LANSING – With the Nov. 6 election less than 30 days away, Michigan officials tout the fact that the state's election machines are not connected to the Internet — eliminating a major hacking risk.

But does that fact alone make Michigan's election machines impervious to hacking?

Many researchers and election integrity activists say no.

They say Michigan could be vulnerable as one of at least four states — along with Florida, Illinois, and Wisconsin — that use cellular modems to transmit unofficial election results.

In an Oct. 2 letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, 30 academics, security experts and election integrity activists — including a computer science professor at the University of Michigan — expressed "grave concerns" about the devices.

They said use of the modems makes election results vulnerable to tampering and could result in malware infecting election machines. They asked the federal government to warn states and local agencies against their use.

"In short, they can wreak havoc on an election," the letter said.

The concerns are raised following documented efforts by Russia to interfere with the 2016 election and warnings from the Trump administration that China is trying to interfere with the 2018 election.

State and local election officials say encryption and other security features are in place to prevent hacking and unofficial results are verified against a paper trail of ballots and tabulations before results are made official.

Fred Woodhams, a spokesman for the Michigan Secretary of State's Office, said Tuesday that such devices have been in use in some parts of the state, including Detroit, Wayne County and Oakland County for at least six years.

"The systems are tested at the federal level to ensure they are secure," Woodhams said. State officials "do not have a count of which jurisdictions use them," and "we do not provide specific guidance about their use."

Woodhams stressed the tabulators are tested before each election and the modem is only activated after the results are printed out. "The modem only transmits unofficial results and those results are not relied upon during the canvassing process that scrutinizes the results in each precinct," he said.

Cellular modems use a cell phone connection, not an Internet connection, and their use "is part of the reason why Oakland County, for example, has been able to report results more quickly than its neighbors in past cycles, and why reporters were pleasantly surprised when Detroit and Wayne County were able to report in after the 2017 local elections," Woodhams said.

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He said use of the devices follows federal guidelines and processes that "prevent any portions of the systems from being accessed or altered outside of the established flow of the application."

But the letter, signed by academics including Alex Halderman, director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Science and Security, and groups including Common Cause and the National Election Defense Coalition, says modern cellular modems "in fact, are part of the Internet."

Cellular networks have "known vulnerabilities that are subject to exploitation," the letter said. A cellular device "can be fooled into connecting to false mobile cell towers (such as Stingray surveillance devices) to cause a server disruption, and if there is improper authentication of a connection, there could be false reports from devices impersonating precinct voting machines."

Joe Rozell, director of elections for Oakland County, said officials there have used cellular modems for about seven years and are "very comfortable with the process that we're using." That's especially true since 2017, when the county paid AT&T between $15,000 and $20,000 for a private cellular network used to transmit the unofficial results from 520 precincts to the clerk's office in Pontiac, he said.

If the modem can't detect connection to that network, it will shut down immediately, he said.

And that's just one of the security features in place, Rozell said.

The modem is shut down prior to and during voting and once the last vote is cast, it is not turned on until a hard copy of the results is printed at each precinct, he said. Then the cellular modem is turned on and it takes less than 30 seconds to transmit the encrypted results from the precincts to election headquarters, in a process that is also password protected, he said.

After the election, two separate methods are used to verify that the transmitted results match those printed out before the modem was activated, he said.

Also, unlike some states, the optical scan voting system used by all Michigan municipalities means there are paper ballots that can be recounted as an ultimate safeguard, Rozell and Woodhams said.

Without such a system, precinct workers would have to drive the memory cards to Pontiac and then input the election data.

"That process could take hours and hours," Rozell said. "We would be looking at, rather than posting unofficial results at 8:05, we would be looking at not posting unofficial results until almost 10 o'clock."

In 2017, Oakland County and all other Michigan counties replaced aging voting machines around the state with new equipment paid for with $40 million in federal and state money. Clerks got to choose among equipment from three manufacturers — Dominion Voting Systems, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), or Hart InterCivic. All three manufacturers offer the cellular modem option, Rozell said.

He believes the use of cellular modems is widespread in Michigan counties and he couldn't say that all have established private cellular networks, as Oakland County has.

The letter calling for federal action said connecting to public networks even briefly "can make the system vulnerable to attacks that could impact current or future election results."

"The convenience of transmitting vote totals online does not outweigh the need of the American people to be assured their votes will be accurately transmitted and counted," the letter said.

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4.