Category Archives: James Lankford

Election Assistance Commission pleads for more money in Senate hearing

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The Election Assistance Commission is straining to secure elections in advance of the 2020 cycle with its current level of funding, the organization’s leadership told lawmakers Wednesday during a hearing on Capitol Hill. EAC chairwoman Christy McCormick said during a Senate Rules Committee hearing on election security that the commission has seen its budget halved from where it was in 2010, despite the fact that its responsibilities have greatly increased since the 2016 election. “That’s unbelievable,” Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said of the cuts. “That’s like cutting the budget of the fire department in the middle of a five alarm fire. We’ve never had such a serious attack on our political systems that we’ve had in the last three years and your budget is 50 percent what it was.” All four EAC commissioners who testified Wednesday agreed that information sharing with local election officials needs to improve in advance of the 2020 elections. Two […]

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Flagship election security bill gets a companion in the House

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A bipartisan group of House lawmakers introduced a bill Friday that aims to assist state governments in their election security efforts and boost cooperation between the federal and state officials on the issue. The bill shares the name of a companion bill in the Senate, the Secure Elections Act, which senators from both major parties have been pushing along for months. The House version was introduced by four members of the Intelligence Committee: Trey Gowdy, R-S.C.; Tom Rooney, R-Fla.; Jim Himes , D-Conn. and Terri Sewell, D-Ala. Like its Senate counterpart, the House bill would allow state and local election offices to apply for federal grants to replace paperless, electronic voting machines. Security experts and election integrity advocates say these machines are vulnerable targets to hacking because they don’t leave a paper trail that can be used to verify each vote. The bill also would facilitate the process whereby the […]

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White House floats law to shore up agencies’ digital supply chain

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The Trump administration is proposing a law to tighten up the security of computer systems that the federal government buys and uses. Thursday, the White House publicly released the draft of legislation it had sent to Capitol Hill two days earlier. The proposal would shore up supply-chain cybersecurity for civilian federal agencies, which is currently being considered in piecemeal fashion across multiple different bills in the House and Senate. The news was first reported by Inside Cybersecurity. The White House’s proposal, titled “Federal Information Technology Supply Chain Risk Management Improvement Act of 2018,” would create two bodies – a Federal IT Acquisition Security Council and a Critical IT Supply Chain Risk Evaluation Board – that offer agencies advice and guidance on how to cut down on supply chain security risks when procuring their technology. If passed, the bill would give civilian agencies more authorities and tools to mitigate supply chain […]

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State officials ask lawmakers for more election security funding

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All three state elections officials on a panel before the Senate Rules Committee Wednesday told lawmakers that they would gladly accept more financial assistance from the federal government for election security. The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) continues to dole out grants for states as part of a $380 million fund Congress appropriated in March under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). But the officials who run the country’s elections have some differences about the role federal lawmakers and agencies should play, with some worrying about overreach into a process run by the states. There was no disagreement at the hearing, however, that additional money would be welcomed. “While our upgrades to equipment and cybersecurity will be an ongoing challenge for many states, the federal funding received will regrettably be insufficient to do all that we want or need,” said Jim Condos, Vermont’s secretary of state. “However, we are very grateful for […]

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Senate bill hopes to sort out supply-chain cybersecurity risks, prevent next Kaspersky drama

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A new bipartisan Senate bill would try to get to the bottom of supply chain risks by setting up a new federal acquisition council that would include representation from the intelligence community and Defense Department. The goal of the bill is to help streamline coordination between agencies so that the government can avoid buying technology that’s bugged by foreign spies. The “Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act” was introduced Tuesday by Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. It tasks agencies across the government with creating a strategy to tackle supply chain threats embedded in federally procured technology systems. If a malicious piece of equipment enters the supply chain of government agencies, experts say it could be used for espionage or more destructive purposes. The announcement comes after a year in which top officials have repeatedly grappled with national security concerns surrounding Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, an anti-virus software maker that […]

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Election security legislation gains attention on Capitol Hill

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Senators are making a renewed push to secure voting infrastructure ahead of the midterm elections through measures that would boost states’ cooperation with U.S. intelligence agencies and require the use of paper ballots. As the Senate considers an annual defense policy bill, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., is urging support for a bipartisan amendment that would tighten cyberthreat information sharing between states and the intelligence community. “With the new kind of [information] warfare we’re seeing,” Klobuchar said Tuesday at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, failing to update U.S. law would be “a very big lost opportunity.” The Secure Elections Act sponsored by Klobuchar and Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., would task the Department of Homeland Security – which is already a hub for passing intelligence from federal to state officials – with quickly sharing election-related threats with all state election agencies. The bill also aims to speed up the security-clearance process for state […]

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Election security bill still needs work in some areas, state officials tell Senate sponsors

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Several secretaries of state are telling the main backers of a Senate election security bill that the legislation might need tweaks to how it addresses information sharing, state-federal communication channels, funding mechanisms and post-election audits, among other things. The secretaries, who are the top election officials in their states, met with bill sponsors James Lankford, R-Okla., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., in person and via phone Monday to discuss the Secure Elections Act. The legislation is intended to bolster election security by smoothing out coordination between the state and federal levels and providing states financial support for operations and equipment upgrades. State secretaries from Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Colorado and New Mexico participated in the meeting. A spokesperson for Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson said that the secretary suggested quicker intelligence reporting to states. Among the ways the Department of Homeland Security is currently coordinating with states is by sponsoring security clearances for state election officials to review information about […]

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Stalled election security bill is reborn with support from Senate Intelligence Committee

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A bipartisan group of lawmakers from the Senate Intelligence Committee is reintroducing a bill that aims to bolster election cybersecurity. The purpose of the original Secure Elections Act is intact: to facilitate communication between the federal government and the state and local offices that run elections, to expedite security clearances for those officials and to provide financial support for state election infrastructure. Changes include making funding available to local election jurisdictions and create an election security advisory panel, among other things. The new bill retains its five original bipartisan co-sponsors, but notably now includes leaders from the Senate Intelligence Committee — Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., who serves as the chair and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who is the vice chair. “Our democracy is under attack by foreign actors who seek to undermine and destabilize our country,” Burr said in a press release. “This bill will help strengthen our cybersecurity heading […]

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Spooked by election hacking, states are moving to paper ballots

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Paper ballots may at first seem like an antiquated voting practice, but hacking fears are now pushing an increasing number of states toward a return to the basics. State legislatures and election directors are heeding warnings from Washington that hackers may tamper with electronic voting systems in the 2018 midterm elections. The U.S. intelligence community has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a campaign to interfere with the 2016 presidential election and that the Kremlin will try to do so again. On the national level, lawmakers have made several attempts to push legislation aiming to strengthen election cybersecurity through grants to upgrade equipment and to increase cooperation between the federal government and lower jurisdictions. So far, no such legislation has passed either house in Congress. Amid all this national attention, a number of states have started to act on their own bolster the integrity of elections they run. With these […]

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Senate panel gives go-ahead to bill that would hit reset on DHS

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Congress is moving forward with a plan to reauthorize the Department of Homeland Security for the first time since its 2002 creation and establish a permanent, dedicated cyber office within the agency. The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs approved the legislation Wednesday. The current bill is a version of what the House passed in July. If it passes in the full Senate, it would still need to see action in the House, even though that side of Congress already passed two attempts to reauthorize DHS last year. The Senate bill would reorganize DHS’s National Protection and Programs Directorate into a dedicated cyber agency, called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. NPPD was established in 2007 by DHS and therefore isn’t officially deputized by Congress. The new office would be headed by an department undersecretary. “Passing the Department of Homeland Security Authorization Act is an important step to strengthen DHS and to establish a process […]

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