DALLAS (AP) – The top elections official for Dallas County said she was wrong when claiming earlier this year that Russian hackers had attempted to access county voter registration rolls prior to the 2016 presidential election.
County elections administrator Toni Pippins-Poole told The Dallas Morning News that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security last fall warned the county of 23 “occurrences” where county web servers were vulnerable to access by outside parties.
Pippins-Poole says she took the word to mean hacking attempts.
An assessment by Homeland Security has found that Russian hackers targeted state election systems, and Pippins-Poole says based on a conference call with agency officials she assumed Russians had attempted to also access Dallas County.
She acknowledged that she misunderstand federal authorities.
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