DHS announces election audits tool

Homeland Security's main cyber division Thursday announced a new tool to help election officials audit voting machines — the first version of which is already deployed in six states.

Why it matters: While a lot of attention gets paid to voting machine security, auditing machines during an election is equally as important: It's the only way to tell whether machines were hacked or malfunctioned.

Details: The tool, which DHS' Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency calls Arlo, simplifies performing the audits' math.

• Arlo is being developed by VotingWorks, a non-partisan, non-profit voting security engineering group.
• It integrates with all major vendors of voting machines.