The Democrats’ battle over campaign data breaches finally appears to have to come to an end as the Democratic National Committee concluded its investigation and Bernie Sanders’ campaign withdrew its lawsuit, the DNC announced in a statement Friday.
The Sanders campaign claimed the DNC had shut off their access to crucial voter data after the party accused Sanders staffers of accessing confidential Hillary Clinton campaign voter data. In December, they filed a breach of contract action against the DNC.
In the mutually agreed upon investigation conducted by a third party called Crowdstrike, it was concluded that four user accounts belonging to the Bernie 2016 had unauthorized access of Hillary for America score data. All access took place in a one-hour period on Dec. 16, 2015.
“With the investigation behind us, the campaign has withdrawn its lawsuit against the DNC today but continues to implore the DNC to address the systemic instability that remains in its voter file system,” the Sanders campaign said in a statement. “It is imperative that the DNC make it a top priority to prevent future data security failures in the voter file system, failures that only serve as unnecessary distractions to the democratic process.”
As the lawsuit and subsequent investigation took place, Sanders’ primary campaign proceeded as normal. But unlike Clinton, Sanders did not set up a way of sharing his campaign funds with state and local Democratic parties.
As the DNC and the senator reach their resolution, Sanders’ chances of succeeding in the Democratic primary continue to decline. In order to win the nomination Sanders would have to win 81 percent of remaining delegates.
