1 Million Cyberattacks Made On Montco Election, Mainly From Russia And Belarus: Officials
NORRISTOWN, PA — There more than one million attacks on Montgomery County’s election system in the lead up and throughout Election Day, most of which were traced back to Russia and Belarus, officials said Monday.
The county is confident that their IT system rebuffed all of the hacking attempts and that the security of the election in Montgomery County was not impacted.
Related: Trump Wins 8,000 More Votes In Montgomery Co. Than He Did In 2020
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“For the voter’s sake, there’s no reason to believe that interfered with the results or the tabulation of the election,” Commissioner Neil Makhija told reporters Wednesday morning.
Specifically, some 600,0000 of the attempts were traced back to Russia and Belarus. It comes as the FBI confirmed that Russia was behind numerous bomb threats at polling places around the United States on Tuesday, including in Chester County.
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Related: Russia Behind Election Day Bomb Threats Targeting Chester County, FBI Says
While authorities did not have specific numbers to compare the cyber attacks to past elections, they were clear that this was significantly more than ever before.
“It does seem quite high, and that was alarming,” Makhija said. “Thankfully, we have a firewall that was successful. We have no reason to suspect the IT system was (compromised).”
While more total voters cast ballots in 2024 than ever before, and the county is calling that a “record turnout,” the percentages tell a much different story. 2020 saw 84.2 percent of all registered Montgomery County voters participate in the election, while 2024 brought out notably less, just 81.8 percent.
Roughly 518,000 ballots were cast in 2024 out of 632,719 registered county voters, while 2020 saw nearly the same number, 513,395, out of 12,000 less registered voters (609,250).
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