Podcasts about secure elections act

“Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Elections” follows security expert Harri Hursti and others who reveal alarming vulnerabilities in U.S. electronic voting machines. Filmmakers Simon Ardizzone, Russell Michaels and Sarah Teale illuminate paper-balloting solutions, and point to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as a key impediment to passing the Secure Elections Act that has bipartisan support. — Raphaela Neihausen and Thom Powers For more information, click here to visit the film web site.

The currently legal ability of obscenely rich people to bribe lawmakers and law enforcers is the source of many - if not all - of our political problems. In this episode, get an update on the few democracy-enhancing bills that have moved in this Congress and Jen speaks to Sam Fieldman - the National Counsel at Wolf-PAC - who explains how we can constitutionally end the role of money in politics by going around Congress. Joe Briney joins Jen for the thank you's. Please Support Congressional Dish – Quick Links Click here to contribute monthly or a lump sum via PayPal Click here to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Send Zelle payments to: Donation@congressionaldish.com Send Venmo payments to: @Jennifer-Briney Send Cash App payments to: $CongressionalDish or Donation@congressionaldish.com Use your bank's online bill pay function to mail contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North, Number 4576, Crestview, FL 32536 Please make checks payable to Congressional Dish Thank you for supporting truly independent media! ______________________________________________________ Recommended Congressional Dish Episodes CD129:The impeachment of John Koskinen CD192: H.R. 1 Outline Recommended Reading Article: Ensuring elections 'free from foreign intrusion' by John Sarbanes and Brian Frosh, Baltimore Sun, July 3, 2019 Article: Alexander-Murrary Bill, by Donald Shaw, ReadSludge.com, June 10, 2019. Article: Microsoft and Election Guard by Whitney Webb, MPN News, May 24, 2019. Document: Ballot-Marking Devices (BMDs) Cannot Assure the Will of the Voters    SSRN, May 21, 2019 Article: DHS to Assess Risks Posed to Ballot-Marking Devices by Mark Niese, GovTech, May 2, 2019. Article: DHS, FBI say election systems in all 50 states were targeted in 2016 by Sean Gallagher, ARS Technica, April 10, 2019. Article: Amid Election Integrity Criticism, Georgia Governor Signs Bill to Replace Voting Machines by Greg Bluestein and Mark Niesse, Governing, April 5, 2019.  Article: Firm’s close ties to Georgia stir concerns about voting system purchase by Mark Niesse, Atlanta Journal, January 30, 2019 Article: “Our best friend in this debate is the public,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told reporters on Friday. by Ella Nilsen, Vox, January 04, 2019. Article: How the GOP is using the Help America Vote Act to block voting, by Thom Hartmann, Salon.com, November 23, 2018. Article: The Latest: Some Georgia Statewide Races Too Close to Call  U.S. News, November 7, 2018. Article: VOTING MACHINES ARE STILL ABSURDLY VULNERABLE TO ATTACKS by Lily Hay Newman, Wired, September 28, 2018. Article: Top Voting Machine Vendor Admits It Installed Remote-Access Software on Systems Sold to States by Kim Zetter, Vice News, July 17, 2018. Article: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Ran—and Won—as a Movement Candidate, by DD Guttenplan, The Nation, June 27, 2018. Article: Voting machine vendor treated election officials to trips to Vegas, elsewhere  by Greg Gordon, Amy Renee Leiker, Jamie Self and Stanley Dunlap, McClatchy DC Bureau, June 21, 2018. Document: LD-2 Lobbying Report Disclosure Form Secretary of the Senate Office of Public Records, 2018 Data: Lobbying Spending Data:Lobbyists representing Election Systems & Software, 2018  OpenSecrets.org, 2018. Article: The Fraud Behind Article V Convention Opposition  by Sam Fieldman, Medium.com, October 12, 2017. Article: Some Machines Are Flipping Votes, But That Doesn't Mean They're Rigged  by Pam Fessler, NPR, October 26, 2016. Document: 2012 REDMAP Summary Report  Redistricting Majority Project, January 4, 2013. Document: Report on Proper Use of Campaign Funds and Resources  Committee on Ethics, January 4, 2013. Document: Title 36 organizations  Every CRSRReport.com, June 17, 2011.  _____________________________________________________ Bill Outline H.R. 2722: SAFE Act Sponsor: Zoe Lofgren of northern California 74 pages Passed the House on June 27, 2019 225-184 Only GOP yes: Newbie Rep. Brian Mast - 38 year old wounded Afghanistan war veteran representing the Palm Beach area Went to the Committee on Rules and Administration in the Senate Title 1: Financial Support for Election Infrastructure Subtitle A: Voting System Security Improvement Grants Sec. 102: Paper ballot requirements “The voting system shall require the use of an individual, durable, voter-verified paper ballot of the voters’ vote that shall be marked and made available for inspection and verification by the voter before the voter’s vote is cast and counted, which shall be counted by hand or read by an optical character recognition device or other counting device." “The voting system shall provide the voter with an opportunity to correct any error on the paper ballot…” Recounts: The paper ballot “shall constitute the official ballot and shall be preserved and used as the official ballot for purposes any recount or audit conducted with respect to any election for Federal office in which the voting system is used.” Sec. 104: Durability and readability requirements for ballots Ballots must be on “durable” paper, which means it is capable of withstanding multiple recounts by hand without compromising the fundamental integrity of the ballots” and they must maintain readability for 22 months. Sec. 105: Recycled Paper Ballots must be printed on recycled paper starting on January 1, 2021. Sec. 107: These rules will apply “for any election for Federal office held in 2020 or any succeeding year.” Grandfathered equipment: Districts using machines that print paper ballots with the votes already tallied can use those machines until 2022, but they must offer every voter the opportunity to vote using a blank paper ballot, which are not allowed to be designated as provisional. Sec. 111:Grants for equipment changes Federal tax money will be given to states to replace their voting system, if needed. Grant amount: At least $1 per the average number of people who voted in the last two elections To use these grants, the states can only buy voting equipment from a vendor “owned and controlled by a citizen or permanent resident of the United States” The vendor must tell government officials if they get any part of their election infrastructure parts from outside the United States Authorizes (but doesn’t appropriate) $600 million for 2019 and $175 million for each even number election year through 2026 Subtitle B:Risk-Limiting Audits Sec. 121: Risk-limited audits required for all elections for Federal office State election officials will make the rules for how these will be done Sec. 122: Federal government will pay for audits Authorizes “such sums as are necessary” Title II: Promoting Cybersecurity Through Improvements in Election Administration Sec. 201: Voting system cybersecurity requirements Vote counting machine rules Machines that count ballots must be built so that "it’s mechanically impossible for the device to add or change the vote selections on a printed or market ballot” The device must be “capable of exporting its data (including vote tally data sets and cast vote records) in a machine-readable, open data standards format” The device’s software’s source code, system build tools, and compilation parameters must be given to certain Federal and State regulators and “may be shared by any entity to whom it has been provided… with independent experts for cybersecurity analysis.” The devise must have technology that allows “election officials, cybersecurity researchers, and voters to verify that the software running on the device was built from a specific, untampered version of the code” that was provided to Federal and State regulators. Loophole for moles: The Director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security can waive any of the requirements other than the first one that prohibits machines that can change votes. The waivers can be applied to a device for no more than two years. The waivers must be publicly available on the Internet. Not effective until November 2024 election. Ballot marking machines and vote counters can’t use or “be accessible by any wireless, power-line, or concealed communication device” or “connected to the Internet or any non-local computer system via telephone or other communication network at any time.” Effective for the 2020 general election and all elections after Ballot marking devices can’t be capable of counting votes States may submit applications to Federal regulators for testing and certification the accuracy of ballot marking machines, but they don’t have to. Sec. 202: Testing of existing voting systems 9 months before each regularly scheduled general election for Federal offices, “accredited laboratories” will test the voting system hardware and software with was certified for use in the most recent election. If the hardware and software fails the test, it “shall” be decertified. Effective for the 2020 General Election. Sec. 203: Requiring use of software and hardware for which information is disclosed by manufacturer “In the operation of voting systems in an election for Federal office, a State may only use software for which the manufacturer makes the source code… publicly available online under a license that grants a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual, sub-licensable license to all intellectual property rights in such source code…." …except that the manufacturer may prohibit people from using the software for commercial advantage or “private monetary compensation” that is unrelated to doing legitimate research. States “may not use a voting system in an election for Federal office unless the manufacture of the system publicly discloses online the identification of the hardware used to operate the system” If the voting system is not widely-used, the manufacture must make the design “publicly available online under a license that grants a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual, sub-licensable license to all intellectual property rights…” Effective for the 2020 General election Sec. 204: Poll books will be counted as part of voting systems for these regulations Effective January 1, 2020 Title III: Use of voting machines manufactured in the United States Sec. 301: Voting machines must be manufactured in the United States HR 391: White House Ethics Transparency Act of 2019 Pdf of the bill Reported June 12, 2019 out of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform 23-16 On January 28, 2017 - a week after taking office - President Trump issued an executive order that requires all executive agency appointees to sign and be contractually obligated to a pledge that… The appointee won’t lobby his/her former agency for 5 years after leaving Will not lobby the administration he/she previously worked for Will not, after leaving government, “engage in any activity on behalf of any foreign government or foreign political party which, were it undertaken on January 20, 2017, would require me to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938” Will not accept gifts from registered lobbyists Will recuse themselves from any matter involving their former employers for two years from the date of their appointment If the appointee was a lobbyist before entering government, that person will not work on any matter that they had lobbied for for 2 years after the appointment BUT Section 3 allows waivers: “The President or his designee may grant to any person a waiver of any restrictions contained in the pledge signed by such person.” Sec. 2: Requires any executive branch official who gets a waiver to submit a written copy to the Director of the Office of Government Ethics and make a written copy of the waiver available to the public on the website of the agency where the appointee works. Backdated to January 20, 2017 (President Trump’s inauguration) H.R. 745: Executive Branch Comprehensive Ethics Enforcement Act of 2019 Reported March 26, 2019 out of the Committee on Oversight and Reform 18-12 Pdf of the bill  Sec. 2: Creates a transition ethics program Requires the President-elect to give Congress a list of everyone in consideration for security clearance within 10 days of the applications submission and a list of everyone granted security clearance within 10 days of their approval. Requires the transition team to create and enforce an “ethics plan” that needs to describe the role of registered lobbyists on the transition team, the role of people registered as foreign agents, and which transition team members of sources of income which are not known by the public Transition team members must be prohibited by the ethics plan from working on matters where they have “personal financial conflicts of interest” during the transition and explain how they plan to address those conflicts of interest during the incoming administration. The transition team ethics plan must be publicly avail on the website of the General Services Administration Transition team members need to submit a list of all positions they have held outside the Federal Government for the previous 12 months -including paid and unpaid positions-, all sources of compensation that exceed $5,000 in the previous 12 months, and a list of policy issues worked on in their previous roles, a list of issues the team member will be recused from as part of the administration. Transition team members that do not comply will not be granted any access to the Federal department or agency that isn’t open to the public. S. 195 : Creates a transition ethics program: Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act Pdf of the bill   Reported 4/10/19 out of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. On Senate Calendar Sec. 2: Definitions “Congressionally mandated report” means a report that is required to be submitted to Congress by a bill, resolution, or conference report that becomes law. Does NOT include reports required from 92 nonprofit corporations labeled as “Patriotic and National Organizations” (“Title 36 corporations”) Sec. 3: Website for reports 1 year after enactment, there needs to be a website “that allows the public to obtain electronic copies of all congressionally mandated reports in one place” If a Federal agency fails to submit a report, the website will tell us the information that is required by law and the date when the report was supposed to be submitted The government can’t charge a fee for access to the reports The reports can be redacted by the Federal agencies Resources Twitter Link: Rachel Maddow Twitter Link  Twitter. Employment Profile: Employment History for Richardson, Sean J OpenSecrets.org Employment Profile: Employment History for Jen Olson  OpenSecrets.org Email Link: Sam Fieldman Email at Wolf-PAC   PDF Email: Email with Eli Baumwell of the W.V. ACLU Volunteer Link: Volunteer for Wolf-PAC Resource Link: Article V Wolf-PAC Resource Link Documentary: Wolf Pac Documentary Congressional Dish Interview: Interview with Sam Fieldman from Wolf-PAC Preet Bharara Podcast: Taking Trump to Court (with David Cole) YouTube Video: Wolf PAC Call for Volunteers - Get Money Out of Politics! YouTube Video: Mike Monetta On Why Wolf-PAC Is Making A Movie YouTube Video: Wolf PAC Resolution Passes New Jersey Senate  YouTube Video: Fight Against Money In Politics: Cenk Uygur (Wolf-PAC Presentation) YouTube Video: Republican Vermont Representative Vicky Strong YouTube Video: Americans for Prosperity testify in New Jersey YouTube Video: Hawaii Senate Judiciary Hearing on 2018 SCR 76, Wolf-PAC YouTube Video: Cenk Uygur's Speech at The Conference to Restore the Republic YouTube Video: Article V Debate Document: Case Docket: Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm'n Document: Brief by ACLU in support of Citizens United Document: Brief by former members of the ACLU in support of neither party Document: Essay on Term Limits Document: Article V of the US Constitution - Overview Document: Virginia Plan (First draft of the Constitution) Document: Full Text of Congressional Regulations on Article V Document: 1984 Version of Congressional Regulations on Article V Document: 1987 Version of Congressional Regulations on Article V  Document: Congressional Record Archive Copy of Congressional Regulations on Article V Document: The Fix It America Constitutional Amendment Document: Take Back our Republic Document: Role of Congress Document: American Promise 28th Amendment Document: United for the People Amendments Reference Website: Massachusetts Commission Govtrack: H.R. 2722 Document: H.R. 391 Document: H.R. 745 Document: H.R. 745 Document: H.R. 964 Document: S. 195   Sound Clip Sources Watch on C-Span: House floor debate on HR 2722 June 27,2019 sound clip transcripts pdf Watch on C-Span: William Barr Testifies on Mueller Report Before Senate Judiciary Committee May 1, 2019 1:57:55 Sen. Amy Klocuchar (MN): For the last two years, Senator Lankford and I, on a bipartisan bill with support from the ranking and the head of the intelligence committee; have been trying to get the Secure Elections Act passed. This would require backup paper ballots. If anyone gets federal funding for an election, it would require audits, um, and it would require better cooperation. Yet the White House, just as we were on the verge of getting a markup in the rules committee (getting it to the floor where I think we would get the vast majority of senators), the White House made calls to stop this. Were you aware of that? Attorney General William Barr: No. Sen. Amy Klocuchar (MN): Okay, well that happened. So what I would like to know from you as our nation’s chief law enforcement officer if you will work with Senator Lankford and I to get this bill done? Because otherwise we are not going to have any clout to get backup paper ballots if something goes wrong in this election. Attorney General William Barr: Well, I will… I will work with you, uh, to, uh, enhance the security of our election and I’ll take a look at what you’re proposing. I’m not familiar with it. Sen. Amy Klocuchar (MN): Okay. Well, it is the bipartisan bill. It has Senator Burr and Senator Warner. It’s support from Senator Graham was on the bill. Senator Harris is on the bill and the leads are Senator Lankford and myself, and it had significant support in the house as well. Hearing: Committee on Oversight and Reform:Strengthening Ethics Rules for the Executive Branch, February 6, 2019 Watch on Youtube *28:00 Rep Jordan (OH): 2013 we learned that the IRS targeted conservative for their political beliefs during the 2012 election cycle systematically for a sustained period of time. They went after people for their conservative beliefs, plan in place, targeted people. They did it. The gross abuse of power would have continued, if not for the efforts of this committee. 2014 the Obama Administration doubled down and attempted to use the IRS rule making process to gut the ability of social welfare organizations to participate in public debate. Congress has so far prevented this regulation from going into effect, but HR 1 would change that. Hearing: Judiciary Committee For The People Act Of 2019, January 29, 2019  Witness: Sherrilyn Ifill - President and Director-Counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Watch on YouTube 32:00 Sherrilyn Ifill: Well before the midterm election, in fact, Georgia officials began placing additional burdens on voters, particularly black and Latino voters, by closing precincts and purging. Over half a million people from the voter rolls the voter purge, which removed 107,000 people, simply because they did not vote in previous elections and respond to a mailing was overseen by the Republican candidate for governor Brian Kemp, who was also the secretary of state. LDF and a chorus of others called on him to recuse himself from participating in the election. But he refused.  ______________________________________________________ Community Suggestions See Community Suggestions HERE. Cover Art Design by Only Child Imaginations ______________________________________________________ Music Presented in This Episode Intro & Exit: Tired of Being Lied To by David Ippolito (found on Music Alley by mevio)

The 2018 DEFCON Vote Hacking Village showed once again that our voting machines are way too easy to hack. Even though election system manufacturers refuse to allow independent researchers to vet their products directly, hackers at DEFCON have managed to get their hands on several systems in use today, and show that they are trivial to compromise. Jacob Hoffman-Andrews from the EFF explains what all of this means and the measures we need to take to address these shortcomings. The PAVE Act that’s currently before Congress would provide mechanisms to mitigate the weaknesses of our voting systems by requiring a paper trail for all votes and risk-limiting audits to validate vote totals with minimal effort and cost. The companion Secure Elections Act is now a much weaker bill and would need to have these provisions restored. Jacob Hoffman-Andrews is a lead developer on Let's Encrypt, the free and automated Certificate Authority. He also works on EFF's Encrypt the Web initiative and helps maintain the HTTPS Everywhere browser extension. Prior to working at EFF, Jacob was on Twitter's anti-spam and security teams. One the security team, he implemented HTTPS-by-default with forward secrecy, key pinning, HSTS, and CSP. On anti-spam, he deployed new machine-learned models to detect and block spam in realtime. Before Twitter, he worked at Google, variously on the maps, transit, and shopping teams. For Further Insight: Website: https://www.eff.org/about/staff/jacob-hoffman-andrews Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/j4cob

On episode 3 of the Breakdown with James Lankford, Senator Lankford is joined by his staff to discuss election security and Lankford's bill, the Secure Elections Act. The purpose of the bill is to streamline cybersecurity information-sharing between federal intelligence entities and state election agencies; provide security clearances to state election officials; and provide support for state election cybersecurity infrastructure.

Since the 2016 election, our country has been questioning whether our elections are secure, fair, and accurate. In this episode, we examine the threats to our election administration, both real and overblown. Please Support Congressional Dish - Quick Links Click here to contribute a lump sum or set up a monthly contribution via PayPal Click here to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Send Zelle payments to: Donation@congressionaldish.com Send Venmo payments to: @Jennifer-Briney Use your bank’s online bill pay function to mail contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North Number 4576 Crestview, FL 32536 Please make checks payable to Congressional Dish Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Recommended Congressional Dish Episodes CD175: State of War CD172: The Illegal Bombing of Syria CD167: Combating Russia (NDAA 2018) LIVE CD108: Regime Change CD041: Why Attack Syria? Additional Reading Report: Dramatic increase in voters purged from voter rolls between 2014 and 2016 by Adia Robinson, ABC News, July 24, 2018. Article: Mueller's latest indictment suggests Russia's infiltration of U.S. election systems could get worse by Lawrence Norden, Slate, July 26, 2018. Article: State election officials didn't know about Russian hacking threat until the read it in the news, emails show by Sam Biddle, The Intercept, June 20, 2018. Article: Supreme court upholds Ohio's purge of voting rolls by Adam Liptak, The New York Times, June 11, 2018. Article: What we know and don't know about election hacking by Clare Malone, FiveThirtyEight, April 10, 2018. Report: America's voting machines at risk - An update by Lawrence Norden and Wilfred U. Codrington III, Brennan Center for Justice, March 8, 2018. Article: The dark roots of AIPAC: America's Pro-Israel Lobby by Doug Rossinow, The Washington Post, March 6, 2018. Article: Wyden presses leading US voting machine manufacturer on potential hacking vulnerabilities by Olivia Beavers, The Hill, March 6, 2018. Article: They myth of the hacker-proof voting machine by Kim Zetter, The New York Times, February 21, 2018. Article: No instant profits in US electronic voting machines, Financial Times, 2018. Article: Virginia is replacing some of its electronic voting machines over security concerns by Andrew Liptak, The Verge, September 10, 2017. Report: It took DEF CON hackers minutes to pwn these US voting machines by Iain Thomson, The Register, July 29, 2017. Article: Russian hackers broke into elections company used in Miami-Dade, Broward by Tim Elfrink, Miami New Times, June 6, 2017. Report: Exclusive: Trump says Clinton policy on Syria would lead to world war three by Steve Holland, Reuters, October 25, 2016. Article: The best Congress AIPAC can buy by L. Michael Hager, Foreign Policy Journal, March 22, 2016. Article: AIPAC-linked group launches $5 million ad campaign against nuke deal by Adam Kredo, The Washington Free Beacon, July 17, 2015. Article: The non-pliticians who profit from Election Day by Megan McCarthy, Fortune, November 4, 2014. Report: Diebold indicted: Its spectre still haunts Ohio election by Bob Fitrakis, Columbus Free Press, October 31, 2013. Article: The mysterious case of Ohio's voting machines by Kim Zetter, Wired, March 26, 2008. Letter: Elections: Federal efforts to improve security and reliability of electronic voting systems are under way, but key activities need to be completed, GAO, September 2005. Article: Ohio's odd numbers by Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair, March 2005. Article: Diebold's political machine by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, Mother Jones, March 5, 2004. Resources Brennan Center for Justice: The Help America Vote Act Congress.gov: S.2261 - Secure Elections Act GovTrack: H.R. 3295 (107th): Help America Vote Act of 2002 Internet Research Agency Indictment: Mueller John Husted, Secretary of State of Ohio Report: President/Vice President Voting Report: November 2, 2004 Justice.gov: New Indictment of Mueller Source Watch: Ashcroft Group Info Sound Clip Sources Hearing: Election Security Preparedness, Senate Rules and Administration Committee, C-SPAN, June 20, 2018. Witnesses: Matthew Masterson - National Protection and Programs Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security Jim Condos - Vermont Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft - Missouri Secretary of State Steve Simon - Minnesota Secretary of State Connie Lawson - Indiana Secretary of State Shane Schoeller - Clerk for Greene County, Missouri Noah Praetz - Director of Elections for Cook County, Illinois 2:40 Senator Roy Blunt (MO): January of 2017, the Department of Homeland Security designated our country’s election infrastructure to be critical infrastructure. This designation began the formalization of information sharing and collaboration among state, local, and federal governments through the creation of a Government Coordinating Council, some of our witness this day are already sitting on that newly formed council. More recently, in the 2018 omnibus, Congress appropriated right at $380 million to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to help states enhance their election infrastructure. As of this week, 38 states have requested $250 million of that money, and about 150 million of it has already been disbursed to the states. 6:45 Senator Amy Klobuchar (MN): So, we have a bill, Senator Lankford and I along with Senator Harris and Graham and Warner and Burr, Heinrich, and Collins. It’s a bipartisan bill called the Secure Elections Act, and we have been working to make changes to it along the way and introduce it as amendment, but it really does four things. First of all, improves information sharing between local election officials, cyber-security experts, and national-security personnel. Second, providing for development and maintenance of cyber-security best practices. We all know, I think there’s five states that don’t have backup paper ballots, and then there's something like nine more that have partial backup paper ballots. And while we’re not mandating what each state does, and we do not want each state to have the exact same election equipment—we think that would be a problem and could potentially lend itself to more break-ins—we think it’s really important that we have some floor and standards that we set that given what we know, I don’t think we’d be doing our democracy any good if we didn’t share that and we didn’t put in some floors. Third, the bill will promote better auditing our election’s use of paper backup systems, which I mentioned, and finally, it’s focused on providing election officials with much-needed resources. As you all know, we were able to get $380 million to be immediately distributed to the state, not play money, money that’s going out right now to states across the country, based on populations. We didn’t have some complicated grant process that would have slowed things down. The money went directly to state election officials as long as the state legislature authorizes it to get accepted and get to work to update their systems. 11:50 Jay Ashcroft: But before we move forward, we should briefly look back to the impetus of why we are all here today: allegations that outside actors threaten the integrity of our elections during the 2016 election cycle. While these are serious allegations, it is vitally important to understand that after two years of investigation, there is no credible—and I could strike “credible” and just put “evidence”—there is no evidence that these incidents caused a single vote or a single voter registration to be improperly altered during the 2016 election cycle. It was not our votes or our election systems that were hacked; it was the people’s perception of our elections. 30:50 Matthew Masterson: For those voters who have questions or concerns regarding the security or integrity of the process, I implore you to get involved. Become a poll worker; watch pre-election testing of the systems, or post-election audits; check your registration information before elections; engage with your state- and local-election officials; and most importantly, go vote. The best response to those who wish to undermine faith in our democracy is to participate and to vote. 1:08:00 Senator Roy Blunt (MO): Should the federal government make an audit trail, a paper audit trail, a requirement to have federal assistance? Jay Ashcroft: I don’t think so. Jim Condos: I do think so. Steve Simon: I think there is a federal interest in making sure that there's some audit process. Sen. Blunt: Well, now, what I’m asking about is, should there be a way to recreate the actual election itself? And I don’t know quite how to do that without paper, even if you had a machine that was not accessible to the web. Jay Ashcroft: I believe states are moving to do that, without federal legislation. So that’s why I don’t think that federal legislation needs to be done to that. 1:23:30 Shane Schoeller: I do want to address one area that concerns Secure Elections Act, that is on page 23, lines three, four, and five. It says, “Each election result is determined by tabulating marked ballots, hand or device.” I strongly recommend for post-election auditing purposes that a state-marked paper ballots, because I believe the opportunity for fraud in electronic ballot-casting system that does not have a paper trail’s too great. *1:32:00 Shane Schoeller: Even if you do a post audit with the machine, how would you know if something’s been compromised if you can’t at least compare the results of the paper ballot. And I think that’s the assurance it gives. Clearly, the machine, when you have an accurate election, does do a better job of counting the ballots. I’m talking about in the case where clearly fraud has occurred, then the paper ballot is going to be the evidence you need in terms of if your system inside that machine is compromised. 1:32:30 Senator Amy Klobuchar (MN): I think for a while people were talking about, well, why doesn’t everyone just vote from home, which is great when you can mail in a ballot, we know that, but vote from home just from your computer, and that would mean no paper records of anything. Could you comment about that? Noah Praetz: I think that’s 100% inappropriate for civil elections. Sen. Klobuchar: Got it. Shane Schoeller: I find it ironic because this is my first term, although I ran for this office in 2014, that was actually a common theme that I heard. Sen. Klobuchar: Right. I was hearing it, and I was—I kept thinking— Schoeller: Mm-hmm. Sen. Klobuchar: —about our state with, they’re not going to keep dwelling on it, with that high voter turnout. But, you know, that involved a paper ballot— voice off-mic: incredible integrity. Sen. Klobuchar: —and incredible integrity. But it involved people—they could vote by mail, and we’ve made that even easier, but they had actual paper ballots that they did, and then they were fed into this machine to count, with auditing. But you’re right. That’s what people were talking about. Why can’t you just do it from your home computer and have no backup, right? Schoeller: Right. And that was one of the things I actually had to disagree when that viewpoint was put forth, particularly in one city that I remember. And even after I became elected, I went to a conference of other elected officials, and there was a group of speakers, and they all were talking about this, and there was actually one speaker— Sen. Klobuchar: Like voting from Facebook. Schoeller: Correct. Sen. Klobuchar: Just kidding... Schoeller: But they actually disagreed, and I went up, and I think I was the only election official that day—this was prior to 2016—that didn’t think that it was a good idea. But I think we have evidence now from 2016 that clearly—that’s a convenience that we just can’t afford. 1:35:05 Noah Praetz: We’ve got a piece of paper that every voter looked at. Senator Amy Klobuchar: Mm-hmm. Praetz: So worst-case scenario, a Sony-type attack with full meltdown of all systems, we can recreate an election that’s trusted and true. Hearing: Election Security, Senate Judiciary Committee, C-SPAN, June 12, 2018. Witnesses: Adam Hickey - Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division at the Department of Justice Matthew Masterson - National Protection and Programs Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security Kenneth Wainstein - Partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell, LLP Prof. Ryan Goodman - New York University School of Law Nina Jankowicz - Global Fellow at the Wilson Center 9:00 Senator Dianne Feinstein (CA): We know that Russia orchestrated a sustained and coordinated attack that interfered in our last presidential election. And we also know that there’s a serious threat of more attacks in our future elections, including this November. As the United States Intelligence Community unanimously concluded, the Russian government’s interference in our election—and I quote—“blended covert intelligence operations, such as cyber activity, with overt efforts by the Russian government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social-media users or trolls.” Over the course of the past year and a half, we’ve come to better understand how pernicious these attacks were. Particularly unsettling is that we were so unaware. We were unaware that Russia was sowing division through mass propaganda, cyber warfare, and working with malicious actors to tip scales of the election. Thirteen Russian nationals and three organizations, including the Russian-backed Internet Research Agency, have now been indicted for their role in Russia’s vast conspiracy to defraud the United States. 39:40 Senator Mike Lee (UT): First, let’s talk a little bit about the integrity of our election infrastructure. We’ll start with you, Mr. Masterson. Were there any known breaches of our election infrastructure in the 2016 election? Matthew Masterson: Thank you, Senator. Yes, there was some publicly discussed known breaches of election infrastructure specifically involving voter-registration databases. Sen. Lee: Are there any confirmed instances of votes being changed from one candidate to another? Masterson: There are no confirmed instances of that. Sen. Lee: And were any individual voting machines hacked? Masterson: No, not that I know of. 42:55 ** Senator Mike Lee**: One approach to some of this, to the threat, the possibility of election infrastructure or voting machines being hacked from the outside is to go low-tech. Some states have gravitated toward that. For example, some states have started making moves back toward paper ballots so that they can’t be hacked. Is this something that’s helpful? Is it something that’s necessary that you think more states ought to consider? Matthew Masterson: Yeah. Senator, the auditability and having an auditable voting system, in this case, auditable paper records, is critical to the security of the systems. In those states that have moved in that direction have implemented means by which to audit the vote in order to give confidence to the public on the results of the election. In those states that have non-paper systems have indicated a desire—for instance, Pennsylvania—to more to auditable systems. And so at this point, resources are necessary to help them move that direction. Sen. Lee: By that, you mean either a paper-ballot system or a system that simultaneously creates a paper trail. Masterson: An auditable paper record. Correct, sir. 1:22:08 Senator Kamala Harris (CA): Will you talk a bit about what you have seen in terms of the risk assessments you’ve been doing around the country? I believe 14 states have been completed. Is that correct, 14? Matthew Masterson: I believe it’s 17 states have been completed— Sen. Harris: Right. Masterson: —thus far, as well as 10 localities. Sen. Harris: And what generally have you seen as being the vulnerabilities— Masterson: Sure. Sen. Harris: —in those assessments? Masterson: Thank you, Senator. Generally speaking, within the election’s infrastructure sector, we’re seeing the same typical vulnerabilities you’d see across IT systems, so managing software updates, outdated equipment or hardware, as well as general upgrades that need to take place as far as what configuration management within systems to limit the damage that could be done if something were to take place. And so— Sen. Harris: Resilience. Masterson: What’s that? Sen. Harris: Their resilience. Masterson: Yeah, their resilience. Sen. Harris: Mm-hmm. Masterson: Exactly. Thank you, Senator. And so this sector is no different in what we see in the work we’re doing with them. 2:15:00 Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI): But what I want to talk about in my time is the problem of shell corporations, because for all of the emphasis that the witnesses have put on policing and prosecuting foreign influence in our elections, you can neither police or prosecute what you cannot find. And at the moment, we have both a shell-corporation problem, which was emphasized by Mark Zuckerberg in his testimony when he said their political advertisement-authentication program would only go to the first shell corporation and not seek any information about who was actually behind it. I don’t think Putin is stupid enough to call it Boris and Natasha, LLC. It’s going to sound more like Americans for Puppies and Peace and Prosperity. But it’s a front group, and it’s got Putin or whomever else behind it, and until we can know that, we cannot enforce effectively, period, end of story. Similarly, when our election system has these colossal channels for dark money, anonymized funding, if you can’t find out what special interest is behind anonymous money, you can’t find out if there’s a foreign interest behind that money. Darkness is darkness is darkness, and it hides malign activity, both foreign and domestic. And I’d like to ask each of you to comment on that. We’re concerned about trolling. Obviously, that’s facilitated by shell corporations. You talked about general propaganda campaigns. Obviously, facilitated by shell corporations. Campaign finance laws, you’ve called out for a need for effective disclosure. You can’t have effective disclosure if the only thing you’re disclosing is a front corporation and you don’t know who’s really behind it. So, if I could ask each of you three on that, then that’ll be the end of my time. Kenneth Wainstein: Sure, I’ll go first, Senator Whitehouse. And thank you for kind words, and good to work with you again. Always is. Sen. Whitehouse: We were good adversaries. Wainstein: We were. Adversaries who were working for the same goal. Sen. Whitehouse: Yes. Wainstein: Look, as a prosecutor, former prosecutor, looking at this issue, of course you want to know more about the corporations than less. There are obviously First Amendment issues and other concerns out there in the election context, but absolutely, there’s no way to sort of resist your logic, which is we’ve seen the use of corporations in a variety of contexts, whether it’s money laundering or otherwise, but we’ve seen here in the election interference and disinformation context, and a lot of that— Sen. Whitehouse: In fact, they’re widely used in the criminal context for money-laundering purposes and to hide the proceeds of criminal activities, correct? Wainstein: Absolutely. Sen. Whitehouse: So to the extent that what Putin is running is essentially a criminal enterprise of himself and his oligarchs. Why would they not look to what criminal enterprises do as a model? Wainstein: Yeah, it’s meat-and-potatoes criminal conduct. Sen. Whitehouse: Yeah. Wainstein: No question. And all intended to hide the fact of the source of this malign activity. Hearing: Election Security, Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, C-SPAN, February 13, 2018. Witnesses: Robert Butler - Co-Founder and Managing Director, Cyber Strategies LLC Heather Conley - Director of the Europe Program Center for Strategic and International Studies Former Dep. Asst. Sec. of State for EU & Eurasian Affairs in GWB admin, 2001-2005 Richard Harknett - Professor of Political Science and Head of Political Science Department, University of Cincinnati Michael Sulmeyer - Director, Cyber Security Project, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University 7:15 Senator Ben Nelson: First, the department has cyber forces designed and trained to thwart attacks on our country through cyberspace, and that’s why we created the Cyber Command’s National Mission Teams. A member of this subcommittee, Senator Blumenthal, Senator Shaheen, we all wrote the secretary of defense last week that they, the department, ought to be assigned to identify Russian operators responsible for the hacking, stealing information, planting misinformation, and spreading it through all the botnets and fake accounts on social media. They ought to do that. That’s—the Cyber Command knows who that is. And then, we ought to use our cyber forces to disrupt this activity. We aren’t. We should also be informing the social-media companies of Russia’s fake accounts and other activities that violate those companies’ terms of service so that they can be shut down. 18:20 Heather Conley: You asked us what role DOD could play to protect the U.S. elections, and I think, simply, DOD working with Congress has got to demand a hold of government strategy to fight against this enduring disinformation and influence operation. We don’t have a national strategy. Unfortunately, modernizing our nuclear forces will not stop a Russian influence operation. That’s where we are missing a grave threat that exists in the American people’s palm of their hand and on their computer screens. 19:05 Heather Conley: As one of the most trusted institutions in the United States, the Department of Defense must leverage that trust with the American people to mitigate Russian influence. Simply put, the Department of Defense has to model the bipartisan and fact-based action, behavior, and awareness that will help reduce societal division. This is about leadership, it’s about protecting the United States, and as far as I can see, that is in the Department of Defense job description. Hearing: Cybersecurity of Voting Machines, House Oversight Subcommittee and Government Reform Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Affairs, C-SPAN, November 29, 2017. Witnesses: Christopher Krebs - Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Under Secretary National Protection & Programs Directorate, Department of Homeland Security Tom Schedler - Secretary of State of Louisiana Edgardo Cortes - Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Elections Matthew Blaze - Associate Professor, Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania 4:24 Representative Robin Kelly (IL): In September of this year, DHS notified 21 states that hackers affiliated with the Russian government breached or attempted to breach their election infrastructure. In my home state of Illinois, the hackers illegally downloaded the personal information of 90,000 voters and attempted to change and delete data. Fortunately, they were unsuccessful. 5:05 Representative Robin Kelly (IL): Earlier this year, researchers at the DEF CON conference successfully hacked five different direct-recording electronic voting machines, or DREs, in a day. The first vulnerabilities were discovered in just 90 minutes. Even voting machines not connected to the Internet still contained physical vulnerabilities like USB ports that can be used to upload malware. Alarmingly, many DREs lack the ability to allow experts to determine that they have been hacked. Despite these flaws, DREs are still commonly used. In 2016, 42 states used them. They were more than a decade old, with some running outdate software that is no longer supported by the manufacturer. 20:30 Tom Schedler: In terms of voting-machine security, remember that with the passage of the Help America Vote Act in 2002, states were required to purchase at least one piece of accessible voting equipment for each polling place. 23:55 Edgardo Cortes: Virginia has twice has been put in the unfortunate position of having to decertify voting equipment and transition to new equipment in a condensed timeframe, based on security concerns of previously used DREs. These steps outlined in detail in my written testimony were not taken lightly. They place a financial and administrative stress on the electoral system. They were, however, essential to maintain the public’s trust and the integrity of Virginia elections. The November 2017 general election was effectively administered without any reported voting-equipment issues. Thanks to the ongoing partnership between the state, our hardworking local election officials, and our dedicated voting-equipment vendors, the transition to paper-based voting systems on a truncated time line was incredibly successful and significantly increased the security of the election. 25:45 Edgardo Cortes: To ensure the use of secure voting equipment in the future, Congress should require federal certification of all voting systems used in federal elections. This is currently a voluntary process. Federal certification should also be required for electronic poll books, which currently are not subject to any federal guidelines. 28:20 Matthew Blaze: Virtually every aspect of our election process, from voter registration to ballot creation to casting ballots and then to counting and reporting election results, is today controlled in some way by software. And unfortunately, software is notoriously difficult to secure, especially in large-scale systems such as those used in voting. And the software used in elections is really no exception to this. It’s difficult to overstate how vulnerable our voting infrastructure that’s in use in many states today is, particularly to compromise by a determined and well-funded adversary. For example, in 2007 our teams discovered exploitable vulnerabilities in virtually every voting-system component that we examined, including backend election-management software as well as particularly DRE voting terminals themselves. At this year’s DEF CON event, we saw that many of the weaknesses discovered in 2007, and known since then, not only are still present in these systems but can be exploited quickly and easily by non-specialists who lack access to proprietary information such as source code. 38:40 Matthew Blaze: The design of DRE systems makes their security dependent not just on the software in the systems but the hardware’s ability to run that software correctly and to protect against malicious software being loaded. So an unfortunate property of the design of DRE systems is that we’ve basically given them the hardest possible security task. Any flaw in a DRE machine’s software or hardware can become an avenue of attack that potentially can be exploited. And this is a very difficult thing to protect. Representative Gary Palmer: Do we need to go to, even if we have some electronic components to back it up with paper ballots because your fallback position is always to open the machine and count the ballots? Blaze: That’s right. So, precinct-counted optical-scan systems also depend on software, but they have the particular safeguard, but there is a paper artifact of the voter’s true vote that can be used to determine the true election results. DRE, paperless DRE systems don’t have that property, and so we’re completely at the mercy of the software and hardware. 47:00 Christopher Krebs: When you characterize these things as attacks, I think that is perhaps overstating what may have happened in the 21 states, as was mentioned, over the course of the summer. The majority of the activity was simple scanning. Scanning happens all the time. It’s happening right now to a number of probably your websites. Scanning is a regular activity across the web. I would not characterize that as an attack. It’s a preparatory step. 58:15 Matthew Blaze: There is no fully reliable way to audit these kinds of systems. We may get lucky and detect some forensic evidence, but ultimately the design of these systems precludes our ability to do a conclusive audit of the voter’s true intent. That’s why paperless systems really need to be phased out in favor of things like optical-scan paper ballots that are counted at the precinct but backed by an artifact of the voter’s true intent. 1:02:42 Tom Schedler: The system that we’re looking at, we’re not out for bid yet, would be one that would produce, even though you would vote on an electronic machine, it would produce an actual paper ballot that you could hold in your hand—Representative Paul Mitchell (MI): My concern with that— Schedler: —and then cast ballot only with that point when you put it into a secure box. Rep. Mitchell: My concern with that, and Dr. Blaze makes the point, is that if you produce a paper result after you put something into the machine, if in fact the machine is tampered with, you could in fact end up with just confirming the tampered information. Schedler: Yes, sir. Speech: Hillary Clinton on National Security and the Islamic State, Council on Foreign Relations, November 19, 2015. 12:35 Hillary Clinton: So we need to move simultaneously toward a political solution to the civil war that paves the way for a new government with new leadership and to encourage more Syrians to take on ISIS as well. To support them, we should immediately deploy the special operations force President Obama has already authorized and be prepared to deploy more as more Syrians get into the fight, and we should retool and ramp up our efforts to support and equip viable Syrian opposition units. Our increased support should go hand in hand with increased support from our Arab and European partners, including Special Forces who can contribute to the fight on the ground. We should also work with the coalition and the neighbors to impose no-fly zones that will stop Assad from slaughtering civilians and the opposition from the air.   Hearing: Electronic Voting Machines, House Administration Committee, C-SPAN, September 28, 2006. Witnesses: Edward Felton - Computer Science Professor at Princeton University Keith Cunningham - Board of Elections Director of Allen County, Ohio Barbara Simons - Association for Computer Machinery, Public Policy Committee Co-Chair 19:54 Edward Felten: Two weeks ago my colleagues, Ari Feldman and Alex Halderman, and I released a detailed security analysis of this machine, the Diebold AccuVote-TS, which is used in Maryland, Georgia, and elsewhere. My written testimony summarizes the findings of our study. One main finding is that the machines are susceptible to computer viruses that spread from machine to machine and silently transfer votes from one candidate to another. Such a virus requires moderate computer-programming skills to construct. Launching it requires access to a single voting machine for as little as one minute. 1:45:23 Keith Cunningham: Can they be improved? Absolutely, and I think throughout my comments I was very definite to say that these machines, as they currently sit, are not reliable. My question back to you, though, in that regard is, who’s going to pay to fix it, because one of the problems we have right now is in the last 24 months every election jurisdiction in this country has spent the $3 billion we spoke about earlier on new election equipment, and that’s what’s in place. So without somebody stepping forward to fund that enterprise, I don’t know how we’re going to improve them ourselves. 1:51:00 Barbara Simons: I wanted to remind the panelists of what happened in Carteret County, North Carolina, in, I believe it was, ’04, where paperless DREs were used and over 4,000 votes were lost. I mean, there's this concern about being able to reprint paper ballots or paper VVPATs. When you lose votes in a DRE, which has no paper, there is nothing you can do, and in fact, there was an election for—the statewide election—for agricultural commissioner, where the separation between the two candidates was such that the results could have been reversed by those missing votes. And it went to court, it went to two different courts, where they first tried to hold a recount just for the county itself. That was thrown out. Then it went for a statewide recount, and that was thrown out because we had no laws to deal with what happens when DREs fail. And finally, there were a number of people who submitted subpoenas or petitions say they had voted for one of the candidates, and based on those submissions, it looked like the judge was going to declare that candidate the winner, and so that was how the election was decided. This is not a way to hold elections in this country. Community Suggestions See more Community Suggestions HERE. Cover Art Design by Only Child Imaginations Music Presented in This Episode Intro & Exit: Tired of Being Lied To by David Ippolito (found on Music Alley by mevio)