FBI director warns that hackers have been ‘poking around’ voter registration systems

The systems underlying our elections process are more important than ever this year, and the bad guys know it too. FBI director James Comey said at a House Judiciary Committee hearing today that “bad actors have been poking around” voter registration systems lately.

“This is very different than the vote system in the United States, which is very, very hard for someone to hack into because it’s so clunky and dispersed,” he clarified, perhaps raising some eyebrows in the room. “It’s Mary and Fred putting a machine under the basketball hoop at the gym. Those things are not connected to the internet, but the voter registration systems are.”