A report released last week from the Brennan Center for Justice, the R Street Institute, the University of Pittsburgh’s Institute for Cyber Law, Policy and Security, and the Alliance for Securing Democracy sounds an alarm about the urgent need for federal funding to secure state elections systems ahead of the 2020 election.
Choosing Alabama, Arizona, Illinois, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania as key states representing different regions, with varied population sizes to extrapolate from, the authors find that federal intervention is critical. “Elections are the pillar of American democracy, and, as we saw in 2016 and 2018, foreign governments will continue to target them,” the authors write. “States cannot counter these adversaries alone, nor should they have to. But at a time when free and fair elections are increasingly under attack, they can, with additional federal funding, safeguard them.” They say that while they “have limited their review to a sampling of six states, it is clear that the other 44 states and the District of Columbia have similar unfunded needs.”
Four of the states said they need funding to replace old equipment that’s vulnerable to cyber attacks, while several others require funds for training election officials in cybersecurity. Oklahoma needs funding for post-election audits to make sure their tallies are correct, and Pennsylvania identified a need for regular assessments of the security of its counties’ systems.
View the complete July 22 article by Joan McCarter from Daily Kos on the AlterNet website here.