Congress Should Secure Elections for the Long-Term

Congress determines the acceptable uses for federal election funding. These expenditures should reflect a bipartisan understanding of the most basic role of the federal government in elections: election security.

And that is where states have spent the money so far. In the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s annual report to Congress about the spending of election grants to states, states reported plans to spend the funding to replace outdated voting technology, to conduct external security analyses, to upgrade voter registration databases, and to harden physical security among many other strategies.

The level of funding in most cases allows states to begin making these needed investments, but the vulnerabilities and needs are far greater than existing funding allows and will require regular expenditures over several funding cycles. Any technology purchased in part with federal funding will require frequent upgrading of software and hardware on more reasonable timelines than election officials have made them in the past.

Federal funding incentivizes states to make investments in their elections processes. The money Congress sent to states must be matched at 5% with state funds, which is a small way of ensuring the states have “skin in the game.” The availability of federal funding also adds political pressure on states for policymakers to focus resources on their elections systems; no policymaker wants to leave federal funding on the table when it comes to securing democracy. That’s good for each state’s voters because they will be participating in a more secure election process, but it also improves overall confidence in the U.S. voting process because voters know that election security is a priority everywhere.

Still, specific voter-facing election policy is best made at the state and local level where legislators can select policies that reflect historical decisions, current electorate preferences, and the interaction between new laws with other intertwined parts of the process.

The federal role revolves around election policy is—at minimum—one that focuses on the legitimacy and security of the voting process. With American elections under attack from foreign adversaries, states cannot all successfully defend themselves without the full backing of the United States government. They need the robust partnership to avoid further activities that only serve to delegitimize our elections.

That is why states need to continue spending existing and future federal grants on those investments most immediately focused on securing the elections process and most in line with Congressional intent. States should:

• Upgrade the hardware and security of state voter registration databases, which serve as the basis of many other election administration functions.
• Secure voting systems that include durable paper ballots that are counted on separate machines than those used to mark the ballot.
• Revamp the basic IT infrastructure of elections offices. The largest election jurisdictions have significant IT teams. The smallest offices have no IT staff and are often included on the county’s servers with no firewalls. Any attacks affecting the county could take the election office offline.
• Move all jurisdictions to “.gov” websites and email servers, which would ensure voters know that they are interacting with the trusted sources of information.
• Schedule the whole suite of cybersecurity training for all election administrators at every level and implement multifactor authentication at least to the most vulnerable databases.
• Develop a program of cyber navigators that seeks to connect election officials with appropriate resources would be highly effective and in need of further expansion and elevate an individual in state election offices with the role of keeping all jurisdictions in the state aware of cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities.

There are many other areas where Congress could improve the voting experience for all Americans. Admittedly there are a larger number of ideological differences in those areas. But Congress cannot let a lack of consensus on other areas of election policy derail their responsibility today to assist states and local officials to secure American democracy.