Voter registration website (Department of Accounting and General Services - Office of Elections)

Jason Koebler filed this request with the Department of Accounting and General Services - Office of Elections of Hawaii.
Multi Request Voter registration website
Submitted Oct. 13, 2020
Status
Rejected

Communications

From: Jason Koebler

Subject: Hawaii Uniform Information Practices Act Request: Voter registration website (Department of Accounting and General Services - Office of Elections)

Email


To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Hawaii Uniform Information Practices Act, I hereby request the following records:

A series of voter registration website outages have made national news in recent weeks:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/935em3/severed-internet-cable-breaks-virginia-voter-registration-portal-on-deadline-day
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/06/920774701/florida-governor-extends-deadline-after-voter-registration-site-crashes

Therefore, I request the following information:

- Contracts, plans, RFPs, and underlying information about the design of online voter registration systems
- Presentations and emails regarding these systems
- Any disaster recovery / backup plans / failsafes for voter registration databases and registration websites or emails/plans/RFPs/presentations regarding this
- Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity contracts, plans, RFPs, presentations for voter registration websites and databases
- Any cybersecurity audits/penetration test reports / RFPs and contracts regarding online voter registration systems

Please search from Jan 1, 2018 until the day this request is processed.

These documents will be used for reporting on Motherboard, VICE Media's science and tech website (www.motherboard.vice.com)

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 10 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Jason Koebler

From: Department of Accounting and General Services - Office of Elections

Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] Hawaii Uniform Information Practices Act Request: Voter registration website (Department of Accounting and General Services - Office of Elections)

Email

Dear Mr. Koebler,

This is written in response to your request for a variety of documents relating to our online voter registration system.

Elections are considered critical infrastructure and this includes the online voter registration system. In general, in order to safeguard critical infrastructure, the state's practice is to not disclose IT security methodology, activities, and data, including equipment and software employed and remediation actions, if any, because doing so could advertise vulnerabilities, promote phishing, and/or expose or impede investigation activities.

This non-disclosure of records is authorized by our state law that provides that disclosure is not required for "[g]overnment records that, by their nature, must be confidential in order for the government to avoid the frustration of a legitimate government function." HRS ยง 92F-13(3).

As such, we are declining the disclosure of the records you have requested.

Sincerely,

Jaime Kataoka
Office of Elections

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