The Department of Homeland Security and election officials from around the country are expected to meet in October to begin working toward an understanding of what authority DHS has over the country’s election systems since it designated those systems as “critical infrastructure.”
Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson is president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, a nonpartisan coalition of most of the top election officials in each state. Lawson’s communications director, Valerie Warycha, says NASS and DHS are working on setting up a “coordinating council” to discuss the issue.
“This will be members of federal, state and local government that will make decisions regarding how the designation will work,” Warycha told the Washington Examiner by email. “They are currently working to finalize the council and to organize an initial meeting. The first meeting is tentatively scheduled for Oct 14/15 in Atlanta.”
Organizing a cooperative council to hash out the designation marks a significant step for the group, which has opposed the DHS edict since its inception.
DHS spokesman Scott McConnell confirmed the tentative dates.
“We continue to work with state and local election officials to improve the security of the nation’s election infrastructure, through an ongoing dialogue and by building trusted relationships,” McConnell told the Washington Examiner. “This council is an important part of this effort and is part of formalizing the working arrangement between DHS and state and local governments.”
News of a tentative working meeting comes at the same time that DHS finally notified election officials in 21 states that they were targeted by some kind of hacking attempt in 2016. DHS had already disclosed their knowledge of the hacks in a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 21 of this year. However, they had not notified all of the local governments who were targeted.
Sen. Mark Warner, vice chairman on the Senate Intelligence Committee which has been looking into election security all year, pounced on the news.
“It’s unacceptable that it took almost a year after the election to notify states that their elections systems were targeted, but I’m relieved that DHS has acted upon our numerous requests and is finally informing the top elections officials in all 21 affected states that Russian hackers tried to breach their systems in the run up to the 2016 election,” Warner said in a statement Friday evening.
The Washington Examiner learned of the tentative meeting between DHS and top election officials prior to Friday’s news that DHS finally contacted the local governments.
DHS first gave the nation’s voting systems the “critical infrastructure” designation in the last month of the Obama administration under the direction of then-DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson. But not long after, the Trump administration signaled it would keep the policy in place.
The designation provides DHS some areas of interface with the state and local voting authorities, but the voting systems designation was controversial because voting laws and procedures are the domain of the individual states unless changed by an act of Congress.
At the time, Johnson said the designation makes voting machines a “priority” in the national infrastructure plan, and lets DHS provide aid to state and local officials. He also said it lets federal officials “have full and frank discussions with key stakeholders regarding sensitive vulnerability information.”
Johnson also insisted it does not mean a “takeover” of voting infrastructure.
“This designation
does
not mean a federal takeover, regulation, oversight or intrusion concerning elections in this country,” Secretary Johnson wrote in January when announcing the rule. “This designation does nothing to change the role state and local governments have in administering and running elections.”
NASS held its annual conference in July in Indianapolis, and at the time, was still critical that it had not been informed of the proposed outline of the powers DHS wanted.
Adding fuel to the debate was the leak of a document in a news report by The Intercept that showed the National Security Agency was aware of numerous cyber hacks or attacks attempted on election systems or attempted on computer systems in election offices in more than 100 various locations around the country, but NASS said their members weren’t alerted by federal officials.
Lawson testified about election security before the Senate Intelligence Committee in July, and after the hearing received a cautionary forecast from Chairman Richard Burr on where the issue of state and federal cooperation on election security was going.
“It is absolutely critical that we have not only a collaboration but a communication between the federal government and the states as it relates to our voting systems,” Burr said at the end of the hearing. “If not, I fear that there would be an attempt to, in some way, shape, or form, nationalize [voting systems]. That is not the answer.”
