviously, just making sure their information is secure, so they turned it down,” [Student Government Association President] Ronk said.
Of course, the University has the resources to likely get the system back up if they choose to in the near future. Actually its not quite the end of the world, since students can still register to vote long before the November election. Hopefully, something similar will never happen to the Connecticut online voter registration system, once again, not the end of the world.
Yet, online voting would be another matter, there is not a lot of leeway if online voting were breached, knocked down, risked other State systems, or subject to a denial of service attack shortly before an election…especially if it was designed to help those in the Military or overseas vote.
But that is Maryland, who would question Connecticut’s ability to protect our own systems?
