Countdown to the MIDTERMS, page-291

In Okaloosa County, which stretches from the Gulf of Mexico to the Alabama border, only one major road connects the election office in the north with the 68 percent of registered voters who live in the south, Lux said. If poll workers had to deliver results by hand, he said, he wouldn’t be able to report results until 11 p.m.

Mark Ard, a spokesperson for Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd, said that without modems, some counties might not be able to report results until the day after an election. And delays create misinformation risks as well. Trump and other 2020 election deniers seized on delays as another excuse to claim the results were rigged.

Ard and election officials in other states that use modems told POLITICO they believe the security risks are overblown.

“I’ve been at this job now 10 years, and we’ve used modems as far as I can remember, and we’ve never ever had an issue,” said Travis Weipert, the election supervisor in Johnson County, Iowa.