Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson indicated Friday that the U.S. has never had a completely secure election process, even as he said his agency is ramping up efforts to protect this year’s election from cyberthreats.
“When have we ever had a clean electoral process?” Johnson asked on MSNBC Friday when asked whether the system can be completely secure. “There are cyberintrusions in this country every day and every hour.”
Still, Johnson said DHS is doing what it can to protect the U.S. election system, after a successful infiltration of “the online presence of state and local election officials.”
“We have to be concerned about the increasing sophistication of cyber actors, whether they are nation-states, criminal actors, hacktivists and do our utmost to protect our election systems,” said Johnson.
When asked if voters could potentially find the integrity of their ballot compromised in the upcoming presidential election in light of the successful attack, Johnson gave his assurances that the decentralized nature of elections makes the country more secure.
“One of the reasons I suspect the system is secure is because it’s so decentralized. There are some 9,000 jurisdictions responsible for vote counting across this country. The way our elections work in this country, there’s no one single point of failure,” said Johnson. He also pointed to the existence of “established best practices for having backups for how you tally votes.”
Asked if just one successful attack on a municipality could undermine the integrity of the country’s elections, Johnson reiterated that is “why there are best practices which why there need to be backups, and which is why we encourage state officials local officials to do the utmost to secure your system. And we’re here to help.”
