Georgia Elections Supply Web Store Hosted on Canadian Platform
By
Ivan Pentchoukov
-
December 7, 2020
The website used to order blank ballots and other election supplies from the office of Georgia’s secretary of state is hosted on Shopify, a Canadian e-commerce platform that admitted it was breached not long before Election Day.
The
unique address of the website appears on the bottom of order records from local elections offices, some of which were discarded near the secretary of state’s distribution warehouse.
The shop’s landing page is protected by a password.
“The Georgia Elections Supply Store is for Georgia Election Officials only. It is password protected. If you do not know the password and you would like access to the store, please contact Rachell Simmons at the Secretary of State’s office,” the page states, before listing the email and phone number for Simmons.
Exposing the emails and phone numbers of officials involved in disseminating the password for the website leaves them vulnerable to phishing attempts.
An order slip discarded near the Georgia secretary of state’s warehouse in Atlanta shows that the Georgia Official Elections Supply Store is hosted on Shopify. (Anonymous Submission via Epoch Times)
Local election officials use the website to order blank absentee ballots, ballot envelopes, oath envelopes, applications for voter registration, signs for ballot drop boxes, and other items. The Epoch Times can confirm that boxes appearing to contain these and other supplies were being loaded from the warehouse into a UPS truck. The UPS has not responded to a request for comment.
Shopify announced on Sept. 22 that two rogue members of its support team had breached the data of some 200 members. The company said at the time that it had referred the matter to the FBI.
“This incident was not the result of a technical vulnerability in our platform, and the vast majority of merchants using Shopify are not affected. However, those whose stores were illegitimately accessed may have had customer data exposed. This data includes basic contact information, such as email, name, and address, as well as order details, like products and services purchased,” Shopify said in a
blog post.
Shopify did not immediately answer an emailed inquiry about whether the Georgia Elections Supply Store was one of the accounts breached. The company had previously said that it contacted the victims.
The office of the Georgia’s secretary of state did not immediately return a request for comment.
Shopify is the second Canadian company with an involvement in the U.S. election. Toronto-based Dominion Voting Systems is facing accusations that its elections systems, in use in key states like Georgia and Michigan, were maliciously manipulated to change the outcome of the 2020 election. Dominion has vehemently denied the allegations.
