Company assures Johnson County that election worker data is secure after CEO arrested

The Johnson County Election Office says it has received assurances the personal data of its election workers is secure, after an executive of a company that provides software used by the county to manage election workers was accused of stealing the personal data of election workers in Los Angeles.

Johnson County said in an unsigned statement that it is working with law enforcement to determine if election worker data was improperly stored in violation of its contract with Konnech. The Michigan-based company provides PollChief, an election management system the county uses to assign workers to polling locations.

The Los Angeles case doesn’t involve voter or election results information. Johnson County also said PollChief isn’t connected to the county’s voter tabulation system and that it doesn’t use the software for payroll.

The Los Angeles County, California, District Attorney’s Office announced last week Konnech CEO Eugene Yu was arrested in Michigan on suspicion of theft of personal identifying information in Los Angeles County, which uses PollChief.

Konnech’s contract with Los Angeles County requires it to securely maintain the data and that only United States citizens and permanent residents have access to it. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement that investigators had found that information was stored on servers in China, in violation of Konnech’s contract.

Johnson County provided an Oct. 6 email from Konnech to Johnson County Election Commissioner Fred Sherman in which the company says unequivocally that its data is secure at a data center in Lansing, Mich., “where we have always hosted your data.”

“We have never hosted your data or system in servers outside of the United States,” Konnech said in the email.

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.