Last week, the House Administration Committee voted on party lines to defund the Election Administration Commission<\/a>, the leading federal agency responsible for helping states run smooth elections and preventing hacking.<\/p>\n About<\/p>\n Dan S. Wallach (@danwallach<\/a>) is a professor in the computer science department at Rice University and a Rice Scholar at the Baker Institute for Public Policy. Justin Talbot-Zorn (@justinzorn<\/a>) is a Truman National Security Fellow and public policy consultant. He served as legislative director for three Democratic members of Congress.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Republicans justified the move as a way to save money and shrink the size and scope of government: “We don’t need fluff,” said<\/a> Rep. Gregg Harper (R-MS), the committee chairman, explaining his vote.<\/p>\n But the move wasn’t just Capitol Hill budget politics as usual.\u00a0It’s evidence of a radical disconnect between a handful of influential House Republicans and nearly everyone else—including the scientific community, leading cybersecurity experts, and even the White House—who contend that voting vulnerabilities are a serious problem.<\/p>\n On the morning of the election, Donald Trump called Fox News to give his views<\/a> on the state of voting in the United States: “There’s something really nice about the old paper ballot system—you don’t worry about hacking.” Trump wasn’t going rogue.\u00a0While his “voter fraud” comments<\/a> have gotten serious attention of late, he has also, like many conservatives, expressed concern about the vulnerability of voting systems.<\/p>\n According to recent studies<\/a>, more than 40 states use electronic machines that are more than 10 years old and rely on outdated platforms like Windows 2000. This means more breakdowns and, naturally, more vulnerability to interference.\u00a0Across the country, independent<\/a> observers<\/a> have found electronic voting systems to be astonishingly<\/a> insecure<\/a>. These problems have yet to be fixed.<\/p>\n In addition to software risks with electronic voting machines, a January report<\/a> from US intelligence agencies concluded that “Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple US state or local electoral boards.”\u00a0While the reports found that foreign agents did not target the machines or tabulators themselves, the news underscores that elections are a matter of national security.<\/p>\n The US can fix, or at least mitigate, these problems. Addressing the challenge requires sensible security standards, modernizing or retiring the oldest equipment, conducting regular risk-limiting audits<\/a> to detect malfeasance, and, yes, a return to paper ballots as the record of voter intent.\u00a0<\/p>\n In a recent Congressional hearing<\/a> in which one of us testified, both Republicans and Democrats spoke of the potential for new legislation to update the 15-year-old Help America Vote Act<\/a> to address these issues. Such reform could garner serious bipartisan support; Republicans have just as much reason to fear election insecurity as Democrats, and everyone wants to know that our elected representatives got there fair and square.<\/p>\n This year should present a real opportunity for needed reform, but the House’s move last week could close the door to such a possibility. Any new voting security overhaul would almost certainly have to be implemented, at least in part, by the Election Assistance Commission, the very entity the lawmakers are attempting to gut. Even if Congress fails to reach an agreement on how to strengthen elections, the Commission would still remain a vehicle for setting standards<\/a> on important (and now timely) matters like security protocols or measures to keep individuals from voting in multiple states.<\/p>\n Sure, some argue that election security should, like most voting issues, be left to states and municipalities. But even the most fiercely independent local elections administrators admit there’s room for federal standard-setting and security assistance. The Election Assistance Commission was borne of a bipartisan agreement in the wake of the 2000 presidential election’s hanging chad fiasco.\u00a0Eliminating a meaningful federal role in election security is asking for another crisis at a time when the country’s voting systems vulnerabilities are facing unprecedented threats.<\/p>\n It’s true: There’s plenty of “fluff” in the federal budget.\u00a0 But federal election security measures don’t fall into that category.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.wired.com\/category\/security\/feed\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Credit to Author: Dan S. Wallach and Justin Talbot-Zorn| Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2017 13:30:35 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n Opinion: Dropping funding for the crucial Election Administration Commission is a particularly bad way to save money. The post Want Secure Elections? Then Maybe Don’t Cut Security Funding<\/a> appeared first on WIRED<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10378,10607],"tags":[2714,11192,941,11051,234,11330,714,11109],"class_list":["post-6620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security","category-wired","tag-congress","tag-election-hacking","tag-elections","tag-national-affairs","tag-opinion","tag-russian-hacking","tag-security","tag-voting-machines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6620\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}WIRED OPINION<\/h4>\n
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