The NPR Politics Podcast - Election Vendor Faces Charges After Conspiracy Group's Allegations

Episode Date: October 18, 2022

Prosecutors in Los Angeles say Konnech, a small company that makes software for scheduling election workers, has illegally given its contractors in China access to sensitive data as part of a "massive data breach." A defense attorney said the prosecution was relying on dubious information from "one of the more discredited election deniers." This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, voting correspondent Miles Parks, investigations correspondent Tom Dreisbach.Learn more about upcoming live shows of The NPR Politics Podcast at nprpresents.org.Support the show and unlock sponsor-free listening with a subscription to The NPR Politics Podcast Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org/politics Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's Susan Davis from the NPR Politics Podcast and Atlanta. Come see us live. Join me, Mara Liason, Asma Khalid, Tamara Keith, Miles Parks, Georgia Public Broadcasting's Stephen Fowler, and WABE's Raul Bali as we do our show live at the Buckhead Theater Thursday, October 20th at 8 p.m. You can find more information about tickets, including student ones, at nprpresents.org. Thanks to our partners at Georgia Public Broadcasting, WABE, and WCLK Jazz. We hope to see you there. Hi, this is Eric in La Honda, California. I'm about to go in for hip replacement surgery, and I'll be listening to the podcast in the recovery room. This podcast was recorded at 1.07 p. 7 PM on Tuesday, the 18th of October. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I'll be walking with a new spring in my step from the titanium in my new hip. Okay, here's the show. Just don't walk too fast through airport security. My mom had her hips replaced a couple years ago. It really is life-changing, so I'm excited for her.

The thing that's remarkable to me is, like, how quickly you can get up and walking with a hip replacement. My mom was, like, jumping up and down, yeah. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And Tom Dreisbach, NPR's investigations correspondent, is here with us. Hey, Tom. Hey. So we talk a lot on this podcast about politics and about voting. But on today's pod, we are digging in on the administrative side of making elections happen. And this story, the two of you have reported, is wild. I will attempt to explain. There is a small company

that makes software for scheduling election workers. And it has, according to prosecutors, allegedly illegally given its contractors in China access to sensitive data as part of a massive data breach. And that could have implications for the election that is just three weeks away. So what is this company? What does this software do? So this is a company called Connect Software. And basically, they have this software called Poll Chief, which basically allows election officials to have all of their poll workers sign up. It allows them to easily communicate, send emails. It allows them to easily like communicate, send emails. It allows them to send training information to all the hundreds of thousands of people these cities

and counties need to kind of run an election. I imagine that there's like a McDonald's with a similar sort of software system. Right. It's very kind of straightforward of communication schedule. The problem, according to prosecutors, and Tom can detail this a little bit more, is basically prosecutors say that some of this information on these poll workers was illegally being stored in China. Wow. And Tom, what is the allegation here? What is the alleged crime? Yeah. So in this case, which is being brought by the Los Angeles County District Attorney here in L.A., where I'm based, L.A. has a contract with this company to use the Poll Chief software. And the district attorney alleges that the company violated the contract with the county by not adhering to some data privacy aspects of the contract. Specifically, the company was, according to the prosecutor, supposed to store all of their data on U.S. servers and only give access to people who were supposed to be able to see it. But instead, the company used some outside contractors based in China who handled bug fixes, software development, that kind of thing. And in that process,

those contractors were able to see sensitive, personally identifiable information on L.A. County election workers. And is there any allegation that this data was misused? Not yet. I mean, the exact charges in this case are conspiracy to misappropriate public funds. Basically, the allegation is that, you know, the district attorney says, we were paying you to do this service and you were supposed to adhere to these data security protocols. You did not. Therefore, you were misappropriating public funds. Which doesn't sound that crazy when you kind of say it that way. But I think where the story gets really weird is when we talk about how this investigation started. And it started with an organization called True the Vote, which is this very well-known discredited

election denial group that does a lot of kind of quote-unquote investigations into the elections world. And Tom, am I right here that the district attorney says that this investigation started because of a tip from True the Vote? That's right. And actually, somewhat interestingly, the L.A. County DEA, when they announced the arrest of the CEO of this company, they said True the Vote played no role in this investigation. Then suddenly this past week, L.A. County D.A. says, well, actually, Greg Phillips, who is associated with True the Vote, he provided us a report which led us to start this investigation. However, they say in their statement that it was nonetheless an independent investigation. And just to underline what you were saying there, Miles, about True the Vote, they have links to QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory.

They provided the research and were the executive producers of 2000 Mules, which people might have heard of, which is this widely debunked election conspiracy, election denial film, which even former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr said was indefensible with its claims. And True the Vote has also come under scrutiny from law enforcement in Arizona recently. The Arizona attorney general said the group has misled law enforcement and asked the FBI to investigate. So this is a convoluted series of players involved in the story. I feel like you have this word salad of like voting. We've got China. we've got charges brought, which sounds really scary, but I do think it's important to step back here

and say that this software is used only to manage poll workers. This software has nothing to do with counting votes, casting votes. There's no version of this where the software has anything to do with that, even though, as you can imagine, this story is getting picked up

in kind of conspiracy-minded circles as some sort of evidence of, you know, the conspiracies that people have been trying to lob at the American election system for the past few years. So, Miles, how many counties and cities use this software? And is this story, is this case now affecting their behavior or affecting how they are going to schedule their poll workers ahead of the election? Yeah, I mean, so it's only it's a fairly small number of counties. They have, according to their website, less than 32 clients in North America, which doesn't sound like very many. But when you hear which counties there are, there are we mentioned L.A. County, the city of Minneapolis, the city of Detroit was a client, a number of. And so we've we've we've started to put together a list of quite a few of these counties. And we've counted at least four that have dropped out of using this software. And it is really interesting, you know, as we're sitting here, kind of trying to go through these accusations and figure out what's what and what they actually mean. Election officials are doing the same thing. They don't have any more information on what the heck's going on than we do. I talked to Ricky Keach, who's the deputy director of elections in Loudoun County, Virginia,

and I asked him, you know, do you think this is a county that used Connect software? I was like, do you think there's anything to these accusations? I have no idea. You know, and I think that's the problem, right, is I think I have no idea. You have no idea. It's the L.A. district attorney doesn't seem to be accusations. I have no idea. You know, and I think that's the problem, right, is I think I have no idea, you have no idea. It's the L.A. District Attorney doesn't seem to be talking, right? You know, it is a very confusing situation, and we've gone around and around and around in circles about this. But at this particular moment, with an election breathing down our neck, you know, the last thing we need is for our election officers to feel like we're not doing everything we can to protect them and for them to decide not to serve. So basically, Loudoun County decided to stop using

Connect software out of fear that this story would scare poll workers from working, even though they're not positive that their data was affected at all or even what's going on at all. Tom, this obviously affects the business of this company, Connect, that makes this software. What are they saying? Well, they're denying the allegations from LA County's district attorney. They're also saying that criminal charges in this case seem inappropriate in their view. What they're saying is that the allegations in the complaint by the DA really seem like a contract violation, which is the type of thing you would often handle in civil court, not in criminal court. In any event, the attorneys for Connect have also raised

concerns about the fact that the district attorney apparently relied on information from True the Vote, which Connect's attorneys described as one of the more discredited election denial groups. They, meanwhile, are also suing True the Vote in federal court in Texas, another jurisdiction, and accusing True the Vote of defaming them. And that lawsuit is ongoing and is separate and distinct from the criminal charges. So a lot of accusations and counter accusations flying all which way. Yeah, this is quite a stew. We are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, more on what this says about the state of voting and faith in the institution of elections. And we're back. And neither of you can predict the future, but do you imagine that we will see

more cases or charges like this in the future as there is this heightened scrutiny of the election process and sort of heightened scrutiny of minuscule parts of the election process? I think it seems almost inevitable, both because we've had we now have hundreds or thousands, potentially tens of thousands, depending on how you count it, of individuals who are kind of decided that they're going to investigate our election system and considering how many thousands of people are working in our election system. And then you add in the fact that a number of states over the last couple of years have added new rules to the elections process that could potentially mean penalties or criminal charges against election workers. You know, what this case represents is this overall intense scrutiny of election companies

overall, particularly since the 2020 election. When President Trump declared that the 2020 election was stolen from him and started lobbying often baseless accusations against all sorts of companies and people, I think that kind of set the tone for the following few years of how people will approach these elections and companies. And I think that scrutiny will only intensify as time goes on. And it's going to be really hard for the average American voter who, again, does not have a really, really strong understanding of exactly how elections work to kind of sift through all of these accusations, especially

when you start talking about criminal charges being brought and trying to say, OK, you know, trying to keep that in their brain that like, OK, this is happening, but that's not affecting my vote. I still trust the voting process. We know these are two separate things. It's going to be really hard on American voters to kind of parse all of that and keep their trust. Right.

I'm thinking back to after the 2000 election when there were hanging chads in Florida and the whole country spent weeks watching people hold ballots up to the light and thinking like, oh, my God, is this how elections are decided? The country came out of that. There was legislation and a lot of money put into strengthening the election system. And and I think it was bipartisan. But right now, it's a very polarized approach. The American public, just broadly, like, there's polarization about every aspect of voting.

Yeah, that is the difference, right, is that there has not been buy-in at the congressional level. There's a lot more bipartisan buy-in when it comes to improving the voting process at the state level and at the county level. You'll often talk to Republican county administrators who are operating in good faith and aren't being driven by conspiracies. And I think we've seen a way in which all aspects of election administration have now become partisan or polarized. You know, we are used to certain debates about election administration, like voter ID has been a national debate in certain ways for a long time now. But now we're talking about a company that makes scheduling software for poll workers, and that has entered a partisan and polarized debate. I think every aspect of election administration apparently is now up for debate in this sort of crazy new world we live in. Well, and if it gets distilled down to a meme,

then, you know, you're not going to get, oh, it's about scheduling. No. And the other thing about this is that there's thousands of election jurisdictions all across the country. And so if you really want to find something in one tiny county or one specific company, and then you want to try to make that emblematic of something that's rotten at its core, it's very easy to do if there's not that baseline of trust within the American people. Well, Tom Dreisbach, NPR investigations correspondent, thanks for joining us on the pod. Hey, thanks for having me. All right, we are going to leave it there for today. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting White House. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.