This article by the political news source, FiveThirtyEight, discusses the security issue in regards to American elections. The need to protect data and have measures that ensure cybersecurity is ever-growing, and this is especially true when it comes to the backbone of the American Democracy: Elections. This was a particularly hot topic issue during the 2016 elections because there was a lot of talk about Russia hacking into the election. States are in charge of elections and many states, for the 2016 Presidential Election, hired private companies to help administer these elections and provide fundamental software like “electronic poll books (which are lists of eligible voters)”. It was discovered that one such company, VR Systems, was hacked by Russian Intelligence Officers, from a simple phishing scheme (nothing fancy, just phishing!), which the intelligence officers then used to create phishing attacks on state election officials. The lack of cybersecurity awareness and practices is ultimately the root cause of something like this. This is not the only example talked about in the article: Dominion Voting, a leading voting machine manufacturer, was discovered to lack basic security measures, such as “basic SSL encryption, which is a standard security practice used to protect user credentials, passwords, and other sensitive information”. The main issue that this article highlights is that there is a lack of responsibility and accountability among these companies that essentially run the American elections and there will be further consequences if the government and the people continue to turn a blind eye to it.