SALT LAKE CITY — Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox said he was quite taken aback when he stumbled upon a report that said about half of Democrats in the U.S. were convinced that vote totals in the 2016 election were changed by Russian intervention.

Not to be outdone, more than half of Republicans believed millions of people who entered the country illegally voted in those same elections, he added.

“Both of those things are verifiably false, and we were very chagrined to see that type of misinformation that has been spread out there,” Cox explained during a Tuesday morning press conference at Utah's Capitol.

“We get a lot of questions about elections security, (like) ‘How do I know my vote is going to be safe? How do I know my vote is going to count? How do I know we can trust the elections results?'” Cox said.

In an attempt to answer those questions and be transparent about what the state government is doing to protect the integrity of election results, Cox called the media to a press conference to ask questions — though he couldn’t give all the answers (for security reasons).

Here are 10 takeaways from that meeting:

1. The state is ramping up election security because Utah’s got some high-profile stuff going on this election

When former presidential candidate Mitt Romney announced his Utah run for senate in June, Cox knew the state needed to amp up its cybersecurity measures. Romney has been outspoken against Russia, and the federal government told 21 states in January that their election systems had been targeted by (mainly) Russian hackers during the 2016 election.

‘Intrusion attempts’ to Utah gov websites skyrocket during Romney senate campaign

During the 2017 Utah primary election, the state's IT team blocked about 500,000 to 700,00 “intrusion attempts” against state websites. In 2018, that number reached 1 billion — 2,000 times what it was the year before.

And indeed, “intrusion attempts” to Utah’s government websites reached 1 billion in 2018 — 2,000 times what it was the year before. While some of these “attempts” may have been active hackers trying to break into the system, most were simply reconnaissance and surveillance traffic, officials reported.

Even so, Cox said he believes security will be of utmost importance in the coming election because ...

2. Turnout is expected to be much higher for this election

Romney is running for Senate, there’s a close congressional race between Mia Love and Ben McAdams and controversial Proposition 2 will bring out all those who care about medical marijuana — whether they want it or not.

While the state’s office of elections doesn’t have a set estimate on the number of people who will vote in the November midterm elections, they believe it will be significantly higher than normal, Cox said. Especially because ...

3. Voters can register on Election Day

Good news for procrastinators: Those who want to vote but haven’t registered yet can register and vote all on the same day, come November elections. This has never been the case with any Utah election before, Cox said.

Utah has also made a few other changes this year:

4. The state invested in new voting machines and equipment

The state government allocated $4.5 million for new voting machines and equipment that needed to be upgraded. Like any other technology, voting equipment has a shelf life, Cox said. It just happened to work out really well that the state allocated money to upgrade the equipment right around the time the election's office doubled down on cybersecurity measures. However, …

5. It turns out paper is just more secure than anything else

“It’s one of those strange situations where old is new again,” Cox said. “One of the things we know is that paper just happens to be more secure than electronic ballots, and so most of the state has moved to that.”

Cox estimates that 90 percent of ballots will be paper for the upcoming election, and the remaining 10 percent will have paper backups.

Registered voters in 27 of 29 Utah counties will be automatically sent mail-in ballots, whether they request them or not. Emery and Carbon counties are the only areas that will still need to request mail-in ballots, but they are available, Cox said.

The voter registration database is still connected to the internet — but none of the voting systems that count the ballots are, Cox added. In fact, …

6. The entire process of counting votes is not connected to the internet

Whether residents vote by mail or go in and vote on Election Day, their votes will not be counted by a machine that’s connected to the internet, according to Cox.

All paper ballots are fed into a scantron machine that is not connected to the World Wide Web. Election officials will then physically download the data from that machine and take it over to a tabulation machine that is also not connected to the internet.

That machine then counts the votes, an election official will manually download that data, and then the results will finally be uploaded to the internet so residents across the state can see them. To ensure the process is as secure as possible, …

7. The state has partnered with other agencies, both federal and local, to locate and fix vulnerabilities

“We’ve taken significant steps to, one, know what the bad guys are doing and, two, prevent them from hacking into our systems,” Cox said.

The state of Utah partnered with the state Department of Technology Services, Homeland Security, the FBI, the Department of Public Safety and the Center for Internet Security, as well as county clerks and election officials across the state, to find and fix vulnerabilities in the system, Cox added.

Homeland Security and the Department of Technology Services did several rounds of testing, and the state fixed issues found by both agencies. The state has also been working with local officials to help them know how to act in the face of a potential security “disaster,” Cox said.

8. The state has also invested in additional staff — and one-fifth of the whole staff will be in San Juan County

The elections in San Juan County will be particularly politically-charged this year after a federal judge handed down new voting districts to replace those declared discriminatory against Native American voters.

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A federal judge has handed down new voting districts to replace those declared discriminatory against American Indian voters in southeastern Utah, but a prominent county commissioner said Friday that the county plans to appeal.

While the state’s elections committee is small, they will be sending one-fifth of their staff to San Juan County to make sure everything goes smoothly, according to the state’s director of elections Justin Lee.

9. So what is this all costing?

The state already spent the $4.5 million on new voting equipment, but it also allocated about $500,000 for election security measures — some of which the state has already used, Lee said.

Utah has also received additional federal resources, more than they can use, so election cybersecurity isn’t costing Utah taxpayers that much directly, Cox said. The state has used a big chunk of the federal funding (about $2 million) to upgrade the voter registration database, Lee added. Luckily, because of measures like these …

10. The state has never suffered a serious data breach

Cox said the state was one of the first to start working with Homeland Security — though not initially about elections. He believes that’s why Utah has never had a serious data breach.

“Now, with elections becoming ramped up, we were ahead of the curve,” he said.

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