Johnson County distances from election worker data management firm as CEO faces charges
The Johnson County Election Office announced on Friday that all of its election-worker data managed by Konnech Inc., a software company whose chief executive faces criminal theft charges in California, had been transferred over to local servers under the county’s exclusive control.
The security measure — which solely concerns election employees, and has nothing to do with voting or voter information — came in the wake of fallout for Konnech, a small software company based in East Lansing, Michigan. Johnson County had a limited contract that utilized the company’s PollChief system, which was used to assign workers to polling locations in Johnson County.
Konnech CEO Eugene Yu was arrested and charged on Oct. 13 following a criminal investigation in Los Angeles County that involved the alleged theft and sale of personal information with the aid PollChief.
The LA District Attorney’s Office says the personal information stolen was from poll workers only. Yu is accused of selling that information to third-party interests in China.
In Johnson County, election officials began a risk assessment after news broke of the arrest and criminal charges.
Of its 9,800 poll workers, less than 10% — about 825 people — have a driver’s license number entered into the PollChief administrative system, the election office says. Those people were being reached with information that their driver’s license number was exposed to an unauthorized third party.
As of Friday, the elections office had discovered “no evidence of malicious activity,” and has previously received assurances from Konnech that its data was safely stored in Michigan.
In its Friday statement, the Johnson County elections office said any third-party access granted by Konnech to the PollChief program for software development was done “without our approval.”
The statement also stressed that PollChief “is not and has never been connected to the county’s voting machines or any vote tabulation, voter registration, financial or any county systems.”
Election officials with Wyandotte, Jackson, Clay and Platte counties, as well as the Kansas City Board of Elections, told The Star that these counties don’t use Konnech.
The Star’s Jonathan Shorman contributed to this report.
