Annapolis, MD — On Friday after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the indictment against the 12 Russian Military Officers for attempting to interfere with the 2016 presidential election, Maryland’s State Board of Elections, released a statement.
The statement explains that while they “assure Maryland voters that Maryland’s State Board of Elections was not the State election office mentioned in the indictment,” they did however receive information from the FBI regarding a “vendor the State Board of Election uses to host various election systems.”
ByteGrid LLC, the vendor that Maryland uses to “host various election systems,” including hosting the “statewide voter registration,” is financed by AltPoint Capital Partners.
AltPoint Capital, according to the press release, funds manager is a Russian, and its largest investor is a Russian oligarch named Vladimir Potanin.
The press release stresses that the FBI found no evidence that Maryland’s systems have been breached, however the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has stated Maryland was one “of the states with suspicious online activities before the 2016 General Election.”
In August of 2016 Maryland “saw some unusual activity,” with online voter registrations and “ballot request system.” They had the systems independently checked by, the FBI, one of the State’s cybersecurity vendors, and a private cybersecurity firm. All three came to the same conclusion there were “no suspicious artifacts.” Meaning there was no evidence to suggest that “the online registration and ballot request system was breached or fraudulent transactions were submitted.”
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R) issued a press release on Friday after the State Board of Elections made the announcement.
Governor Hogan along with Maryland Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller (D), Speaker of the House Delegates, Michael Busch (D) sent a letter to DHS, requesting that the DHS Office of Cybersecurity and Communications “provide the State of Maryland with technical assistance to evaluate the network utilized by the Maryland State Board of Elections.”
As a reminder count eleven in the linked indictment alleges that Russian National Military Officers attempted to hack into computers of sate board of elections. (DOJ)
- Count Eleven charges conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States by attempting to hack into the computers of state boards of elections, secretaries of state, and US companies that supplied software and other technology related to the administration of elections.
