Cybersecurity, disinformation dominates hearing on elections

Cybersecurity was once considered a side issue in election administration. Eight years after the Russian government waged a multi-pronged effort to interfere in the 2016 elections and four years after former President Donald Trump left office spewing a flurry of falsehoods in a scorched-earth campaign to undermine the integrity of U.S. voting, things look a little different. 

When six secretaries of state descended upon Washington to testify in front of Congress this week on the state of U.S. election readiness, virtually every topic discussed related to cybersecurity or false and misleading claims around election fraud driven by foreign or domestic disinformation. 

Cybersecurity was one of the first things highlighted by Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose in his opening statement, with the Republican touting his state’s installation of Albert intrusion sensors for county election boards, the rollout of endpoint detection and response systems, network segmentation, vulnerability disclosure policies and the hiring of a full-time CISO. 

Meanwhile, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, began his testimony by discussing how his state has responded to the emergence of generative AI and deepfakes through novel trainings and tabletop exercises, which CyberScoop reported on in-depth earlier this year.

The hearing served as a demonstration of the central role that technology and digital security now play in modern elections. But it also included lengthy and contentious exchanges around voter fraud, noncitizen voting and negligent election procedures that have been the subject of numerous disinformation campaigns over the past four years. 

The myth of rampant noncitizen voting

The notion that state voter rolls are poorly maintained and packed with illegal immigrants voting in American elections has been central to the messaging put out by the Trump campaign, amplified by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and spread by congressional allies and supporters online. 

Apart from already being a federal felony, numerous studies have shown that noncitizen voting and registration are largely non-existent problems, and certainly not election-swinging ones. 

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told reporters last week that the number of “potential noncitizens” found on voter rolls in state audits are “extraordinarily small, and what some states don’t then go and say is how many of them actually voted, because that number will be virtually zero.”

Meanwhile, a number of mostly conservative states and localities have pulled out of the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that allows states to compare voter registration, licensing and identification data across different states to update and maintain accurate voter databases. Some have switched to using tools developed by partisan conservative organizations that have been error-prone and flagged thousands of eligible voters as ineligible to vote. 

As Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd noted in his testimony, his state’s voter registration numbers are constantly fluctuating largely due to things that have nothing to do with voter fraud or ineligible noncitizens attempting to cast a ballot. That number changes every minute of every day, the Republican said: A person turns 18, a person passes away, a person moves into the state, a person moves out of the state. A person becomes a U.S. citizen and registers to vote for the first time, a person becomes a felon or has their voting rights restored. 

Byrd, Rose and Warner remarked at one point that the U.S. should have a “zero tolerance” policy for any instances of non-citizen voting, saying some local races in their states often come down to a handful of votes. 

But critics contend that there are already numerous laws and procedures in place to prevent non-citizen voting. Voters must attest under penalty of perjury that they are eligible citizens before registering, and election officials cross reference voter data with state and federal databases from the Social Security Administration, state departments and motor vehicle departments to validate their citizenship. 

They also cite studies that show at least 1 in 10 eligible voters in America don’t have ready access to a driver’s license, birth certificate and other documents that underpin proof of citizenship laws. 

Federal voter registration initiatives only look to register Democrats

An argument repeatedly pushed by congressional Republicans during the hearing was that the Biden administration’s executive order on promoting access to voting has operated as a secret “get out the vote” operation for Democrats. In particular, they’ve highlighted partnerships between the Small Business Administration and states like Michigan to help direct citizens to online resources around voter registration and serve as a formally designated Voter Registration Agency under the National Voter Registration Act.  

It’s a charge that has bubbled up from conservative influencers in recent years, with congressional Republicans holding hearings on the issue. Murphy questioned Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, on her state’s partnership with the SBA, repeatedly charging that the agency’s initiatives sought to register voters “only for Democrats.” 

But there doesn’t appear to be any hard evidence showing that the SBA designed its voter registration initiative to favor or boost Democratic turnout. The only services listed on a fact sheet for the program are to direct voters to nonpartisan voter registration resources on federal websites and serve as a Voter Registration Agency for states that request it. 

When House Republicans held a hearing on the SBA’s supposed weaponization of voter registration in June, one of the witnesses, Lisa Danetz, pointed out that federal agencies are prohibited by the NVRA and the Hatch Act from engaging in partisan politics, and that armed forces recruiting centers, military installations and tribal colleges have all previously served as designated Voter Registration Agencies under the NVRA in Democratic and Republican administrations. 

She further noted that “the intergovernmental agreement in this case also prohibits partisan conduct by any SBA staff in Michigan.”

‘Overhyped’ threats to election officials

West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner, who ran for governor earlier this year before bowing out in the Republican primary, claimed in his testimony that the Biden administration and allies were “hyping domestic terrorism and overplaying threats to election officials” instead of tackling real problems. 

But as CyberScoop has reported, the alarm about threats to election workers has come primarily from state and local officials who have been on the front lines of election administration. Many have said that unfounded conspiracy theories about vote-rigging have gotten dramatically worse since the 2020 election and the COVID-19 pandemic, and that overwhelming suspicion has isolated them from their own communities and families.

Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., expressed his sympathies to state officials, noting that threats and harassment have gone up for elected officials like him as well, something independent research has borne out.  

“It’s sadly enough the world we live in and I blame social media, primarily for all of it,” he said. 

Murphy then used his five minutes of questioning to accuse election officials and the Biden administration of “smugness,” intentionally allowing dead people and illegal immigrants to vote in U.S. elections and collaborating to create a one-party state in America. All of those claims, each with little to no evidence behind them, have been cited as motivating factors by individuals charged with threatening or harassing election workers in recent years.

Federal agencies like the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and national organizations like the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Officials have stepped up awareness and resourcing around the problem, with the Justice Department starting a task force dedicated to combating and prosecuting election-related threats. 

Put another way, the DOJ has brought more charges this year against individuals for threatening election officials (20) than the number of fraudulent votes identified by courts in dozens of legal challenges from the Trump campaign in 2020 (0). 

Yes, elections continue to be underfunded 

A persistently sore subject among state and local officials has been sputtering federal funding support since elections were designated critical infrastructure by the Department of Homeland Security in 2017. 

This past year, Congress allocated just $55 million in federal grant dollars to states for security and other improvements to elections, and Republican House appropriators in June passed a proposed budget on a party-line vote that would zero out all funding for the program next year, while also dramatically slashing funding for another federal body, the Election Assistance Commission. 

That has come as some members who have previously supported federal election funding to states, such as Sen. James Lankford, R. Okla., have expressed concerns that states aren’t spending the federal HAVA dollars they already have. 

But states continue to report urgent, ongoing funding shortfalls to handle the increasing responsibilities they have around election administration, including cybersecurity and fighting back against voting mis- and disinformation. 

Fontes rattled off a litany of preparations Arizona undertook for the four elections it has administered just in 2024, including improved trainings for new election officials, tiger teams of technologists to bolster IT infrastructure at county election offices and resource assessments. 

“None of this is free and none of it is cheap,” Fontes said. “Our operations, administration and security depend on intermittent, rare and never enough funding for the Help America Vote Act grants that we are occasionally given by Congress.”

Fontes went a step further, challenging the committee and Congress to put real resources behind their rhetorical concerns about election security. 

“We implore you, please consider that if this is such a big deal, and if it is so important that we continue to have free, fair and secure elections, fund them,” he said.