Security

Q&A: Brennan Center Expert on the Election Security Challenges That Remain – StateTech Magazine


Editor’s note: This is one of a series of Q&As StateTech has conducted with state election officials and cybersecurity experts on election security. To read our Q&A with Adam Clayton Powell III, the executive director of the University of Southern California’s Election Cybersecurity Initiative, click here. To read our Q&A with Peter Threlkel, director of information services for the Oregon Secretary of State, click here. And to read our Q&A with Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, click here.

In the last week of July, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency held a massive virtual tabletop exercise on election security to experience what one participant described to StateScoop as “an Armageddon-like situation in which every potential meltdown can happen.”

The three-day exercise involved 37 states and approximately 2,100 total participants. CISA is confident that it, alongside state and local election officials, is taking the appropriate measures to safeguard the vote ahead of the general election on Nov. 3

Yet worries abound. Voting by mail is set to surge. Some states, Michigan for example, are facing challenges simply delivering absentee ballots to registered voters before primary election day due to U.S. Postal Service delays. And Matthew Masterson, CISA’s senior cybersecurity adviser on election security, tells NPR that local election officials are still being too careless with password security leaving them susceptible to phishing attacks.

With less than 100 days before the election, what are state and local agencies to do? The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law has long advocated for measures that could help protect elections, including banning wireless components in the voting systems that record and tabulate votes, robust post-election audits and backing up voter registration databases. StateTech recently spoke with Lawrence Norden, director of the Brennan Center’s election reform program, about the biggest remaining vulnerabilities and how to address them.



READ NEWS SOURCE

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.