Arizona's Secretary of State's Office has compiled a new manual of election procedures looking at ways to increase cybersecurity ahead of next year's presidential race.
The manual and many of its changes came after a report by the Arizona Republic looking at concerns about election meddling for the 2020 election, according to a story in the Republic. An earlier draft of the manual, which the paper said is more than 500 pages, had raised several concerns with experts, including suggesting that USB sticks could be used more than once to transfer information to various devices without them being cleaned and reformatted.
According to the Republic story the final draft said counties should "conduct periodic election security and cybersecurity assessments and develop and implement appropriate security procedures and best practices."
The final draft of the new manual was required to be submitted to the governor and attorney general by Oct. 1. Both officials must sign off on the manual and have until the end of the year to do so, according to the Republic. If not approved, the 2020 elections will be governed by the rules in the most current manual which went into effect in 2014.
Gov. Doug Ducey told the paper he is "going to go through the proper diligence and briefing" of the proposed manual but did not commit to signing off on the new material.
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