After the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency last week announced cuts to its staffing and programs, several secretaries of state told StateScoop they\u2019re concerned about what it could mean for the future of the nation\u2019s voting systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their worries follow acting CISA Acting Director Bridget Bean last week circulating a memo<\/a> announcing a \u201creview and assessment\u201d of every program, service, action and position related to the agency\u2019s efforts to counter \u201cmis, dis- and malinformation,\u201d with results due March 6.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CBS News last weekend reported that officials at the Department of Homeland Security fired about 400 employees<\/a>, citing inadequate performance. This included more than 130 staff at CISA, an agency that President Donald Trump created in 2018 to consolidate federal efforts to protect against a rising tide of cyberattacks and foreign interference in U.S. elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bean\u2019s memo noted that funding has also been discontinued for the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or EI-ISAC, a program housed at the nonprofit Center for Internet Security that provides training, threat monitoring services and shares resources with elections officials in state and local government offices across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A White House spokesperson told StateScoop that EI-ISAC\u2019s funds were eliminated because its work no longer effectuates the priorities of DHS. The funding cuts come as DHS \u201cpartially terminates\u201d its cooperative agreement with CIS, according to a separate Feb. 14 memo obtained by StateScoop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The order technically leaves the New York nonprofit free to provide services to state and local governments, but without its prior designation, a majority of states<\/a> are now legally barred from accepting its services. One source familiar with the situation, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, said these changes will likely shutter the EI-ISAC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The White House spokesperson said that funding was not eliminated for CIS\u2019s Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which provides threat monitoring, training and other cybersecurity services outside of the elections space. The spokesperson declined to provide further clarification on which CISA programs will be affected by cuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat who during Trump\u2019s first term praised his administration\u2019s work in establishing CISA and convening experts to improve the security of the nation\u2019s election infrastructure, told StateScoop she\u2019s now \u201cvery concerned\u201d about the cuts, particularly how they will affect election offices in rural counties that had been relying on the funding and free technical services CISA provided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is a difficult place to be in,\u201d Toulouse Oliver said. \u201cMost of us are starting our legislative sessions. Ours is very short in New Mexico and we didn\u2019t even have the foreknowledge to be able to relay to our legislature that we were going to be losing out on a lot of these tools and resources.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s common for smaller local governments to employ information technology teams of only a handful of people \u2014 or for the smallest county offices, for a single employee to split time between IT and other responsibilities. Toulouse Oliver said the two most useful services CISA and EI-ISAC offered included \u201crobust\u201d penetration testing, which alerted officials to vulnerabilities in their voting systems, and Albert sensors<\/a>. Over the last several years, CIS has distributed to state and local governments more than 1,000 of the devices, which act as an early warning system for anomalous network activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI can have all the Albert sensors on my systems, but I\u2019m connected to 33 counties,\u201d Toulouse Oliver said. \u201cAnd if one of those counties doesn\u2019t have an Albert sensor, that\u2019s one county that we\u2019re missing potentially that can have an upward flow of weird traffic. It\u2019s just concerning that it sounds like those two things are going to go away and we\u2019re going to have to figure out a way to pay for them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Toulouse Oliver said that in addition to the free services, her state was also receiving $1 million annually via the Help America Vote Act, a 2002 law created by former President George W. Bush that instantiated new standards for voting systems and set new accessibility and authentication rules for voters. HAVA also created the Election Assistance Commission, an independent clearinghouse for election administration information. Toulouse Oliver said some are concerned that the Trump administration may start cutting funding and programs at EAC next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI can guarantee you it\u2019s going to be a big hit to our office and that\u2019s relative compared to small counties, who already don\u2019t have enough resources,\u201d she said of CISA\u2019s recent cuts. \u201cTo be honest, we\u2019re scrambling, trying to figure out what we can preserve.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cybersecurity efforts in government have traditionally enjoyed nonpartisan status and bipartisan support. David J. Becker, executive director and founder of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, said he believes the expertise developed at CISA over the past seven years has become a casualty of politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat CISA was able to do was to provide a kind of birds-eye view of what cyber threats there were that could affect our national election infrastructure,\u201d Becker said. \u201cSince elections are run at the states, each state doesn\u2019t have an entity as big as the federal Department of Homeland Security. So they helped them put the pieces together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond cybersecurity, CISA also helped election offices with physical security, preparing for and responding to threats of violence<\/a> against election workers and white powder envelopes, along with disinformation campaigns targeting elections. Disinformation about the voting process \u2014 such as a baseless claim repeated by Trump that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him \u2014 is another threat that CISA and the election security community at large have found some success in tamping down<\/a> in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt appears that even though our foreign adversaries are only ramping up their efforts, with massive misinformation campaigns, with specific targeted campaigns, we are now effectively unilaterally disarming,\u201d Becker said. \u201cI imagine that our adversaries are celebrating this as they\u2019re planning their next attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Becker credited the Trump administration for CISA\u2019s success in fighting election disinformation campaigns, which he said do not necessarily favor a particular party in the United States. He pointed to Russia\u2019s tendency to favor Republicans, Iran\u2019s preference for Democrats and China\u2019s penchant for sowing chaos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAmerican elections should be for Americans,\u201d Becker said. \u201cThey should not be for foreign adversaries to mislead the American people. And that was something we all agreed upon on a bipartisan basis, apparently up until recently.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday announced an inquiry<\/a> into the “potentially illegal” and “unfair” censorship practices of technology platforms. A press release encourages “platform users who have been banned, shadow banned, demonetized, or otherwise censored” to share their stories with the agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And The New York Times reported Thursday<\/a> that the Trump administration has continued to pull back on the government\u2019s work flagging foreign disinformation campaigns, reassigning several dozen officials at the FBI and CISA who\u2019d been assigned to the task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The moves reverse the government\u2019s posture over the last several years, when officials sought to identify and counter mis- and disinformation leveled against all 16 sectors designated by CISA<\/a> as critical infrastructure, a group that also includes the power grid, transportation and water systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI don\u2019t think the elections sector differs from any other sector that enjoys the critical infrastructure designation,\u201d said Steve Simon, Minnesota\u2019s secretary of state. \u201cMeaning if a foreign adversary is spinning up false tales and lies about any sector, I think we should have folks in the federal government who are there to identify it and push back on it. I think it would be a major mistake and a danger to national security to abandon the misinformation mission.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Simon, a Democrat who was first elected secretary of state in 2014, said that when he learned about foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election, he was \u201cshocked and outraged.\u201d Minnesota was one of 21 states where nation-state hackers targeted websites and election systems<\/a>, in some cases stealing voter information, though they did not succeed in Minnesota.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That election \u201cchanged everything,\u201d he said, noting that one lesson gleaned in the intervening years has been that election security can only be effectively managed by the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u2018A difficult place\u2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\u2018For Americans\u2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\u2018A major mistake\u2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n