Must-read Pam Fessler for NPR:

When people showed up in several North Carolina precincts to vote last November, weird things started to happen with the electronic systems used to check them in.

“Voters were going in and being told that they had already voted — and they hadn’t,” recalls Allison Riggs, an attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

The electronic systems — known as pollbooks — also indicated that some voters had to show identification, even though they did not.

Investigators later discovered the company that provided those pollbooks had been the target of a Russian cyberattack.

There’s no evidence the two incidents are linked. But the episode has revealed serious gaps in U.S. efforts to secure elections. Nine months later, officials are still trying to sort out the details.

Update: See also Report from North Carolina Makes Reality Winner Leak Far More Important at EmptyWheel.