After blocking election security bills earlier this year, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has voiced support for $250 million in funding to help states shore up their defenses.
Still, McConnell’s funding support, announced in mid-September, falls far short of the $600 million approved by the House of Representatives for election security. Some advocates said McConnell’s about-face is too little, too late.
McConnell’s support is “promising, but more is needed to help states upgrade their systems and validate the 2020 election,” said Marian K. Schneider, president of Verified Voting, an election security advocacy group. The $600 million from the House is “much closer to meeting the need for proper investment in election security.”
Federal funds will allow states to replace “aging, insecure” voting equipment and implement security best practices, including paper ballots and post-election audits, she added. “Congress has the obligation to protect the country from threats to national security and has the opportunity to act on this nonpartisan issue — after all, everyone votes on the same equipment,” she said.
The Senate funding would pump up voting system security budgets by an average of $5 million per state, which would represent a significant increase in some, noted James Goepel, CEO and general counsel at Fathom Cyber, a cybersecurity strategy firm. For example, Colorado spent about $14.5 million on voting security in the 2018 election, meaning an extra $5 million would be a 34% increase.
“That being said, $5 million probably isn’t enough for most states to really tackle election security,” he added. “The infrastructure changes needed alone would likely be significantly more than the $5 million.”
However, states should already have budgets for election security, Goepel added. “The federal government is merely supplementing the costs since the states have not historically prioritized election security,” he said.
The Senate funding is unfortunately coming too late, said Zohar Pinhasi, CEO of MonsterCloud, a cybersecurity vendor. The funding is a “start,” he added, but the 2020 election is just over a year away.
“For any meaningful change to be implemented in America’s voting system to make it more secure, plans would have had to have been implemented four years ago,” Pinhasi added. “No matter how good the intent, and no matter how well funded, these things take time, and a lot of it. This isn’t something you can roll out immediately now that the checkbook has arrived.”
McConnell, in a speech on the Senate floor, said the $250 million would “help states improve their defenses and shore up their voting systems.”
Senate Democrats pushing for election funding applauded McConnell’s support, saying $250 million is better than zero. Some Republicans had questioned the need for new funding because some states have not entirely spent their share of the $380 million Congress allocated for the 2018 election.
With $600 million approved by the House, some Democrats also say they hope the final number will be more than $250 million. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont will push for more funding in conference negotiations, a spokesman said.
The Senate funding was included in a bipartisan amendment to a Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill and sponsored by Leahy, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby of Alabama, and Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware.
“These funds will allow states to upgrade election technology, improve cybersecurity, and help prevent future cyberattacks,” Leahy said during a discussion of the amendment. “We know … that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election, targeted our election infrastructure, and did so, according to [Robert] Mueller, in ‘sweeping and systematic’ fashion.”
A recent Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report found that the Russian government targeted all 50 states by looking for vulnerabilities to exploit, Leahy added.
McConnell’s support for funding came just days after a group of conservative leaders called on Republicans to push for election security measures.
“American elections are a soft target,” wrote Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, and Tony Shaffer, a retired U.S. Army intelligence officer, in a recent opinion piece. “Leading computer security experts have studied a range of electronic voting infrastructure — including touch screen machines, optical scanners, electronic poll books, and registration database systems — and found significant vulnerabilities that could enable a range of hackers to threaten election integrity.”
