Washington candidates for Secretary of State clash over cybersecurity

Cybersecurity and election fraud are top of mind in this year’s race for Washington’s secretary of state.

On the November general election ballot, Democratic incumbent Steve Hobbs will face off against Republican challenger and political newcomer Dale Whitaker. Hobbs took first place in the Aug. 6 primary race for his current post, garnering 48% of the statewide vote. Whitaker followed behind and picked up 37% of the vote.

The two contenders differ on their perceptions of threats to local, regional and statewide elections in Washington.

Whitaker wants to crack down on voter security to prevent “migrants” from voting, saying he’d take steps to re-establish the state’s 30-day residence requirement for voter registration.

“Removing the 30-day registration requirement is going to lead to a lot of migrant voting, transient voting, whether that’s county-to-county or state-to-state,” Whitaker said.

If re-elected, Hobbs wants to work to prevent election meddling by foreign actors.

“With the overseas threat with the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, then our own uncertainty within our own population, I feel like this democracy is under threat,” Hobbs said,

Hobbs, 54, of Lake Stevens, was appointed to his role as secretary of state in 2021 by Gov. Jay Inslee, making him the first Democrat to hold that office since 1965. He previously served as a state senator from 2007 to 2021. The current secretary of state has previous experience as a military intelligence specialist and now serves in the Washington National Guard as a lieutenant colonel and public information officer

Whitaker, 35, of Spokane, has not held elected office before. He is the previous executive director of We Believe, We Vote, a Spokane-based conservative organization that surveys political candidates about their opinions on social issues such as gay marriage, abortion and religion. He currently owns and operates his own accounting firm called Mass Tax. The Spokane resident is a British immigrant who moved to the United States in 2008 and became a citizen in 2015.

When it comes to cybersecurity, the two candidates differ over a contract created by Hobbs last year to hire a tech firm to track and refute election misinformation on social media websites such as X and Facebook.

In May 2023, Hobbs’ office authorized a no-bid contract for nearly $273,000 with British artificial intelligence company Logically that is scheduled to run through the end of this year.

Whitaker said he would discontinue that contract if elected as secretary of state, arguing it displays the office’s “lack of trust” that Washington voters are able to judge and sift through information on their own.

Hobbs argued that his office has no ability to sensor election information on social media websites, and that the contract instead enables his office to shine light on false election claims in real time.

The Washington secretary of state is elected to a four-year term. Along with elections, the secretary of state’s office oversees the state library and archives, business records and nonprofit registration.

General election ballots will be mailed in mid-October for the Nov. 5 election.