A CEO for a software firm employed by election offices was arrested last week for allegedly illegally storing data of election workers on servers in China, according to The Epoch Times.
A defense attorney rebutted that the prosecution was relying on information from election deniers, reports NPR.
The company, Konnech, creates software for managing payroll and scheduling election workers and is used by many local municipalities across the country, including Los Angeles, where the charges originate.
Eugene Yu, CEO of Konnech, was charged on October 5 with data theft by Los Angeles County district attorney George Gascón. It is alleged that Yu violated laws on offshore data storage.
Gascón has not announced any specific motive for the crimes that Yu is charged with, including a misappropriation of public funds.
With election day only weeks away, local groups across the country are trying to decide whether or not to ditch the company amid the allegations.
Almost immediately afterwards, Konnech lost contracts with election jurisdictions such as Fairfax County, Virginia and Detroit, Michigan.
An election board in Dekalb County, Georgia voted to continue with Konnech, although that was opposed by two Republican members during a meeting.
“My grave concern is that our active account could become inactive in a single moment, and doing so during 19 days of early voting or on Election Day could cause havoc with our election operations,” Republican Party chair Marci McCarthy said in a letter read during the meeting. “We would have no advance warning and no recourse.”
“It comes down to the basics of who will pay the bills and what employees will continue to work as the company is in turmoil. What happens if Konnech cannot pay its cloud hosting fees? When they can’t make payroll?”
Richard Keech, deputy elections director for Loudoun County in Virginia, said he had no idea what was going on with Konnech.
“The district attorney [in LA County] doesn’t seem to be talking,” Keech told NPR. “It is a very confusing situation. And we’ve gone round and round and round in circles about this because nobody has the full story.”
On Friday Yu was ordered to confinement at home in LA and to post a $500,000 bond. He is scheduled to appear back in court in November.