    [Senate Hearing 115-648]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                                                         S. Hrg. 115-648

                         ELECTION SECURITY PREPARATIONS

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARINGS

                                   BEFORE THE

                               COMMITTEE ON RULES
                               AND ADMINISTRATION
                              UNITED STATES SENATE

                         ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                        JUNE 20, 2018 AND JULY 11, 2018

                                   __________

        Printed for the use of the Committee on Rules and Administration

    [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

            Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov

                                   _________

                        U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
    35-266                     WASHINGTON : 2019

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office,
    http://bookstore.gpo.gov. For more information, contact the GPO Customer Contact Center,
    U.S. Government Publishing Office. Phone 202-512-1800, or 866-512-1800 (toll-free).
    E-mail, po@custhelp.com.

                     COMMITTEE ON RULES AND ADMINISTRATION

                                 SECOND SESSION

                         ROY BLUNT, Missouri, Chairman

    MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky            AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota
    LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee           DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
    PAT ROBERTS, Kansas                  CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York
    RICHARD SHELBY, Alabama              RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
    TED CRUZ, Texas                      TOM UDALL, New Mexico
    SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia  MARK R. WARNER, Virginia
    ROGER WICKER, Mississippi            PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont
    DEB FISCHER, Nebraska                ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine
    CINDY HYDE-SMITH, Mississippi        CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO, Nevada

                       Fitzhugh Elder IV, Staff Director
                  Elizabeth Peluso, Democratic Staff Director

    Note: Archived webcasts of all hearings and an electronic version of
        this report are available at http://rules.senate.gov.

                            C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                                  ----------
                                                                      Pages

                                 June 20, 2018

     HEARING--ELECTION SECURITY PREPARATIONS: A STATE AND LOCAL PERSPECTIVE
                             Opening Statement of:

    Hon. Roy Blunt, Chairman, a U.S. Senator from the State of
      Missouri.......................................................     1
    Hon. Amy Klobuchar, a U.S. Senator from the State of Minnesota...     2
    Hon. John R. Ashcroft, Missouri Secretary of State...............     4
    Hon. Jim Condos, Vermont Secretary of State......................     6
    Hon. Steve Simon, Minnesota Secretary of State...................     8
    Matt Masterson, Senior Cybersecurity Adviser, Department of
      Homeland Security..............................................    10
    Noah Praetz, Director of Elections, Cook County, Illinois........    26
    Shane Schoeller, Clerk, Green County, Missouri...................    28

                            Prepared Statements of:

    Hon. John R. Ashcroft, Missouri Secretary of State...............    37
    Hon. Jim Condos, Vermont Secretary of State......................    40
    Hon. Steve Simon, Minnesota Secretary of State...................    45
    Hon. Connie Lawson, Indiana Secretary of State...................    49
    Matt Masterson, Senior Cybersecurity Adviser, Department of
      Homeland Security..............................................    54
    Noah Praetz, Director of Elections, Cook County, Illinois........    60
    Shane Schoeller, Clerk, Green County, Missouri...................    75

                      Materials Submitted for the Record:

    Statement from R. Kyle Ardoin, Louisiana Secretary of State......    80

                      Questions Submitted for the Record:

    Hon. Roger Wicker to Hon. John R. Ashcroft.......................    82
    Hon. Dianne Feinstein to Hon. John R. Ashcroft...................    82
    Hon. Mark Warner to Hon. John R. Ashcroft........................    84
    Hon. Roger Wicker to Hon. Jim Condos.............................    86
    Hon. Dianne Feinstein to Hon. Jim Condos.........................    87
    Hon. Mark Warner to Hon. Jim Condos..............................    91
    Hon. Roger Wicker to Hon. Steve Simon............................    94
    Hon. Dianne Feinstein to Hon. Steve Simon........................    94
    Hon. Mark Warner to Hon. Steve Simon.............................   100
    Hon. Roger Wicker to Hon. Connie Lawson..........................   103
    Hon. Mark Warner to Hon. Connie Lawson...........................   103
    Hon. Roger Wicker to Matt Masterson..............................   107
    Hon. Dianne Feinstein to Matt Masterson..........................   109
    Hon. Mark Warner to Matt Masterson...............................   113
    Hon. Dianne Feinstein to Noah Praetz.............................   119
    Hon. Mark Warner to Noah Praetz..................................   121
    Hon. Dianne Feinstein to Shane Schoeller.........................   124
    Hon. Mark Warner to Shane Schoeller..............................   127
                                  ----------

                                 July 11, 2018

          HEARING--ELECTION SECURITY PREPARATIONS: FEDERAL AND VENDOR
                                  PERSPECTIVES
                             Opening Statement of:

    Hon. Roy Blunt, Chairman, a U.S. Senator from the State of
      Missouri.......................................................   129
    Hon. Amy Klobuchar, a U.S. Senator from the State of Minnesota...   130
    Hon. Ron Wyden, a U.S. Senator from the State of Oregon..........   131
    Hon. James Lankford, a U.S. Senator from the State of Oklahoma...   133

                                    Panel I

    Commissioner Thomas Hicks, Chair, U.S. Election Assistance
      Commission, Silver Spring, Maryland............................   135
    Commissioner Christy McCormick, Vice Chair, U.S. Election
      Assistance Commission, Silver Spring, Maryland.................   137
    Charles H. Romine, Ph.D., Director, Information Technology
      Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology,
      Gaithersburg, Maryland.........................................   140
    Matthew Masterson, Senior Cyber Security Advisor, U.S. Department
      of Homeland Security, Washington, DC...........................   141

                                    Panel II

    Scott Leiendecker, CEO, KNOWiNK, St. Louis, Missouri.............   157
    Peter Lichtenheld, Vice President, Operations, Hart InterCivic,
      Austin, Texas..................................................   158
    Bryan Finney, Founder and President, Democracy Live, Inc.,
      Seattle, Washington; Sector Coordinating Council for the
      Election Infrastructure Subsector, U.S. Department of Homeland
      Security, Washington, DC.......................................   158

                            Prepared Statements of:

    Commissioners Thomas Hicks and Christy McCormick, United States
      Election Assistance Commission (EAC)...........................   169
    Charles H. Romine, Ph.D., Director, Information Technology
      Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology.....   180
    Matthew Masterson, Senior Cyber Security Advisor, U.S. Department
      of Homeland Security, Washington, DC...........................   186
    Scott Leiendecker, CEO, KNOWiNK, St. Louis, Missouri.............   192
    Peter Lichtenheld, Vice President, Operations, Hart InterCivic,
      Austin, Texas..................................................   195
    Bryan Finney, Founder and President, Democracy Live, Inc.,
      Seattle, Washington; Sector Coordinating Council for the
      Election Infrastructure Subsector, U.S. Department of Homeland
      Security, Washington, DC.......................................   202

                      Materials Submitted for the Record:

    President and Chief Executive Officer, Dominion Voting Systems...   206

                      Questions Submitted for the Record:

    Hon. Roger Wicker to Commissioners Thomas Hicks and Christy
      McCormick......................................................   210
    Hon. Tom Udall to Commissioners Thomas Hicks and Christy
      McCormick......................................................   211
    Hon. Mark Warner to Commissioners Thomas Hicks and Christy
      McCormick......................................................   212
    Hon. Cortez Masto to Commissioners Thomas Hicks and Christy
      McCormick......................................................   214
    Hon. Tom Udall to Mr. Charles Romine.............................   215
    Hon. Mark Warner to Mr. Charles Romine...........................   216
    Hon. Cortez Masto to Mr. Charles Romine..........................   217
    Hon. Tom Udall to Mr. Matthew Masterson..........................   218
    Hon. Cortez Masto to Mr. Matthew Masterson.......................   221
    Hon. Tom Udall to Mr. Scott Leiendecker..........................   226
    Hon. Mark Warner to Mr. Scott Leiendecker........................   227
    Hon. Roger Wicker to Mr. Peter Lichtenheld.......................   229
    Hon. Tom Udall to Mr. Peter Lichtenheld..........................   230
    Hon. Mark Warner to Mr. Peter Lichtenheld........................   231
    Hon. Roger Wicker to Mr. Bryan Finney............................   235
    Hon. Tom Udall to Mr. Bryan Finney...............................   236
    Hon. Mark Warner to Mr. Bryan Finney.............................   237

                        ELECTION SECURITY PREPARATIONS:
                         A STATE AND LOCAL PERSPECTIVE

                                  ----------

                            WEDNESDAY, JUNE 20, 2018

                          United States Senate,
                 Committee on Rules and Administration,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:57 a.m., in
    Room SR-301, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. Roy Blunt,
    Chairman of the committee, presiding.
        Present: Senators Blunt, Fischer, Klobuchar, Durbin, Udall,
    and Cortez Masto.

      OPENING STATEMENT OF HONORABLE ROY BLUNT, CHAIRMAN, A U.S.
                   SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MISSOURI

        Chairman Blunt. The Committee on Rules and Administration
    will come to order.
        Glad our witnesses are here. Glad you had the patience that
    we needed today to get two votes done on the floor. I am
    particularly grateful that my fellow Missourians are here--
    Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, and in the next panel is
    County Clerk Shane Schoeller from my home county--and both of
    them having to hold a job that I once held. It is particularly
    good to see you here and the rest of you on the panel.
        As we begin our review of Federal elections, Senator
    Klobuchar and I are in agreement that the best starting point
    is to start with you. The best starting point is to start with
    state and local officials who, through the history of the
    country, have been responsible for election administration, and
    they are responsible to the people that choose them to do that
    job to see that it is done well.
        Clearly, elections are the keystone of democracy, and they
    are dependent on the efforts of county officials, of election
    directors, of secretaries of state, and many others. On
    election day, they are dependent on lots of people who
    essentially figure out how to volunteer for their job at the
    polling place.
        During the 2016 election cycle, state and local election
    officials were tested like they haven't been before by
    cyberattacks, and we anticipate that these attempts will
    continue, and attempts to interfere with the process will
    continue. We want to be sure that we are doing what we can to
    help you thwart these attempts. State and local governments
    need access to timely and actionable information and technical
    assistance when they need it.
        One of our goals today is to find out more about the
    information sharing that is occurring between Federal, state,
    and local officials and to learn more about your concerns and
    your thoughts on that.
        In January 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 witnesses 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.
        Finally, the attempts to influence the 2016 election have
    spurred many calls for additional laws. I remain open to
    learning more about where those gaps are and how we approach
    those gaps in a way that continues to let local officials do
    their job, but be sure that there is maximum confidence in what
    happens on election day.
        Glad all of you are here. Certainly, it is a pleasure for
    Senator Klobuchar and I to get to work together on this and
    particularly for me to get to work with her. We have had a long
    history of working together, but just this year starting to be
    the top two individuals on this committee.
        Senator Klobuchar, I would recognize you for your opening
    statements.

     OPENING STATEMENT OF HONORABLE AMY KLOBUCHAR, A UNITED STATES
                  SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MINNESOTA

        Senator Klobuchar. Well, thank you very much, Chairman
    Blunt.
        This committee's jurisdiction is clear. We have
    jurisdiction over Federal elections, and obviously, there has
    been a lot of other committees looking into this issue as part
    of investigations, including Judiciary on which I serve. But in
    the end, if we want to get something done and make some
    changes, I think it is really important that this committee
    weigh in, and a lot of the bills will actually be going through
    this committee.
        According to the Department of Homeland Security, you all
    know this, 21 states' election systems were attempted to be
    hacked into by a foreign country--that would be Russia--and
    this was established not just by the intelligence heads under
    President Obama, but also by the intelligence heads in sworn
    testimony under President Trump. I think it was former Senator
    Coats, now the Director of Intelligence for our country, that
    said he believes that they are going to get bolder in the next
    election.
        I don't think we need to get more direction than that to
    know that we must act. Secretary of State Pompeo said when he
    was CIA Director that he has ``every expectation'' that Russia
    will target the U.S. midterm elections. Those are the facts
    from our intelligence forces, and rather than just admire this
    problem, we have to look at what we can do to make things
    better.
        One of the things that we have done, and I appreciate the
    input from the secretary of states, including my own, Steve
    Simon, who is here--thank you. I will note that Minnesota has
    the highest election turnout in the country nearly every year,
    including last year.
        Oh, excuse me, Illinois.
        [Laughter.]
        Senator Klobuchar. We are continuing that record, and a lot
    of that is the election laws that we have in place for same-day
    registration and other things that have made that possible.
        But our subject today is how to protect our elections, how
    to make them more secure with the facts that we have, that we
    allow our state election officials to get information in real
    time about hacks across the country because, you know, hack us
    once, shame on them. Hack us twice, shame on us if we don't do
    anything about it. Because we know it happened, and we know it
    will happen again. In fact, in Illinois, they got as close as
    the voter data information.
        We have a bill, Senator Lankford and I--along with Senator
    Harris and Graham and Warner and Burr, Heinrich and Collins--it
    is 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, cybersecurity experts, and national
    security personnel.
        Second, providing for development and maintenance of
    cybersecurity best practices. We all know I think there is five
    states that don't have back-up paper ballots, and then there is
    something like nine more that have partial back-up paper
    ballots. While we are 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 would actually
    lend--it could potentially lend itself to more break-ins, we
    think it is really important that we have some floor and
    standards that we set that, given what we know, I don't think
    we would 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 elections
    use the paper back-up systems, which I mentioned.
        Finally, it is 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 is going out right now to states across
    the country based on population. 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.
        That is what we have been focused on, and we want to thank
    you for your involvement, and I think we know what the facts
    are and what the evidence is. I will end with this, a reminder
    of what is at stake.
        In 1923, years before Sputnik and the Internet, Joseph
    Stalin, then General Secretary of the Soviet Communists, was
    asked about a vote in the Central Committee of his party.
    Stalin was unconcerned about the vote. After all, he explained
    that who voted was completely unimportant. What was
    extraordinarily important, he said, was who would count the
    votes.
        Now 95 years later, those words echo in this room as we
    realize that this country or they would say not the people, but
    the leader of this country, Vladimir Putin, was once again
    really trying to influence who counts the votes and how the
    votes are counted by attempting to hack into our systems. We
    cannot have that happen. I don't care if we are a Democrat,
    Republican. I don't care who you are for in the Presidential
    race or who you are for in these Senate races. This is really
    about the integrity of our democracy.
        Thank you, Senator Blunt.
        Chairman Blunt. Thank you, Senator Klobuchar.
        Again, I want to thank the witnesses for joining us today.
    Unfortunately, weather and a flight cancellation made it
    impossible for Secretary Lawson's attendance today, but we are
    glad that she tried to come, and we are glad you are here.
        Let us turn to our panel. First, Secretary of State
    Ashcroft from Missouri will start, and then Secretary Condos of
    Vermont, Secretary Simon of Minnesota, and finally, Mr.
    Masterson of the Department of Homeland Security. We have your
    comments for the record. You can use as much or little of that
    as you want to, and we will have it for the record no matter
    what.
        Secretary Ashcroft, we are glad all of you are here and
    eager for you to start.

    OPENING STATEMENT OF JOHN ASHCROFT, MISSOURI SECRETARY OF STATE

        Mr. Ashcroft. Thank you, Chairman Blunt, Ranking Member
    Klobuchar, and distinguished committee members, for the
    opportunity to join you here today for this important
    discussion regarding the security of our elections.
        My name, as mentioned, is John Ashcroft, and it is my
    distinct privilege and honor to serve as the 40th Secretary of
    State for the great people of the State of Missouri. As was
    already noted, this is an office administered at one time by
    the chairman of this committee.
        I decided to run for Secretary of State because of my four
    children. My goal was to ensure their voices and those of
    future generations would continue to be heard at the ballot
    box. One of the priorities of my campaign was to enact
    legislation that both increased the security of our votes and
    made sure that every registered voter could vote. Simply put,
    in Missouri, if you are registered, you can vote, and your vote
    will count.
        Elections are the bedrock of our democratic republic, as
    they are how we the people consent to be governed. The
    integrity of these elections is of the utmost importance, every
    day when I go to my office in Jefferson City, and I know my
    fellow election officials across this country share that same
    concern and dedication.
        I welcome today's conversation to talk about election
    security preparations, but before we move forward, we should
    briefly look back to the impetus of why we are all here today--
    allegations that outside actors threatened the integrity of our
    elections during the 2016 election cycle.
        While these are serious allegations, it is vitally
    important to understand that after 2 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.
        Secondly, every reported cyber incident in 2016 involving
    state election systems was first detected by state election
    authorities, not the Federal Government. In each case, election
    authorities brought the incident to the attention of Federal
    authorities, not the other way around.
        This is not to say that our elections are perfect, that
    there was no fraud, that there were no unlawful corruptions of
    votes or vote totals. The evidence indicates that voter fraud
    is an exponentially greater threat than hacking of our election
    equipment.
        In 2010, well before elections being altered rose to the
    forefront of the public conversation, there was a race for the
    Missouri house in Missouri that was decided by one vote. Yes,
    one vote. Election authorities conclusively determined in that
    election that there were two voters, who also happened to be
    family members of the victorious candidate, who voted
    illegally. Despite the fact that the candidate's relatives
    admitted, admitted in a court of law, pled guilty to illegally
    voting, their nephew now serves in the Missouri legislature.
        Consequently, moving forward, any meaningful enhancement to
    election security must take a comprehensive approach to ensure
    that every legally registered voter is allowed to vote and that
    their vote is not diluted by any sort of voter fraud,
    malfeasance, or ineptitude. Moreover, we must avoid knee-jerk
    reactions that would give voters a false sense of security.
        Steps must be taken to improve communication between
    Federal agencies and states regarding cyber threats and
    election security. States have and will continue to work with
    Federal agencies, regardless of any new legislation. However,
    any new mandates must remedy the failure of Federal agencies to
    communicate and work with local election authorities.
        As one example, since 2012, the National Association of
    Secretaries of State has passed multiple times a resolution
    calling on the Federal Government to meet its statutory
    obligations to share information with state election officials.
    While we wish to continue--state election officials wish to
    continue to work in partnership with Federal agencies, and one
    way in which we have done that, as states have teamed up in
    September, we will be having a National Election Security
    Summit in St. Louis, Missouri, and we have requested Federal
    officials, including the Secretary of DHS, to join us, as state
    officials, vendors, technology experts, and local election
    officials get together to improve processes and make sure that
    people know that our elections are secure.
        As important as this information sharing is, there are
    numerous other ways to protect our elections beyond information
    sharing. Proposed changes should recognize the value of
    allowing state election officials to remain in control of
    elections. I have learned that winning an election does not
    make you an elections expert any more than watching a Fourth of
    July celebration makes you a rocket scientist.
        I will close by noting a certain irony. Just over 10 years
    ago, similar individuals were here in Washington, DC,
    explaining what happened in a Federal election, and we were
    told that the answer was to go electronic, to put it all on a
    computer. Now we are back again.
        With the utmost respect, I will continue to work and local
    officials will work with Government officials at the Federal
    level, but it takes us all working together and the expertise
    of individuals that have run elections before.
        Thank you very much.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Ashcroft was submitted for
    the record.]
        Chairman Blunt. Thank you, Secretary Ashcroft.
        Secretary Condos?

      OPENING STATEMENT OF JIM CONDOS, VERMONT SECRETARY OF STATE

        Mr. Condos. Good morning, Chairman Blunt, Ranking Member
    Klobuchar, and distinguished members of the committee.
        My name is Jim Condos, and I am Vermont's 38th Secretary of
    State. I am also the President-elect of the nonpartisan
    National Association of Secretaries of State. In addition, I
    also serve as a member of the Department of Homeland Security's
    Election Infrastructure Subsector Government Coordinating
    Council, EIS-GCC.
        On July 16, 2018, I will become the new NASS president, and
    I have every intention of continuing the positive work of
    current president, Secretary Connie Lawson of Indiana, and
    those that served before her. NASS is fortunate to have had and
    have leaders, outstanding leaders, and I am proud to be part of
    this association.
        Thank you for the chance to appear before you today with my
    colleagues and for allowing us to address some of the things
    happening at the national level, some work specific to Vermont,
    and also my goals for NASS and the Election Infrastructure
    Governing Council.
        Primary elections across this country are well underway
    with states administering elections in a secure, accurate, and
    fair manner. State and local election officials and Federal
    Government have worked very hard to create a productive
    relationship since the critical infrastructure designation for
    election systems in January 2017.
        As you may know, NASS and its members raised many questions
    and expressed serious concerns about the potential Federal
    overreach into the administration of the elections--clearly, a
    state and local government responsibility. While we remain
    vigilant about possible Federal overreach, we will work
    together to ensure that the critical infrastructure designation
    functions in an effective way.
        Thus, we have chosen to actively focus on improving
    communications between the states and the Federal Government
    and to achieve our shared goal of securing elections. In
    particular, we have utilized the Election Infrastructure
    Subsector Governing Council, which Secretary Lawson mentions
    also in her testimony, to open communication channels and guide
    future collaborative election security endeavors.
        As I transition to the NASS president in less than a month,
    I will also take Secretary Lawson's place on the Executive
    Committee of the GCC. It is my objective to continue Secretary
    Lawson's vital work with this group on behalf of NASS.
        In regards to specific state preparations for 2018 and
    beyond, I would like to thank you and your colleagues for
    appropriating the remaining Help America Vote Act funds to the
    states in the recent omnibus bill. We truly appreciate this
    money, and it will go a long way to helping states strengthen
    and improve their election systems.
        While our upgrades to equipment and cybersecurity will be
    an ongoing challenge for many states, the Federal funding
    received will regrettably be insufficient to do all that we
    want or need. However, we are very grateful for the boost that
    these Federal funds provide us at this time.
        In Vermont, we have already requested and received our $3
    million grant of HAVA dollars from the U.S. Election Assistance
    Commission. By the way, the EAC has provided this in a very
    quick way. It is within 3 to 5 days of actually receiving our
    application, they are getting the money to us. I want to thank
    the EAC publicly for providing a simple and quick method of
    getting that money to us.
        In regards to specific plans in using these new HAVA funds,
    in part our office in Vermont plans to implement prior to the
    2018 primary two-factor authentication for all of our local
    clerks and our SOS staff to access our election management
    system. We have already conducted an additional round of
    penetration testing on our election management system by an
    independent vendor this spring and will do so at regular
    intervals going forward.
        We also will follow the 2018 general election, and every
    general election going forward, with a robust audit of our
    election results using state-of-the-art auditing technology.
    This plan is in addition to what we are already currently
    doing, including mandatory election trainings to our Vermont
    municipal clerks, holding the cyber summit, which we named
    Defending Our Democracy. We convened state and local partners
    to inform Vermonters of our efforts, build confidence in the
    integrity, and those partners included the Department of
    Homeland Security, MS-ISAC from the Center of Internet
    Security, State Homeland Security Department of Public Safety,
    and of course, our town clerks.
        Some of the acknowledged best practices that Vermont is
    using include paper ballot, post-election audits, no Internet,
    daily back-up of our voter registration systems, daily
    monitoring of traffic to our site, blacklisting of known
    problems, periodic penetration tests, securing the human, and
    we have actually installed a real-time Albert monitor.
        I will end by just thanking this committee again for
    inviting me and my peers to testify and for giving me the
    opportunity to speak about this important matter on behalf of
    NASS and Vermont. I look forward to answering your questions.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Condos was submitted for the
    record.]
        Chairman Blunt. Thank you, Secretary Condos.
        Secretary Simon?

     OPENING STATEMENT OF STEVE SIMON, MINNESOTA SECRETARY OF STATE

        Mr. Simon. Thank you, Chairman Blunt. Thank you, Ranking
    Member Klobuchar.
        I really appreciate the opportunity to be with you here
    today. Thank you for your willingness to engage on this very
    important issue.
        In my judgment, election security in general, and
    cybersecurity in particular, poses the number-one threat to the
    integrity of our elections, both nationwide and in the State of
    Minnesota. I have been on the job, this job now for 3 1/2
    years, and I get asked once in a while--whether it is at a
    family gathering or someone I bump into on the street--what is
    your biggest surprise in the job? You have been there for a
    while now. What is it?
        My answer is always the same. My biggest surprise as
    Secretary of State is the extent to which my time and energy
    and focus is spent on this cybersecurity issue or election
    security in general. It is something that came up to some
    people's minds quite suddenly in 2016. That was a big wake-up
    call, and that is now a central and essential part of the job.
        The good news is that in 2016, Minnesota passed the test.
    We engaged a lot of different partners, including our partners
    at the state and local level, including looking for outside
    eyes and ears to sort of test our systems, and so we passed the
    test. We kept out the folks who were trying to get in.
        From our vantage point in our office, we don't care who it
    is. We don't care if it is Russia or another foreign government
    or a nongovernmental actor or the guy next door. We don't care
    what their politics are. We don't care what candidate they
    support or not. This isn't about Democrats or Republicans. This
    is about us as Americans.
        We passed that test, which is great. But we know and we
    found out after the election that Minnesota was one of the 21
    states that was targeted by elements acting at the behest of
    the Russian Government. That was the exact phrase that the
    Department of Homeland Security used in briefing us and letting
    us know about that threat.
        We know we have to be vigilant, as we were in 2016, but now
    we have a lot more information. I think the good news here, the
    reason that the glass is half full, is that Minnesota--and I
    believe every other state--is in a far better position now
    going into this election than we were going into the last
    election, even though we passed the test in the last election.
        As Senator Klobuchar alluded to, Minnesota is proudly old
    school. We have paper ballots, and that is the bedrock of our
    system in Minnesota. Very hard to hack paper, obviously.
    Although there are electronic components further on down the
    line, we feel that we have those well in hand in terms of state
    laws and some of the resources we need to attack those things.
        Second, we think that we have benefited from the ``critical
    infrastructure'' designation from the Department of Homeland
    Security in terms of expertise, in terms of value added, in
    terms of a good partnership after a rocky start with those
    folks at Department of Homeland Security. That is good as well.
        Third, DHS has put together, as you have heard, this
    Government Coordinating Council, which is a fancy term for
    people sharing information. Although that is good, I think it
    could be even better than it is right now.
        Finally, we have the attention of not only you and your
    colleagues in Congress, but of the national and local media and
    of other elections administrators around the country, and that
    is very good.
        In Minnesota--and I never miss an opportunity to brag about
    my state--we are number one in voter turnout in the country.
    Again, 74.7 percent of registered voters--or eligible voters, I
    should say, voted in the last election, and we are very proud
    of that. In some ways, that means the stakes are particularly
    high and that it hits particularly close to home for us in
    Minnesota.
        We appreciate the Federal partnership that we have received
    so far, and I just want to say once again I want to thank
    everyone, including Senator Klobuchar and others, who were part
    of getting that $380 million for us, for elections
    administrators at the state. It is critical. It is crucial. We
    plan to use every penny of that $6.6 million over the next 5
    years to good effect. It will go a long way.
        However, I would respectfully request that those in
    Congress consider some ongoing way to provide some resources
    for us along those same lines. While we don't want to look a
    gift horse in the mouth and we are very grateful--and I know I
    am--for that money, this is expensive. The recommendations that
    we get from the Department of Homeland Security, while very
    helpful, they have a price tag, and that is not always
    accounted for in state budgets. I ask respectfully that you
    consider that as well.
        Then on the policy side, I would be remiss if I didn't put
    in a word for the Secure Elections Act. I was part of the group
    of secretaries of state that Senator Lankford and Klobuchar
    invited to advise them a bit on the scope of the legislation,
    and I do think there is a legitimate Federal interest in making
    sure that we do have floors--not ceilings, not
    micromanagement--but some Federal interest in assuring that the
    states are talking with one another and that we are not just 50
    silos doing our own thing in our own way.
        Although we ultimately retain that authority to do so and
    we would never want that encroached upon by the Federal
    Government, I think there is an interest in making sure that
    there is some coordination, even if it is the states through
    the GCC or through other channels that decides what is best in
    terms of communication. If for no other reason than that, I
    think that is very important.
        I thank you, Mr. Chair and Ranking Member Klobuchar, for
    your continuing efforts here and cooperation, and we look
    forward to an even more robust Federal partnership in the
    future.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Simon was submitted for the
    record.]
        Chairman Blunt. Thank you, Secretary Simon.
        Mr. Masterson?

       OPENING STATEMENT OF MATT MASTERSON, SENIOR CYBERSECURITY
                ADVISER, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

        Mr. Masterson. Thank you, Chairman Blunt, Ranking Member
    Klobuchar, and members of the committee. Thank you for today's
    opportunity to testify regarding the Department of Homeland
    Security's ongoing efforts to assist state and local election
    officials, those who own and operate election systems, with
    improving the resilience of elections across America.
        For over a decade, I have worked with state and local
    officials to advance the use of technology to better serve
    American voters. For the last 3 years, I served as a
    commissioner at the United States Election Assistance
    Commission, working to modernize standards used to test voting
    systems, provide best practices to help support election
    officials, and since 2016 respond to threats against our
    Nation's election systems.
        Now I serve as a senior adviser at DHS focused on the work
    the Department is doing to support the thousands of election
    officials across this country. In this decade of work, I can
    tell you the absolute best part is working with the dedicated
    professionals like those seated at the table here with me that
    administer elections. In the face of real and sophisticated
    threats, these officials have responded by working with us,
    state and local resources, the private sector, and academia to
    mitigate risks and improve the resilience of the process.
        Election security is a national security issue. Our mission
    at DHS is to ensure that the system owners have the necessary
    information and support to assess risks and protect, detect,
    and recover from those.
        This support can come in many forms. Whether it is offering
    no-cost voluntary technical assistance or sharing general or
    specific threat information, DHS stands ready to help and offer
    tailored support based on state and local needs. Through these
    collective efforts, we have already seen significant progress.
    State and local officials and those private sector partners who
    support them are at the table working with us. We have created
    the Government Coordinating Council and private sector councils
    who collaboratively work to share information, share best
    practices, and develop strategies to reduce risk.
        We have created the Election Infrastructure Information
    Sharing and Analysis Center, or EI-ISAC, with members from
    almost all states and hundreds of local jurisdictions. This is
    the fastest-growing sector in critical infrastructure.
        We are sponsoring up to three election officials in each
    state for security clearances, which will allow officials to
    receive classified threat information if or when it is
    necessary. We have increased the availability of free technical
    assistance across this sector. DHS offers a variety of
    services, such as cybersecurity assessments, intrusion
    detection capabilities, information sharing and awareness, and
    incident response.
        The progress being made is clear, as is evident by the
    testimony you have already heard today. Across the country,
    secretaries of state, state election directors, and local
    election officials are taking the steps necessary to respond to
    this new and evolving threat environment.
        Take, for example, the work of Secretary Lawson in Indiana.
    In addition to being an engaged and valued partner with us at
    DHS, she is taking advantage of our scanning and information-
    sharing services. Indiana has taken additional steps to improve
    their security, including increasing monitoring capabilities
    and tightening access and controls.
        In addition, they are working to better secure their
    counties through implementation of two-factor authentication
    and improved post-election auditing. This story is true across
    the country.
        We have seen firsthand the progress that is being made at
    the local level as well. Recently, Under Secretary Chris Krebs
    was in Orange County, California, where he was briefed on their
    comprehensive cybersecurity playbook. This plan includes
    improved cyber hygiene practices, more advanced network
    monitoring and intrusion detection, and the implementation of
    more robust, efficient post-election audits to ensure the
    accuracy of election results.
        Combined, these best practices and security services
    greatly enhanced the resilience of Orange County's election
    system. By publicly communicating them, the county is working
    to give voters the information they need to have confidence
    that their votes will be counted accurately.
        Elections are run by states and localities. Across the 50
    states and 5 territories, there are over 10,000 jurisdictions
    that are responsible for elections. The systems, processes, and
    procedures used vary greatly. The local administration of
    elections empowers voters to engage directly with the process
    and those who run it.
        Which brings me to my final point. 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. Moving forward,
    the Department will continue to coordinate and support state
    and local officials to ensure the security of our election
    infrastructure. Cyber actors can come from anywhere,
    internationally or within U.S. borders, and we are committed to
    ensuring a coordinated response from all levels of Government
    to help plan for and mitigate these risks.
        Before I conclude, I want to take a moment to thank
    Congress for the legislative progress thus far in strengthening
    DHS's cybersecurity and critical infrastructure authorities.
    Specifically, we strongly support the final passage of
    legislation to create the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure
    Security Agency, or CISA, at DHS. This change reflects the
    important work we carry out every day on behalf of the American
    people.
        I look forward to further outlining the work we are doing
    to enhance the security of elections, and I thank you and look
    forward to your questions.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Masterson was submitted for
    the record.]
        Chairman Blunt. Well, thank you, Mr. Masterson.
        We will have a 5-minute round, and if everybody could stay
    pretty close to that and if people have other questions, we
    will have another 5-minute round. We do have a second panel,
    but we want to take full advantage of this panel.
        Let me just ask first the three secretaries of state, this
    is yes or no, should the Federal Government be required to
    share information with jurisdictions that are being impacted by
    known threats?
        Mr. Ashcroft. Yes.
        Mr. Condos. Yes.
        Mr. Simon. Yes.
        Chairman Blunt. For the three of you again, should that
    also--how would--should that include both the state, chief
    state election official as well as the specific jurisdiction? I
    think that is yes or no also.
        Mr. Ashcroft. I would say yes to that.
        Mr. Condos. I agree.
        Mr. Simon. Yes.
        Chairman Blunt. Mr. Masterson, how would you determine--I
    know one of the things I believe you mentioned in your
    testimony was you would have to have some sense that someone
    was ready to receive that information in terms of cyber
    understanding or threat assessment. How would you really
    actually accomplish that with all the local election
    jurisdictions in the country, once you see they have a threat?
    Who do you think you should notify?
        Mr. Masterson. The goal within the Department is to ensure
    broad notification across the sector, which is why we have
    worked to create the Elections Infrastructure Information
    Sharing and Analysis Center, so that there is an avenue by
    which threat information, risk information could be shared
    broadly. Then engaging with the Government Coordinating
    Council, creating those information-sharing protocols for the
    sector.
        The number-one priority within the Coordinating Council has
    been to establish exactly the question you asked, Senator,
    which is how best to share information down to the states and
    then all the way down the locals to ensure that they have what
    they need and that it is done in a way that they can take it
    and it is actionable. They can use it to mitigate those threats
    and protect their systems.
        Chairman Blunt. In terms of broadly sharing, you mean you
    would also broadly share some information with people that
    could potentially face this threat whether they are currently
    facing the threat or not?
        Mr. Masterson. Yes, Senator. That is correct. That is
    typical for how we share information within critical
    infrastructure is to try to boil down the nature of the threat
    and the information necessary for systems owners and operators
    to protect their systems across the sector.
        Chairman Blunt. Again, I am not quite sure I am clear on
    your view of what elected or appointed local official, what
    kind of qualification they would have to have, if any, besides
    having that job for you to share this information with them.
        Mr. Masterson. In order--Senator, in order to receive the
    information from the EI-ISAC, they simply need to be local
    election administrator, state election official, or their
    support staff. The IT staff are eligible. In fact, we are
    working within the sector to craft this information sharing
    such that for executives like the secretaries of state at this
    table, they have the information they need to make good
    decisions from a policy and administrative standpoint, but that
    the IT officials, the technical folks also have the technical
    information they need to respond and protect the systems.
        Chairman Blunt. Is it possible you would be sharing with
    the technical official person something you wouldn't be willing
    to share with the elected official?
        Mr. Masterson. No, Senator. All information is available to
    any of the election officials. It is just a question of who can
    best use that information to effectively protect the systems.
        Chairman Blunt. On the voter registration side, for the
    secretaries, do you have any sense of how many attempts there
    are to get into that system? Secretary Simon mentioned,
    appropriately I think, it doesn't really matter who is trying
    to get in, you don't want them to get in, whether it is a local
    political operative or a foreign government or somebody just
    seeing if they can get into that system and manipulate it in
    some way.
        Is that something that often happens, people are testing
    the system to see if they can get in? Secretary Simon? We will
    go this way this time. You and then Secretary Condos.
        Mr. Simon. Mr. Chairman, yes. That is something that is
    known to happen quite often. Again, we and all the states here
    represented did pass that test, which is good. But there are
    people who are poking and prodding, and the analogy that I have
    come to use in talking with Homeland Security is imagine a car
    thief casing a parking lot, and maybe he goes there a day or
    two in a row. He takes out binoculars and he observes traffic
    patterns, and he tries to figure out is there a way in? That is
    what goes on and can go on quite frequently.
        In the case of all the states represented here, for
    whatever reason, that car thief did not go into the parking
    lot. We would like to think it is because of the great cyber
    protections that we put up in the preceding years. But truth be
    told, we might never know the real reason, but we were able to
    keep them out. But there are people casing--there are a lot of
    people casing a lot of parking lots, and it is up to DHS to
    tell us who they are, what they are there for. So far, they
    have done that.
        Belatedly with respect to the 2016 election--we didn't know
    until 10 months afterwards. But they are doing, I think, a
    better job every day of that.
        Chairman Blunt. Secretary Condos, is this a common thing
    that people are trying to test these systems?
        Mr. Condos. Every day. We have--in talking to my IT
    manager, I can't speak specifically just for election
    management or the voter registration data base, but our entire
    operations, we probably receive several thousand scans per day.
        Chairman Blunt. Per day. Secretary Ashcroft?
        Mr. Ashcroft. I would say we average 100,000 scans on our
    systems a day. We cannot say which of those are targeted to
    elections. We have to treat them all as if they are treated
    toward elections because if they find one way in, they will go
    from there to elections. We treat them as they are all attacks
    on elections.
        Chairman Blunt. Yes, I am going to come back later,
    Mr. Masterson, to you on this topic and others, and how do we--
    how do you think we narrow down which of those should be
    reported and what should be followed up on? I am going to go
    now to Senator Klobuchar.
        Senator Klobuchar. Well, thank you, Senator Blunt.
        We are just so pleased we are having this election hearing,
    and then I am going to defer to my colleague to ask questions
    first. I am glad they are here, and I will start with Senator
    Durbin. I wasn't kidding that I would defer to you with
    questions.
        [Laughter.]
        Senator Klobuchar. I am just pleased they are here and that
    we are having this really important hearing in Rules. Why don't
    you go first, Senator Durbin, and then we will go in order of
    attendance. I will go last. Go ahead.
        Senator Durbin. Thanks. A few years ago, I was on the
    Senate Judiciary Committee, Chairman of the Constitution
    Subcommittee, and there was a lot of talk about voter fraud,
    voter IDs, reducing the time that you would be allowed to vote.
    I took the hearing on the road. We went to Ohio--Cleveland,
    Ohio. Then we went down to Florida. We called election
    officials just like yourselves, both parties, Republicans and
    Democrats, elected and appointed. I asked them the following
    question.
        Your states just changed voter requirements to require the
    voters to prove with a voter ID, to limit the places where you
    can vote, to limit the time that you can vote. What has been
    the incidence of voter fraud in Ohio, in Florida that led you
    to conclude that you had to put these new burdens on voters?
    The answer was none. None.
        For the record, I would like each of you election
    officials, if you would, please, pick--let us pick 10 years.
    Would you report to this committee, and you don't have to do it
    now, but if you would report to this committee, in the last 10
    years, how many votes have been cast in your state and how many
    people have been convicted of voter fraud in either a state or
    Federal court in the same period of time?
        I don't guess you will know this off the top of your head.
    I won't try to put you on the spot. But here is what I have
    concluded. The statement, Secretary Ashcroft, that you made is
    just--it has to be addressed for the record, and here is what
    you said.
        Voter fraud is an exponentially greater threat than
    hacking. Exponentially greater. Let me tell you what happened
    in Illinois because we blew the whistle. We were one of the 21
    states hacked by the Russians. They got into our voter file.
    Somebody left a little wormhole in there, and they got into our
    voter file.
        They had the capacity, and thank goodness they didn't use
    it, to change just a digit on each of our addresses and make a
    chaotic situation at the polling place when people turned up to
    vote, resulting in hundreds of thousands of provisional
    ballots, and I don't know how that would have ended. They
    didn't do it. Thank goodness they didn't, but the threat was
    there.
        I could count on both hands the cases of voter fraud in the
    State of Illinois in the last several election cycles, and the
    convictions even fewer. When it comes to this hacking, it is
    exponentially greater threat to our voting system than voter
    fraud, exponentially. I am willing to say that.
        I hope that we are ready. We put--thank you for the $380
    million. It is good. We got $13 million in Illinois. I wish we
    would have gotten more. Three hundred eighty million will help.
    In 2002, HAVA produced 10 times that amount, $3.8 billion, to
    modernize our voting system.
        I think the Russians are after us again. I hope I am wrong.
    I think other countries are after us again. If we spend all our
    time worrying about making it more difficult for honest
    American citizens to vote instead of worrying about what the
    Russians and others are going to do to invade our election
    system, shame on us.
        I hope that we take this very seriously. I hope that all
    the states have a paper trail. Ours does, thank goodness. I
    hope every other state--I think five don't--will do just
    exactly that.
        Secretary Simon, in your State of Minnesota, what are you
    going to use the Klobuchar funds for?
        Mr. Simon. Well, thank you, Senator Durbin.
        We will use the Klobuchar funds. We have put in a request
    to use the first $1.5 million of our $6.6 million complement to
    redo our--what is called our SVRS, Statewide Voter Registration
    System. It goes by other names in other states. It is what it
    sounds like. It is the primary data base, the very one that,
    unfortunately, in Illinois suffered a breach and the very one
    that in most of the 21 states that I am aware of was at least
    the intended target at the end of the day.
        Senator Durbin. What they told me in Illinois, the State
    Board of Elections, I said what happened? How did the Russians
    get in there? They said we left a little opening that we didn't
    realize was there, and they got in that wormhole, and they were
    in our system.
        They had the capacity. There is no evidence that they
    changed a single registration or a single vote. I certainly
    agree with the witnesses who have said that. From an Illinois
    perspective, that was true, too. But the potential was there
    for a dramatic change. Did you see the same potential in terms
    of your voter information and voting process?
        Mr. Simon. Well, Senator Durbin, without giving a roadmap
    to the bad guys----
        Senator Durbin. No, please don't.
        Mr. Simon I don't want to do that. But what I would say is
    that I think every system has some vulnerabilities. We, in
    2016, did our very best to--and successfully--to make sure we
    took care of those vulnerabilities. We summoned people to find
    them. We asked for people to probe and poke and pry and find
    them so we could fix them, which we did.
        As a result, I think we--and this is what many states have
    done, not just Minnesota. We managed to repulse or rebuff or
    turn away those who tried to get in, which is good, but I like
    to say this is a race without a finish line. There is no end
    zone where you get to spike the football. There is no tape that
    you get to cross. You always have to stay one step ahead of the
    bad guys, and the bad guys get smarter every year. By the way,
    some of them are funded by foreign governments with virtually
    unlimited resources.
        That race without a finish line is something that keeps a
    number of us awake at night, that takes effort, that takes
    focus, and it takes money. These things have price tags.
        Senator Durbin. Thanks. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Blunt. Senator Cortez Masto?
        Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you. Thank you all for being
    here. I, too, want to thank you for this important hearing.
        Let me just associate myself with Senator Durbin's comments
    initially. I was attorney general of Nevada from 2007 to 2014,
    and I can tell you I can count on one hand the type of voter
    fraud that we saw. Most importantly, not only did we see it, we
    caught it, and we prosecuted.
        This idea that somehow there was widespread voter fraud
    occurring across this country that needs our immediate
    attention, which engages in voter suppression, is false. I so
    think that we need to correct the record and use accurate data.
        But let me open this up to the panel as well. In Nevada, a
    majority of the counties are rural, and they obviously play a
    significant role in conducting elections in the state. The
    counties don't have the resources that more populous counties
    have, and they don't have resources like dedicated IT support.
    In your states, how have you addressed that unique challenge of
    election security faced by the rural communities, and what can
    we do to continue to help them and support them?
        Mr. Condos. Thank you, Senator.
        In Vermont, we don't have county government. We go directly
    from the state level to the towns, and in Vermont, the state is
    responsible for paying for the equipment. The state is
    responsible for ensuring that it is working, that it is
    maintained. We pay for the memory cards. We actually provide a
    lot of the resources to the towns. It is not a direct payment
    because we do the work.
        That is how we approached it basically because of the way
    we are set up.
        Mr. Simon. Senator, in Minnesota, we have 87 counties. Only
    9 of the 87 counties have full-time, year-round election staff.
    In most of the counties, which are rural or at least non-urban
    and metropolitan, those folks who run elections also wear many
    other hats. They do property taxes. They do drainage and ditch
    work. They do other things, and they don't have the luxury of
    focusing only on elections.
        That is where I think, if I may, the Federal partnership
    comes in. It costs money to hire people, to have training, to
    put up the defenses. Hennepin County, which is Minneapolis,
    they might have the resources in terms of money and personnel
    and others to erect these kind of defenses. Other counties
    might not be so fortunate. That is where I think there is a
    Federal role to play, frankly, with money, with resources, to
    make sure that everyone in every state, regardless of where
    they live and what kind of community they live, can rest
    assured that the security in general and cybersecurity in
    particular is there and in place.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Right.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Was that the impetus behind your
    request for additional funds in your statement?
        Mr. Simon. Yes, Senator. It was in part. I mean, I think
    making sure we have an even playing field no matter where a
    voter lives in Minnesota is very important.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Okay, thank you. Anyone else?
        Mr. Ashcroft. In Missouri, we have really 116 election
    authorities. We have some counties that are split up. We have
    counties with roughly 2,000 registered voters. They do not have
    the ability and the wherewithal on their own for IT staff. Our
    office works with them.
        We have had meetings with our directors of elections, going
    around the state to reach out to them on new cybersecurity
    initiatives. We are holding a national cybersecurity
    conference, both for secretaries of state, for national
    officials, and local election officials on September 10th and
    11th. We are putting all of our effort--well, not all of it,
    but most of our effort into making sure that they have
    actionable things they can do and the resources to do it.
        I would add one other thing. When we passed voter ID in
    Missouri, we actually increased accessibility to the ballot. We
    actually have individualized individuals that would have been
    turned away under the old law that were allowed to vote on our
    new law. I understand Illinois doesn't work as well as
    Missouri, but in Missouri, we can secure our ballots and make
    sure that every registered voter can participate and their
    voice is heard.
        Thank you.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you. I appreciate those
    comments.
        I also think we can also do automatic voter registration
    and still secure our elections and make sure everybody has
    access to vote.
        Let me also say this, Mr. Masterson. I think you need to
    know this. I worked very closely with the election officials.
    In fact, I think it is true. Everybody should volunteer. I
    volunteered in Clark County on election site when I was an
    assistant county manager.
        But know this. I want to convey to you that the election
    officials in Nevada have told my office that DHS has been great
    to work with. Extremely helpful. Generous with your services
    and knowledge. Thank you for that. I really appreciate it.
        One of the things they told me, however, and I am curious
    if you are hearing this and if this is true, and it is not a
    negative thing. It is that there is too much information, that
    they don't have the bandwidth to process the daily DHS updates
    and have difficulty figuring out what pieces of information are
    relevant for them and establishing priorities among the
    information overload.
        Are you hearing the same thing?
        Mr. Masterson. Thank you, Senator, for the question, and I
    think this may go to Chairman Blunt's question as well.
        We have heard some of that, and part of what we are trying
    to tackle--you know, as you establish a new sector, this is a
    new flow of information to election officials--is finding that
    balance about what is the right amount of information,
    tailoring it in a way that prioritizes what they really need to
    know. But then ensuring that the technical folks or IT folks
    that perhaps need a little more detail and more constant
    updates have that as well.
        I think we are finding that balance as we work with the
    Government Coordinating Council and some of the folks at the
    table to create that tailored information sharing. We will get
    better as we build that relationship and share that
    information. But, yes, that is something we have heard and we
    are working to get better at.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
        Chairman Blunt. Thank you, Senator.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
        Chairman Blunt. Senator Udall?
        Senator Udall. Thank you, Chairman Blunt.
        Let me just, before I ask a couple of questions, we had a
    previous Secretary of State by the name of Dianna Duran, who
    made these just widespread accusations about voter fraud, and
    our state very conscientiously went through thousands and
    thousands that have been reported. After review, it came down
    to several, I mean just a handful of unintentional minor
    errors. No one was ever prosecuted. There was never any real
    fraud that was found.
        I think we need to be very, very careful. I mean, she got
    wonderful headlines, you know? For weeks, there was all this
    activity of, ``Oh, there is fraud. There is fraud.'' Then, when
    it finally trickled out and everybody reviewed it, there was
    nothing there.
        I want to focus again, Secretary Ashcroft, on the quote
    that Senator Durbin asked. The evidence indicates that voter
    fraud is an exponentially greater threat than hacking of
    election equipment. What studies or evidence, preferably
    independent academic studies, back up that claim?
        Mr. Ashcroft. Well, the Senator's actually own words back
    it up because the Senator said that the allegations showed that
    there were no votes changed, no registrations changed by
    hacking. Yet I gave concrete evidence of an election being
    changed by vote fraud.
        As far as I am concerned, if elections are changed by
    fraud, be that individuals in Missouri, be that individuals
    overseas, or by ineptitude, anything that stops the voice of
    the voting public from being heard and then making a decision,
    that is a problem. What I said in my remarks is still true. We
    should take a comprehensive approach to make sure that no votes
    are changed by fraud, malfeasance, criminal actions, or
    ineptitude. We should make sure that every voter knows their
    vote will count.
        Senator Udall. Well, you didn't answer my question. My
    question was about your statement here, ``exponentially greater
    threat.'' What proof do you have?
        I mean, we are all against fraud. Nobody wants fraudulent
    voting. But what proof, independent studies to back up your
    claim that it is exponentially greater?
        Mr. Ashcroft. I will say it as simply as possible. Your
    colleague admitted that no votes were changed, no voter
    registrations were changed by the alleged hacking. I gave you a
    concrete example that was proven in a court of law as
    individuals pled guilty of changing an election.
        No instances of votes being changed. An instance of an
    entire election being changed. That is exactly what I am
    speaking to. I don't know how I can make it more clearer, sir.
        Senator Udall. The--and this is for all the secretaries
    here, and Mr. Masterson, if you have anything to add, I would
    be happy to hear it. Secretary Lawson's written testimony
    stated that only 59 percent of states have drawn down their
    HAVA funds. We know that every state's election infrastructure
    is vulnerable in some way, shape, or form, and we also have
    heard over the years that elections are underfunded.
        Let me ask each of the secretaries, have you drawn down
    your HAVA funds, and if not, what is preventing you from doing
    so? It is a pretty simple answer. I don't need a big lecture on
    that one.
        Mr. Ashcroft. Missouri was the first state to draw down
    their HAVA funds.
        Senator Udall. You have drawn them all down. Okay. You have
    drawn them all down. Go ahead.
        Mr. Condos. Vermont has already drawn down their $3
    million.
        Senator Udall. Yes, Mr. Simon?
        Mr. Simon. Thank you, Senator. We have drawn down our HAVA
    funds.
        Senator Udall. Do you want more? Could you use more?
        Mr. Ashcroft. If you send it, we will use it, sir.
        Senator Udall. Yes. Same?
        Mr. Condos. Yes. Actually, I think what we really need is
    ongoing--if you want to call it maintenance. Cybersecurity is
    an evolving science, and it is an evolving practice. We have
    continuous needs going forward.
        Senator Udall. Same, Mr. Simon?
        Mr. Simon. I would echo the sentiment, yes.
        Senator Udall. Thank you. In your conversations with other
    secretaries of state, do you hear reasons why other states
    aren't drawing down these funds?
        Mr. Condos. Senator, I would say that some of the states
    have to deal with legislative action that needs to be taken in
    order to accept Federal grants. Some of the states may be
    required to do that first. Or it could be from their
    administration. The Governor's office may have to approve it
    before it can be drawn down.
        I think there are other states who are probably trying to
    plan out what they are going to be doing with the money just
    before they get the money.
        Senator Udall. Yes, Mr. Ashcroft, did you have a comment on
    that?
        Mr. Ashcroft. I would say the EAC did a phenomenal job
    getting it out quickly. If it had been a week later, we would
    have run into problems with our legislature.
        Mr. Simon. Senator, I just want to make a distinction
    between the initial HAVA money in 2003. That, we have drawn
    down. The latest chunk, what we have been calling
    affectionately ``the Klobuchar money,'' unfortunately, because
    of, frankly, a political fight in our legislature at the end of
    the session, we weren't able to get access to that $6.6 million
    now, this year.
        That was a totally avoidable outcome and an unfortunate
    one. We think we will be okay, but the sooner we can get that
    money, the better.
        Senator Udall. Yes. Thank you for the courtesy, letting me
    go over a little bit, Chairman Blunt.
        Chairman Blunt. Thank you. Senator Klobuchar?
        Senator Klobuchar. Thank you very much.
        Just to clarify, Secretary Simon, you will be able to
    access that money in the future, and the legislature and the
    Governor appears to want our Secretary of State's office to get
    that funding. Is that correct?
        Mr. Simon. That is correct.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay. It was just part of a larger fight
    over something that, as you described it, was unfortunate. It
    wasn't about the money.
        You mentioned, Secretary Simon, that the bill strikes a
    right balance of the Federal Government support for states.
    This is the Secure Elections Act. Can you expand on this?
        Mr. Simon. Right. Well, I, along with my colleagues, I
    think regardless of party, will always emphasize the primacy of
    the role of states in administering elections. I think there
    is, I dare say, unanimity on that score among secretaries of
    state.
        But what I like about the balance that the Secure Elections
    Act is striking, and I know it is a work in progress, is this
    realization that floors, not ceilings are okay, that even if it
    is just a question of a Federal interest in making sure
    something is done, regardless of how the states choose to do
    it, is important. I highlighted in my testimony here just the
    communications process.
        The GCC, the Government Coordinating Council, is already
    coming up with communications protocols, and my understanding
    of the latest version of the Secure Elections Act is there is
    an acknowledgment there, that that communications can come in
    many different forms including, and not limited to, what the
    GCC comes up with. But the important thing is that there is
    communications, by the way, not just up and down, but up, down,
    and sideways. Local Governments, State Governments, Federal
    Government, maybe some nongovernment actors in some situations.
        I think that alone is a cause for the Federal Government to
    assert some interest in making sure that this communication is
    going on. An election attack in Minnesota can perhaps be linked
    to or have very real effects on an election attack in Vermont
    or Missouri or anywhere else, and so I think that
    communications is important.
        I highlighted that particular aspect, but I think a
    recognition of the primacy of the state role, coupled with a
    very real and genuine Federal interest in making sure things
    get done. States can choose how those things get done. I think
    that strikes the right balance.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay. Secretary Condos, you mentioned
    that the Election Assistance Commission has done a great job of
    disbursing the HAVA funding, appropriating earlier this year
    this money we are discussing. Much of our focus today has been
    on DHS, but could you comment on the role that EAC has played
    in improving communications around the cybersecurity issue.
        Mr. Condos. Certainly. They have been a very valued partner
    with us. They provide information. Obviously, we have to submit
    an approved plan or a plan to them how we are going to spend
    the money.
        I think, you know, I may differ from some of my colleagues,
    but I think that the EAC plays an important role in our
    elections process across this country and sorely needs to have
    the resources it needs to operate and also really badly needs
    to have Congress appoint a full quorum, at least a quorum so
    that they can--their board, or the commission can actually
    operate.
        Senator Klobuchar. You mentioned your support of post-
    election audits earlier. Can you expand on the importance of
    conducting audits and how it relates to voter confidence?
        Mr. Condos. I think that that is extremely important for
    all the--for the integrity of our elections. We in Vermont do
    use paper ballots, and we do a post-election audit within 30
    days. When we do it, we actually do approximately 5 percent of
    our towns, and we do 100 percent of the ballots from that town,
    100 percent of the races on that ballot.
        We do a complete audit of that election. We feel that the
    confidence level that we have with it is as close to 100
    percent as you can be. It is a post-election audit is something
    that I believe should be something that is included in the
    Secure Elections Act as it is.
        Senator Klobuchar. Secretary Simon, same question, but
    about paper ballots and how you see them as an advantage.
        Mr. Simon. It is a huge advantage, especially post 2016. I
    mean, the fact that Minnesota is proudly old school has served
    us well, and we see now many states that are--who were once
    perhaps sold on this vision of the paperless future are now
    understanding that, no, paper is good after all and are going
    in the direction of most of the states in having a paper
    ballot.
        It is very hard to hack paper, and although in Minnesota,
    that paper is fed into a machine, under state law, that cannot,
    must not, and shall not be connected to the Internet. That is a
    central part of our system.
        Senator Klobuchar. Then you have been able to get results
    fairly quickly with this system?
        Mr. Simon. That is right. Yes. It also benefits those
    following the results on election night because the results can
    be reported very quickly, and the counties and the local
    governments are outstanding partners in making sure we get that
    information out.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay. I can turn it to you and then
    maybe ask a few questions----
        Chairman Blunt. No, go ahead. We have some time.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay. I want to focus on some of the
    things that have come out here. First of all, I am not going to
    go on about voter fraud, but I will note the decision that came
    out just yesterday in Kansas, where a Kansas judge struck down
    Kansas' voting registration law that they had introduced, that
    Secretary Kobach actually had introduced that was very
    restrictive.
        He had made this case that there were--it was the tip of
    the iceberg, the people that he had found who had somehow
    fraudulently voted. The judge here looked at all the evidence
    and found that it was a very small number and said that there
    was, in fact, no iceberg--this is their words--only an icicle,
    largely created by confusion and administrative error.
        This was a very thorough review of this. This is based on
    my own experience as the county attorney in Minnesota's biggest
    county, where we had to review cases that were referred to us
    from the Secretary of State, and I had a full-time
    investigator. This is right on the front line looking at these.
    I would--I would echo these remarks because I remember specific
    cases, the handful of cases people referred to.
        The couple whose--the voting line went right, through the
    school board, through their house, and they had decided that
    meant that each of them could vote in both elections, and then
    they asked me where they were supposed to vote, and we did
    research and said it was where they sleep. Then the wife called
    back and said, well, what if we slept in separate beds on two
    sides of the line?
        Okay. I don't--I mean, this is serious stuff, but the kind
    of cases I saw, and we did prosecute a few. A guy that said a
    Republican wouldn't have a say in Minneapolis. So he decided to
    vote twice. Told that to our investigator.
        We had--but those were so rare. Overall, we found that most
    of these cases were a dad and a son with the same last name and
    the same first name, and it was confusing. When we looked into
    it, we found out they had a total legal right to vote.
        I do want to remember this decision, which really
    encapsulates what we have seen in these studies all across the
    country and that our effort should be much more on trying to
    get people to vote, which secretary of states are in such a
    unique position to do, to encourage them to vote, to get the
    numbers up. For us, it always works to say we don't want Iowa
    to beat us in voter turnout, or we don't want Wisconsin to beat
    us. But that is what we should be doing and not--and be honest
    about what is going on here with these numbers.
        Then the other thing we have to be honest about is not that
    the votes were changed in the last election, but they tried,
    and they tried hard, and they got into the Illinois data bank,
    and those kinds of things. They tried in 21 states.
        When our own intelligence people under President Trump are
    telling us that Russia is emboldened, are telling us that we
    are at risk, I think we have to pay attention to it. I
    appreciate that is why we are having this hearing.
        My question of the panel, just a yes or no, the 2018
    primaries already happening across the country, general
    election 139 days away. You are on the front lines. Confirm,
    yes or no, do you agree elections are a potential target and,
    therefore, you see this as a priority? That is my question.
        Secretary----
        Mr. Ashcroft. Primary elections are a very big priority to
    us, and we have already started implementing things.
        Senator Klobuchar. Good. But do you see election security
    as a priority?
        Mr. Ashcroft. I think that is a very important topic, and
    that is why we have been working for quite a while.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay. Sure.
        Mr. Condos. Simply put, yes.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay.
        Mr. Simon. Yes.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay.
        Mr. Masterson. Yes.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay. Secretary Ashcroft, from your
    testimony, it sounded like you believe that information sharing
    from the Government to the states is important and that it
    should be improved. Do you want to--you can elaborate on that.
        Mr. Ashcroft. Yes. There have been serious problems with
    prior individuals in DHS. We had a NASS meeting last year where
    DHS reported that they had told states about instances, but
    they couldn't tell us who they had told. They hadn't told chief
    election officials. They might have told the chief technology
    official. They might have told a local election official.
        We have had problems with things being classified far above
    what they should be classified. They couldn't tell that to
    election authorities, and we couldn't respond.
        Senator Klobuchar. Yes, seen that. Very good.
        Mr. Ashcroft. Sorry.
        Senator Klobuchar. No, no. It is just very--I mean, I said
    I have seen that, and that is well put and must be incredibly
    frustrating when you are trying to do your job.
        We discussed already, Secretary Condos, the post-election
    audit process. We talked about paper ballots and how important
    this money is.
        Mr. Masterson, in a recent article, you wrote about some of
    the great work election officials are doing around the country.
    Do you believe that state and local election officials can
    benefit from this sharing that we talked about? This is not
    just the immediate information about the threat that we need to
    have happen, but also best practices.
        Mr. Masterson. Absolutely, yes.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay, very good. Well, I went through
    all those because those are the elements of our Secure
    Elections Act. Very tricky, huh? We are just hoping that we can
    get this through, and I know Senator Lankford is working very
    hard to do that.
        But thank you all.
        Chairman Blunt. Thank you, Senator Klobuchar.
        Let me start back to where I was a minute ago. In the
    Secure Elections Act, which is a work in progress apparently
    that we will take up at some point, one of the requirements
    there is that if an election agency has reason to believe that
    an election cyber incident has occurred with respect to the
    election system, they are to notify the Department. That would
    be the Department of Homeland Security. That is earlier defined
    as ``any incident, any incident involving an election system.''
        Clearly, from the numbers that have been shared here, that
    would be an unreasonable thing to do. I think maybe,
    Mr. Masterson, maybe in the interest of time, we may just have
    to come back to you and your--the GCC and say how do we write
    that in a way that it makes sense? You obviously don't need
    1,000 a day or 100,000 a day notices that somebody is trying to
    get into our system.
        We need to figure that out. Do you want to comment on that?
        Mr. Masterson. Mr. Chairman, I would agree completely. I
    think finding that balance is something we have been discussing
    in the GCC. None of these folks or the locals need notice that
    their Microsoft patches are out of date, right? They are aware
    and working on that.
        What is the balance on notification with regard to threats,
    vulnerabilities, and incidents and finding that balance? So
    happy to report back and work with that.
        Chairman Blunt. Exactly. On the audit trail, do all three
    of your states require an audit trail? Do you require a paper
    ballot trail, yes or no?
        Mr. Ashcroft. Yes, we do.
        Mr. Condos. Yes, we do.
        Mr. Simon. Yes.
        Chairman Blunt. Same, the same response, yes or no, should
    the Federal Government make an audit trail, a paper audit trail
    a requirement to have Federal assistance?
        Mr. Ashcroft. I don't think so.
        Mr. Condos. I do think so.
        Mr. Simon. I think there is a Federal interest in making
    sure that there is some audit, some audit process.
        Chairman Blunt. Well, now what I am asking about is should
    there be a way to re-create the actual election itself? I don't
    know quite how to do that without paper, even if you had a
    machine that was not accessible to the Web.
        Mr. Ashcroft. I believe states are moving to do that
    without Federal legislation. That is why I don't think Federal
    legislation needs to be done on that.
        Chairman Blunt. But in all three of these cases, you have
    that. On the audit requirement, how specific do you think that
    needs to be? If we had a--in this bill, there is, I think, a
    specific--you have 5 percent. Should that be left up to you, or
    should we tell you whether 5 percent is enough or not,
    depending on how close the election was?
        Mr. Condos. That is a great question, Senator, and I think
    that really there should be some flexibility in the type of
    audit as well. I mean, we hear a lot these days about risk-
    limited audits. Risk-limited audits are a great way of doing it
    if you have the systems in place that allow you to do it, and
    right now, there is only a handful of states that could
    actually do that.
        The system that we use, as I said, we are actually talking
    internally about increasing the 5 percent to maybe 8 percent or
    even 10 percent of our towns post election. We feel very
    confident that it is actually even better than a risk-limited
    audit because it actually looks at 100 percent of the ballots
    that are cast in a town and 100 percent of the races. So you
    are auditing the entire ballot bag essentially at that time.
        Chairman Blunt. Any comments from the two of you on that?
        Mr. Ashcroft. When I was teaching, I taught statistics. I
    think that the language should just give probability intervals
    or confidence intervals as opposed to a specific percentage.
    For a very close race, you need to look at more. If it is an
    80-20 race, you don't need to look at as many ballots for
    people to have confidence.
        Chairman Blunt. Secretary Simon?
        Mr. Simon. Senator, I would say the more flexibility, the
    better. There are states, without throwing any under the bus
    here, that are not represented here today. They don't have
    really any or any meaningful sort of audit, and it strikes me
    that there is a Federal interest in making sure that there is
    some audit process.
        Chairman Blunt. When you do an audit, do you count the
    ballots the same way they were counted on election day?
        Mr. Simon. Yes.
        Chairman Blunt. How about you?
        Mr. Condos. We use a completely different system,
    completely different tabulators.
        Chairman Blunt. But you don't hand count them or anything?
    You still count them----
        Mr. Condos. No. In fact, in our experience, the hand
    counting has actually proved to be the most error.
        Chairman Blunt. Secretary Ashcroft?
        Mr. Ashcroft. We don't hand count everything, although
    there are times when we do, and we are working with the local
    election authorities on those rules.
        Chairman Blunt. Would you give a direction in that post-
    election audit to election authorities locally, and they do the
    recount, or you do the recount?
        Mr. Ashcroft. The local election authorities do the
    recount.
        Chairman Blunt. How about with you?
        Mr. Condos. We do the--we do the audit entirely.
        Chairman Blunt. The ballots come to you in the State
    capitol, and you do the audit, or you go to where the ballots
    are?
        Mr. Condos. We do a public audit. We use the auditorium in
    the Governor's building, and we have the ballots delivered to
    us by the local boards of civil authority from each of the
    towns that have been randomly selected. They deliver those
    ballots to us. We do our work, seal those ballots back up in
    the bag, and get them delivered back to the towns.
        Chairman Blunt. How do you do it, Secretary Simon?
        Mr. Simon. Senator, that is done at the local level, not by
    our office. But we then followup with a second step some weeks
    later and do what is called a post-election review of that
    audit.
        Chairman Blunt. Right. All right. I think there will be
    more questions for the record, and certainly, Secretary
    Ashcroft and I are really glad that all these states have these
    great good government traditions. Our tradition is not quite
    that great. If you looked at the 2000 Governor's race in
    Missouri, I think there is a post-election investigation that
    finds out lots of people voted who shouldn't have, including a
    dog.
        We don't know exactly how the dog voted, but the dog was
    the person--was the registered voter, and the ballot was cast.
    So, you know, we are not--just to get this discussion where I
    think it should be, the Federal Government is not about to do
    things that encourage voter fraud, and the discussion that
    voter fraud doesn't happen is not really before the committee
    today, but I look forward to your reports back of what kind of
    voter fraud you have had.
        I think, Secretary Ashcroft, within the last year, we had
    one election that was set aside by a court, two elections,
    according to Secretary Ashcroft, set aside by a court, and then
    they had to have the election again. Was that absentee voter
    fraud, or was that voter fraud at the voting place?
        Mr. Ashcroft. It had to do with the absentee ballots. There
    were serious allegations of absentee voter fraud. They didn't
    have to prove the voter fraud. There was enough smoke that the
    court said redo it.
        Chairman Blunt. We even have courts in our state that say
    you have to have the election over again. I guess we just have
    a burden that Illinois doesn't have or other states that don't
    think this is ever a problem. It is a problem. It happens not
    to be the problem we are dealing with in this bill, in this
    hearing, or right now.
        Thank all of you for coming. We have got a vote coming up
    before too long, so if our next panel will come up, we will
    have some questions for our local election officials, one of
    which is from the Illinois jurisdiction that somebody actually
    got into, as opposed to the 21 jurisdictions that people tried
    to get into.
        [Pause.]
        Chairman Blunt. All right. Our two witnesses here are Noah
    Praetz, who is the Director of Elections working under Cook
    County Clerk David Orr. I am not quite sure, but we are going
    to find out if it was your jurisdiction or another one that
    somebody actually got into, Mr. Praetz.
        And Shane Schoeller from Springfield, Missouri, where I
    live and vote and has a job I once had. Let us start with Mr.
    Praetz and then Mr. Schoeller, and we will have a few questions
    for both of you.

     OPENING STATEMENT OF NOAH PRAETZ, DIRECTOR OF ELECTIONS, COOK
                            COUNTY, ILLINOIS

        Mr. Praetz. Thank you, Chairman Blunt, Ranking Member
    Klobuchar.
        My name is Noah Praetz. I am the Director of Elections in
    Cook County, Illinois, and it is a real honor to be here.
        As election administrators, when we certify results, we
    help bestow not just power, but legitimacy. Legitimacy that
    comes from the essential American belief that our elections
    reflect a trusted and true accounting of voter choices. That
    legitimacy must be secured.
        Election officials have been working and securing votes and
    voter records for a very long time. When I started in the
    business prior to 2000, we served mostly as logistics managers,
    like wedding planners, making sure the right lists of people
    came together in the right place with the right stuff. After
    Bush v. Gore, though, and the Help America Vote Act, a new era
    of rules and voter technology was heralded in, and we became
    legal compliance and IT managers.
        But the 2016 election and all advice shared since show that
    sophisticated attacks are to be expected, and therefore, we
    must become cybersecurity managers. Spurred by this need to
    defend against foreign enemies, officials have been working
    successfully to find a good balance of Federal involvement in
    elections without trampling on the authority that states
    zealously guard. Good progress is being made.
        State officials who protect statewide voter registration
    lists everywhere and more systems in some states and who are
    often the spokespeople defending our institution deserve great
    credit, particularly their lead blocking up to the 2016
    election. However, and at the risk of being overly broad, I
    must underscore today that local election officials are the
    ones who control, secure, and run elections.
        We locals, 108 in Illinois and over 8,000 nationally, are
    on the front lines of this new battlefield. We deploy a variety
    of network-connected digital services such as voter
    registration systems, informational websites, unofficial
    election results displays, electronic poll books, election day
    command centers, not to mention the less-connected vote
    counting systems. Each of these is a target for our
    adversaries.
        Most of us are simply county officers, and we are facing
    down powerful, shadowy adversaries like Andy of Mayberry sent
    to repel an invading army. We need advice, support, and
    resources. First, for modern, defendable technology and routine
    hand-counted audits, which can give additional confidence that
    digital results are accurate. Second, and more critically
    today, we have a pressing need for top-notch security personnel
    with the skills to navigate the current cyber minefield.
        In Cook County, we have studied this, undertaken
    significant efforts at securing our infrastructure, and helping
    raise awareness broadly through the ecosystem. We conclude that
    to decrease the likelihood of successful attack, each election
    official must have access to an election security officer. Most
    election officials don't have that today.
        We suggest this be handled by a brigade of digital
    defenders or, as Homeland Security's Coordinating Council calls
    them, ``cyber navigators.'' These navigators should adopt a
    mantra of ``defend, detect, recover.'' They can help us improve
    defenses following the specific recommendations of the Center
    for Internet Security or the Defending Digital Democracy
    program at Harvard. They will also help us mature our breach
    detection techniques, and they will help mature our recovery
    plans for when attackers penetrate the first and second line.
        To accomplish this, the navigators will secure free support
    on offer currently from Homeland Security, state governments,
    and companies like Google and Cloudflare. They will work with
    state and county IT staff and with vendors who support locals
    in much of their support.
        Finally, they will help build a culture of security that
    can adapt to evolving threats. Incidentally, Illinois lawmakers
    recently required that half of the HAVA funds you just released
    be spent on a navigator program, and our state election
    officials are acting aggressively to create one.
        Voters across the country should feel broadly confident
    that we have resilient systems, and election officials are
    taking this problem very seriously. But voters should also
    understand that without continued investment in people and
    products, the possibility of a successful attack increases.
        Some losing candidates are already apt to call their
    defeats into doubt. A new digital breach, no matter how far
    removed from the vote counting system, could turn sore losers
    to cynicism, disbelief, even revolt. That is the reaction the
    enemies of the United States want.
        The bottom line is we cannot eliminate every chance of
    breach, but we can make sure that successful attacks are rare,
    and we can provide assurances that we are prepared to recover
    quickly when they do happen. We can do this with support at the
    local level.
        But democracy is not perfect. As Churchill noted, it is the
    worst form of government except for all the others. We need to
    protect it, and we will regret it if our democracy is damaged
    because we looked away and failed to support it at this
    critical moment.
        Thank you, and I look forward to any questions.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Praetz was submitted for the
    record.]
        Chairman Blunt. Thank you, Mr. Praetz.
        Mr. Schoeller?

      OPENING STATEMENT OF SHANE SCHOELLER, CLERK, GREENE COUNTY,
                                MISSOURI

        Mr. Schoeller. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
    Klobuchar, and distinguished members of the committee. Thank
    you for the opportunity to offer testimony this morning.
        My name is Shane Schoeller. I am honored to serve as the
    County Clerk in Greene County, Missouri.
        The county clerk in each county of our state is responsible
    for several administrative duties for the county. These duties
    include tax administration, Secretary to the Board of
    Equalization, licensing and notary issuance, county payroll and
    benefits administration, retention and archival of county
    records, voter registration, and election administration.
    Election administration is clearly the most visible duty of all
    that I just mentioned.
        It is a duty that my fellow county clerks and election
    directors across the state take seriously as we work tirelessly
    to ensure the correct ballot is given to each voter, and then
    the results of their cast ballots being correctly tabulated.
        It is important in the context of this testimony today to
    recognize that each state is unique in how their elections are
    administered at the local level, but not unique in being
    responsible for several other administrative duties. This
    effort in large part is decentralized state by state and county
    by county, which is an advantage in protecting against a broad-
    based systemic cyberattack on our elections.
        The advantage of being decentralized for local election
    officials is also a challenge as it relates to cybersecurity
    threats to electronic voter registration data and the
    electronic tabulation of election results on election night. It
    is fair to say that the majority of county clerks in the rural
    areas of Missouri are depending on the efforts of their
    election service providers who provide their voting equipment
    services, the secretary of state's office, and the coordinated
    efforts of the Department of Homeland Security and the Election
    Assistance Commission to be their firewall for protection
    against incoming cybersecurity threats.
        I currently serve on the advisory board for the EAC. I
    appreciate their continued and increasing coordinated efforts
    to provide critical information on security preparedness to
    state and local election officials. Their work with the DHS and
    the National Association of Secretaries of State is welcome. I
    am optimistic that these good efforts will continue and be
    further enhanced through one of the provisions within the
    Secure Elections Act that would change the `` Technical
    Guidelines Development Committee'' to the `` Technical Advisory
    Board'' and, because of that, include cybersecurity experts as
    part of it.
        I believe changes like this are needed to build on the
    current information sharing that was not in place prior to the
    2016 election to continue improving how cybersecurity
    information is shared to local election officials in a common
    sense and productive way, to help mitigate possible
    cyberattacks in future elections.
        I do want to address one area of concern in the Secure
    Elections Act, and that is on page 23, lines 3, 4, and 5. It
    says, ``Each election result is determined by tabulating marked
    ballots, hand or device.'' I strongly recommend for post-
    election auditing purposes that it state ``marked paper
    ballots,'' as I believe the opportunity for fraud in an
    electronic ballot casting system that does not have a paper
    trail is too great.
        To this point, part of the post-audit requirements in our
    state's regulatory code requires a manual count of the voted
    paper ballots based on a random drawing by a bipartisan team
    not less than 5 percent of the voting precincts on election
    day. Being able to share with voters that the paper ballots
    they cast were randomly selected to be recounted by hand during
    the post audit was critical to helping earn confidence that the
    certified election results in the 2016 general election were
    accurate.
        An area of concern that has received less focus, but cannot
    be underestimated, is the possibility of an attempted
    cyberattack to alter electronic-based voter rosters that are
    now commonly used in place of paper-based voter rosters when
    checking in voters on election day. The benefits of checking in
    a voter on an iPad or tablet-based check-in system have been
    enormous, and it is a convenience voters really appreciate as
    they see their wait times reduced.
        This convenience, though, can quickly evaporate and become
    the source of real issues on election day if voters who have
    not voted are informed on election day that they already have
    voted, or their name cannot be found to check them in to vote.
    I am sure you would agree with me that this is the perfect
    recipe for voters to become very angry and for real chaos to
    ensue.
        As we think through these issues, it is evident that a
    majority of our local election officials, who balance so many
    administrative duties for their county and often have no
    resources available to monitor and prevent incoming
    cyberattacks, need outside help from the DHS and their
    secretary of state to help them withstand future cyber threats
    through their voter registration data and the tabulated
    election results on election night.
        It is for these reasons that I recommend that the DHS, in
    coordination with our secretaries of state, assess state by
    state where the weakest vulnerabilities are county by county.
    Based on the information learned, I believe the necessary cyber
    defense protection can be provided where it is needed to help
    ensure the integrity of our elections this November will be
    protected before it is too late.
        As I conclude my remarks, I want to emphasize that I firmly
    believe that elections are the cornerstone of our freedom, and
    we must all work together to protect that freedom and its
    integrity every time a voter cast his or her ballot. I believe
    we are up to the task if we do it together.
        Thank you for holding today's committee hearing to assess
    the state of election security preparation in our Nation as we
    prepare for this November, and I look forward to answering the
    committee's questions.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Schoeller was submitted for
    the record.]
        Chairman Blunt. Thank you, Mr. Schoeller.
        How many registered voters approximately do you have in
    Greene County?
        Mr. Schoeller. Just a little over 189,000.
        Chairman Blunt. How about you in Cook County?
        Mr. Praetz. One-point-five million.
        Chairman Blunt. Was it your system that was penetrated by
    some--by a hacker we believe to have been a Russian hacker?
        Mr. Praetz. It was a statewide system. Illinois is a little
    bit different. We are----
        Chairman Blunt. The State Director of Elections would have
    been the person that we would have seen on 60 Minutes not too
    long ago talking about this?
        Mr. Praetz. Yes, sir. That was him. Yes.
        Chairman Blunt. It was the statewide Illinois system?
        Mr. Praetz. That is correct.
        Chairman Blunt. Is it your view that more problems are
    likely to be created on election day by getting into the
    registration system than the likelihood of getting into the
    counting system?
        Mr. Praetz. Sure. I mean, we have got a broad threat
    surface area. We rely on a number of different systems. The
    network connectivity of voter registration systems is certainly
    much greater than voting systems and, therefore, more--an
    easier target for adversaries.
        Chairman Blunt. Mr. Schoeller?
        Mr. Schoeller. I would concur, and certainly that is an
    issue that happened in Durham County, North Carolina, in 2016,
    very small scale. But if you would increase that scale, you
    could easily see the issues it would create on the day of an
    election.
        Chairman Blunt. The option of provisional voting, as
    Senator Durbin suggested earlier, it would quickly sort of
    overwhelm the system if you had all kinds of people trying to
    cast their ballot?
        Mr. Schoeller. Correct. We are looking at a back-up system
    in case that would occur for our county. But clearly, even that
    is going to be fairly technical and hard to accomplish. But we
    are looking at that, should that occur.
        Mr. Praetz. If I might point out, please, that in Illinois,
    we have got election day registration, which, in and of itself,
    is a highly resilient policy decision that our lawmakers made,
    particularly in the event of an issue with the voter
    registration data base. Clearly, lines become a problem. We
    have been modeling--our election day registration now is about
    10 seconds longer than our normal check-in.
        There are ways--there are ways to do it, but it is a policy
    decision that not only helps the voters, but it makes the
    security of the whole system much more resilient.
        Chairman Blunt. I assume if you could register in 10
    seconds, you could also do what you need to to cast a
    provisional ballot pretty quickly then?
        Mr. Praetz. Sure. That is true.
        Chairman Blunt. If that same system was designed to
    accommodate that?
        Mr. Praetz. Yes, sir. Absolutely. It is 10 seconds marginal
    increase.
        Chairman Blunt. Yes.
        Mr. Praetz. I would love to be able to get voters through
    in 10 seconds, but that is not the case.
        Chairman Blunt. Mr. Schoeller?
        Mr. Schoeller. Right now, our provisional ballot process
    would not allow for that to happen quickly because of the
    process in filling out the envelope, all the details that go
    along with that. We are certainly--Illinois may be ahead of us
    in that particular regard.
        Chairman Blunt. Do you have a way, Mr. Schoeller, to
    monitor how many people might be trying to access your system
    from outside the system?
        Mr. Schoeller. That would be through our information
    systems team, and they keep that information pretty close to
    the vest, but we are fortunate in Greene County, we have that
    type of help available. But clearly, in our smaller counties, I
    was visiting with one of my fellow county clerks before today,
    and they said we are not prepared, if something of this scale
    would occur, to be able to defend themselves.
        Chairman Blunt. Now I was in a location in St. Louis a
    couple of weeks ago where they have--really they are the
    principal provider of the iPad voting day system.
        Mr. Schoeller. Yes.
        Chairman Blunt. They were just transitioning 51 counties in
    Minnesota to that system. They just got the entire country of
    Canada as a client. One of the things they were doing while I
    was there, they had three summer interns and two other people
    who just all the time tried to get into the systems that they
    are responsible for.
        You know, this is somebody who spends all day every day
    trying to secure a system by trying to penetrate a system. If
    they find those spots, so you have people doing that.
        Mr. Praetz. Sure. I mean, the red team attacks are very
    valuable sort of efforts to ensure that your defenses are
    holding up as you would expect. Homeland Security has offered
    that to all the states and locals. We just had a risk and
    vulnerability assessment through them, and it is quite
    interesting what the good guys are capable of as well.
        Chairman Blunt. But the good guys have to be--you know, our
    whole cyber structure is the good guys have to be successful
    all the time.
        Mr. Praetz. Every single time.
        Chairman Blunt. The bad guys only have to be successful
    once to do--to do great damage. Before I turn to Senator
    Klobuchar,
    Mr. Schoeller, you would like to see a paper ballot as part of
    a national requirement?
        Mr. Schoeller. I would in terms of as you think about the
    measurement that is used in all the different things, but
    particularly when you are visiting the voters. A voter wants to
    see something tangible, and I think the tangibility of paper is
    going to give them much greater confidence. I think when it
    comes to Federal elections, not just for President, but for the
    balance of Congress and the House and the Senate, that being
    able to give them that assurance that, yes, we can always go
    back and look at a paper trail versus something that is on a
    screen that is based inside a system that we have to trust. I
    think voters are going to appreciate that type of assurance.
        Certainly, when I visit voters back home, I rarely have a
    disagreement. Matter of fact, I can't think of one time a voter
    has disagreed with me in that regard, regardless of party.
        Chairman Blunt. When you do an audit of the post-election
    audit, you count those by hand or with counting equipment?
        Mr. Schoeller. We--at no less than 5 percent of the voting
    precincts on the day of the election, we do--and they are
    bipartisan teams. They are recounted by hand. One of the things
    that I think is important is that even if you do a post audit
    with a machine, how would you know if something has been
    compromised if you can't at least compare the results of the
    paper ballot, and I think that is the assurance it gives.
        Clearly, the machine, when you have an accurate election,
    does do a better job of counting the ballots. I am 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.
        Chairman Blunt. Thank you.
        Senator Klobuchar?
        Senator Klobuchar. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
        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?
        Mr. Praetz. I think that is 100 percent inappropriate for
    civil elections.
        Mr. Schoeller. I find it ironic because this is my first
    term. When I ran for this office in 2014, that was actually a
    common theme that I heard.
        Senator Klobuchar. Right. I was hearing it, and I was--I
    kept thinking about our state with, I am not going to keep
    dwelling on it, with that high voter turnout. But you know,
    that involved the paper ballot----
        Mr. Schoeller. Right. That was incredible integrity.
        Senator Klobuchar. Incredible integrity. But it involved
    people, they could vote by mail, and we have 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 are right. That is what people were talking about. Why
    can't you just do it from your home computer and have no back-
    up, right?
        Mr. Schoeller. Right. That was one of the things I actually
    had to disagree when that viewpoint was put forth, particularly
    in one city I remember. 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. There was
    actually one speaker----
        Senator Klobuchar. Like voting from Facebook.
        Mr. Schoeller. Correct.
        Senator Klobuchar. Just kidding. That was a little----
        Mr. 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 was a good idea. But I
    think we have evidence now from 2016 that clearly that is a
    convenience that we just can't afford.
        Senator Klobuchar. Very good. Mr. Schoeller, in your
    testimony, you supported the Secure Elections Act's increase of
    cybersecurity expertise, what is currently the Technical
    Guidelines Development Committee. Additionally, you support
    even more robust auditing provisions.
        Mr. Schoeller. Yes.
        Senator Klobuchar. We talked about that, and so you think
    that that is very important to have this post-election audit.
    Correct?
        Mr. Schoeller. I do. Certainly--and one of the things I
    wanted to recognize is when we do these audits, they are very
    transparent. They are very open to the public, and that is
    something that you could not put a value on.
        Senator Klobuchar. Mr. Praetz, thank you for supporting the
    Secure Elections Act in your testimony, and I think it must be
    hard to be always used as the example of Illinois, that they
    got that close. But it must make it more of a concern in your
    state when you know that happened.
        Mr. Praetz. Yes. Certainly. It hits home.
        Senator Klobuchar. Very good. Are people aware of it, do
    you think?
        Mr. Praetz. Oh, yes. I mean, you know, our voters come to
    us, and we are lucky in Illinois because we can tell a strong
    story. We start at the end. We have got a piece of paper that
    every voter looked at. Worst-case scenario, a Sony-type attack
    with full meltdown of all systems, we can re-create an election
    that is trusted and true.
        Do you want to keep talking about election security? Most
    people walk away. Some will engage.
        If we were able to talk that way nationally, this would be
    probably the last hearing of this sort we will have. I mean, it
    is a very effective narrative.
        Senator Klobuchar. Yes. Do voters get worried about having
    their private data taken?
        Mr. Praetz. Sure. Certainly.
        Senator Klobuchar. Which is a different issue, of course,
    than trying to tamper.
        Mr. Praetz. It is an entirely different issue.
        Senator Klobuchar. I mean, it could happen at the same
    time, but it is a different concern.
        Mr. Praetz. Now, luckily, we have the datasets we keep on
    voters don't have a tremendous amount of PII, but it is
    certainly something that we protect.
        Senator Klobuchar. Of course, we have been talking about
    the fact that Homeland Security didn't come forward with the
    information to the state. When did you find out about the--
        Mr. Praetz. Well, so, again, it happened at the state
    level, and I know as much as anybody else from the 60 Minutes
    story. They shut down the statewide voter registration system
    sometime in the summer, and then we started asking questions.
        We are a bottom-up state. Each county in Illinois has their
    own voter registration system, and then we share data up to the
    State Board of Elections, which also is another sort of
    resilient policy choice because even if the state board system
    had been taken down, we would all have been to operate pretty
    seamlessly.
        Senator Klobuchar. I think there is just a secondary
    concern that people aren't always focused on is that the
    hacking could also result in stealing of private voter
    information.
        Mr. Praetz. Of course.
        Senator Klobuchar. The people's addresses, stuff like that.
    We have been talking a lot about DHS, but you both mentioned
    EAC briefly in your testimony, and could you talk about the
    role that the Election Commission has played in improving
    communications around cybersecurity?
        Mr. Praetz. Certainly. I sit on the Executive Committee of
    the Government Coordinating Council, and I sit alongside the
    chairman of the EAC and the president of NASS and NASED, and
    this sort of confederation is working really well to--for all
    of us to sort of figure out our lanes. What has become clear to
    everybody, including Homeland Security, is the vital role that
    EAC has played. For 15 years, they have been a significant
    partner. They are a trusted source. I think DHS has been able
    to rely on them significantly, and we have certainly at the
    local level.
        Senator Klobuchar. Mr. Praetz, you discussed cyber
    navigators extensively in your testimony, and Mr. Schoeller
    mentioned that not all election authorities have access to a
    team dedicated to protecting them, which you noted. Can you
    both discuss how cyber navigators can provide local election
    officials with a much-needed resource and expertise?
        Mr. Schoeller. I think that is the issue. You mentioned the
    EAC. You know, they have a number of white papers. They have a
    number of information that is out there available. They are
    trying to do all they can.
        I think the issue, and this is in my broader testimony that
    I have included for the record, is that oftentimes a local
    election official, they are so overtasked with all these
    various administrative duties, they don't have a budget to be
    able to handle the duties they have, they don't have access to
    that information just by the logistical way their job occurs
    every single day.
        That is why I think if we can have programs that are there
    to help, like Noah mentioned this morning, I think that is
    going to be the type of help that our local election officials
    appreciate. Because they are concerned. They are worried. They
    realize they don't have the technical background or
    capabilities or the local help to be able to get that
    protection they need.
        One of the things that I want to mention, I think the other
    issue is that sometimes they will go out to somebody there
    locally to get help. But how do they know if the help they are
    being provided is what they need? I think that is another
    thing, and part of helping educate local election officials is,
    okay, this is a product or this is a company you can trust.
        I mean, we get a lot of information from companies, you
    know, telling us they will help us in terms of cybersecurity,
    but what product is actually really needed versus what would we
    just be spending money on that would be frivolous and not
    really protect us at the end of the day?
        Senator Klobuchar. Very good. Thank you to both of you.
        Chairman Blunt. My last question for both of you, and there
    may be questions in writing, do you see any potential for
    unnecessary duplication with the EAC and the new involvement of
    Homeland Security? If you do, is there a way we can
    thoughtfully try to deal with that?
        Mr. Praetz. I have no concerns there. I think Homeland
    Security has got quite a broad plate of responsibilities. Now I
    am glad that they are able to share some of their cyber-
    specific resources. I think it is critical to have an
    institution dedicated solely to election support that will not
    get pulled into other issues.
        Chairman Blunt. Mr. Schoeller?
        Mr. Schoeller. I think the issue is broad enough that the
    coordination is good, and I think the EAC terms of the other
    areas they help out with in terms of the clearing house for
    best practices of the local election official, those types of
    things they provide that DHS is not going to provide. But I
    think when it comes to protecting ourselves in terms of the
    cyber world, I don't think you can be too broad at this point.
        Chairman Blunt. As an interface, you would be comfortable
    reporting things to EAC that then they would report on to
    Homeland Security if they decided necessary?
        Mr. Schoeller. Yes.
        Mr. Praetz. That is correct. We didn't sort of in the
    information-sharing protocols that the GCC has developed, that
    is not the exact design, but I have zero doubt that the
    officials at the EAC and the DHS that are working on this will
    share information appropriately with each other.
        Chairman Blunt. Well, thank all of you. We have started a
    couple of votes that we are going to need to go to, but we
    appreciate you and the other witnesses being with us today.
        The record will be open for a week from today, and there
    may be some questions that come to you in writing. If they do,
    we would hope you would respond to those as quickly as
    possible.
        [The information referred to was submitted for the record.]
        Chairman Blunt. The hearing is closed.
        [Whereupon, at 12:38 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

                          APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED

                                  ----------

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                        ELECTION SECURITY PREPARATIONS:
                        FEDERAL AND VENDOR PERSPECTIVES

                                  ----------

                            WEDNESDAY, JULY 11, 2018

                          United States Senate,
                 Committee on Rules and Administration,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:31 a.m., in
    Room SR-301, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. Roy Blunt,
    Chairman of the committee, presiding.
        Present: Senators Blunt, Cruz, Capito, Wicker, Fischer,
    Klobuchar, Udall, Warner, King, and Cortez Masto.
        Also Present: Senators Lankford and Wyden.

      OPENING STATEMENT OF HONORABLE ROY BLUNT, CHAIRMAN, A U.S.
                   SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MISSOURI

        Chairman Blunt. Good morning. The committee will come to
    order.
        It is great to welcome our witnesses today. I am
    particularly grateful that two of our colleagues from the
    Senate will start us off with some observations they have about
    this critically important issue.
        Also, I am glad that my fellow Missourian, Scott
    Leiendecker, is here. I had a chance to learn more about his
    growing company in this area a few weeks ago, and look forward
    to his testimony, as I do the testimony of all the others.
        This is the second in a series of hearings on election
    security. As we know, during the 2016 election cycle, state and
    local officials were tested like they had not been tested
    before. Even after the election, were more aware of the threats
    that were out there and their need to have better information
    about those threats, and more help as to how to deal with them.
        At our last hearing, the local officials told us that they
    needed timely and actionable information. They needed cyber
    security resources as well as technical assistance.
        Today, we turn to the Federal officials who are in charge
    of helping provide that kind of assistance and looking at how
    they can better provide those resources, as well as private
    sector election vendors.
        Efforts to secure American elections are not new. Following
    the 2000 election, the 2002 Help America Vote Act established
    the United States Election Assistance Commission to assist
    states in replacing voting systems and improving election
    administration.
        HAVA, as that bill was called, also created a partnership
    between the Election Assistance Commission and the National
    Institute of Standards and Technology to create guidance for
    voting systems and to certify those voting systems.
        In January 2017, the Department of Homeland Security
    designated, after the election year had past, election
    infrastructure as critical infrastructure. We are now in the
    first election series since that designation was made.
        At our last hearing, we heard how this designation would
    affect information sharing between state, local, and Federal
    Governments. Today, we look forward to hearing more about the
    other aspects of that designation, which is the formalization
    of information sharing and collaboration between private
    entities and the Federal Government through the Sector
    Coordinating Council.
        More recently, in the Fiscal Year spending bill, Congress
    appropriated $380 million to the U.S. Election Assistance
    Commission to help states enhance their election
    infrastructure. About 49 states and territories have already
    requested approximately $350 million of that money. In many
    cases, they have already received the money they have asked
    for.
        Some of our goals today are to:
         Find out more about the tools that are available
    that the Federal Government can provide state and local
    officials;
         Find out about information sharing that is
    occurring and should occur between state, Federal, and local
    election officials;
         To learn more about what we might do to encourage
    cyber security best practices.
        We are also pleased to have, again, Senator Wyden and
    Senator Lankford here. But before I turn to them, I will turn
    to Senator Klobuchar for any opening remarks she wants to make.

     OPENING STATEMENT OF HONORABLE AMY KLOBUCHAR, A UNITED STATES
                  SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MINNESOTA

        Senator Klobuchar. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding
    this important hearing.
        Thank you, to all of you.
        I would like to also thank Senator Wyden for being here. I
    am glad this worked out, and Senator Lankford for your work. I
    know you are both on the Intelligence Committee.
        I know how incredibly important this topic is, and how
    there is a lot of focus on what has happened and what did
    happen. There should be. But we also have to keep our eyes
    moving forward on how we protect ourselves from this not
    happening again.
        I am particularly pleased with the work that Senator
    Lankford and I have done on the Secure Elections Act, as he
    will describe. This legislation would improve government
    sharing between election officials and the Federal Government,
    provide vital resources and expertise to states, and make it
    easier to confirm election outcomes should there be back-up
    paper ballots audits.
        The legislation has significant bipartisan support. We have
    painstakingly spent the last 18 months working with state and
    Federal officials. I know we have made significant changes to
    the legislation in listening to people, especially to the
    secretaries of states, around the country to meet their
    concerns.
        It is truly vital that we work together, and this is one
    effort, but there are so many others going on, especially with
    the way the Intelligence Committee has handled this
    investigation, the way Senator Blunt and I want to handle this
    going forward on the election side. It is truly important that
    this be bipartisan.
        We had it in a hearing in front of Judiciary recently and
    it became very clear that while a lot of the focus on the
    interference has been about the general election in 2016, it
    was also going on in the primary, specifically targeted at
    Senator Rubio's campaign and others.
        I think it is very important for us to keep telling those
    stories and to remind ourselves that it was not just going on
    with one party versus another. They were doing things that
    affected the primary. They were doing things that were actually
    outside of the actual election involving causes, and groups,
    and people, and trying to turn people against each other
    basically; whether it was the pipeline in North Dakota or
    whether it was rallies in Florida.
        The state and local election officials who are
    administering elections on the frontlines, they are working
    hard to ensure our election systems are secure. I know my
    Secretary of State, Steve Simon, who was here recently, would
    tell you that he and his colleagues across the country are all
    very focused on this.
        During our hearing last month, we heard from some of those
    officials about the challenges they face and the need for
    additional resources in light of the continuing threat posed by
    Russia and other potential adversaries.
        Today, we will hear from Federal officials and
    representatives from voting systems companies. Currently, over
    90 percent of Americans vote on machines from three companies.
    I am pleased that one of these companies, Hart InterCivic, is
    here today, but I wish that the other two companies could have
    also joined us.
        Given the threats we face, and the billions of Federal and
    state tax dollars that go to these companies, oversight is
    vital to ensure that they are providing secure and reliable
    voting machines and services to others.
        Congress must do everything we can to defend our elections
    and bolster Americans' confidence in our democratic process.
        I am glad we have a diffuse system with different systems
    in different states' jurisdictions because then one hack will
    not ruin everything. But we know that one hack in one county in
    one state will jar peoples' confidence. They came close last
    time trying to hack into 21 states, got as close as the voter
    list in Illinois, and we just do not want this to happen again.
        Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Blunt. Well, thank you, Senator Klobuchar, and I
    look forward to working with you on this.
        Certainly, we have both worked with Senator Lankford and
    Senator Wyden, who are on Intelligence with me, care deeply
    about these issues, have had lots of time to think about them.
    We are glad they are here to share some of those thoughts
    today.
        Senator Wyden, if you would like to start, I would like for
    you to go first.

       OPENING STATEMENT OF HONORABLE RON WYDEN, A UNITED STATES
                    SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF OREGON

        Senator Wyden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Chairman, first, let me thank you for your
    thoughtfulness in making it possible for me to come today, and
    I very much look forward to working with you.
        Senator Klobuchar and I have discussed these issues as well
    over the years.
        Mr. Chairman, you have a busy schedule, so I am just going
    to try and make a few key points.
        According to the latest numbers, at least 44 million
    Americans, and perhaps millions more, have no choice but to use
    insecure voting machines that make hackers and hostile foreign
    governments salivate.
        It is, in my view, inexcusable that our democracy depends
    on such hackable voting technology made by a handful of
    companies that have been able to evade oversight. In fact, have
    actually been stonewalling the Congress for years.
        The efforts by Russia, obviously, during the 2016 election
    highlight the vulnerability of our election infrastructure and
    the serious threats that our people face.
        As you and I talk, Mr. Chairman, I recently introduced a
    new cyber security bill to focus on the reliability and
    accuracy of Federal elections. It seems to me enormously
    important, given the prospect that these foreign hackers can
    get access and can hack the voting machines used by the states.
        My legislation focuses on two common sense measures that
    are backed by the overwhelming number of cyber security experts
    in our country: Paper ballots and risk-limiting audits.
        I wrote this bill in spite of this campaign of ducking, and
    bobbing, and weaving, really stonewalling from the major voting
    machine companies. Over the past year you and I have touched on
    this as a member of the Intelligence Committee--I reached out
    to cyber security experts, election officials, and others.
        I wrote the big voting machine companies asking them basic
    questions about their cyber security. These were not
    complicated questions. They were, ``Have you been hacked?''
    ``Do you employ in-house cyber experts?'' Really, the basic,
    sort of ``cyber hygiene 101.''
        The companies refused to answer how or even if they are
    protecting their systems and the votes of the American people.
        Earlier this year, ``The New York Times'' published a story
    revealing that ES&S, the largest voting machine manufacturer,
    was selling devices that came preinstalled with modems and
    remote monitoring software. The experts say remote access to
    election infrastructure is now a five-alarm crisis when it
    comes to security.
        My view is you could only make it worse if you were to
    leave unguarded ballot boxes in Moscow and Beijing. I kept
    writing to the company, following up with the same common sense
    questions. They ignored those as well.
        It is clear to me, Mr. Chairman, these companies want to be
    gatekeepers of our democracy, but they seem completely
    uninterested in safeguarding it.
        Five states exclusively use voting machines that do not
    produce a paper trail. The only record of the votes cast is a
    digital record, which could be hacked and which is impossible
    to audit reliably. That strikes me as a prescription for
    disaster.
        Americans need to have paper ballots marked by hand. Until
    that system is adopted, every election that goes by is yet
    another election that foreign governments, hostile foreign
    governments including Russia, can hack.
        Earlier this year, the Congress appropriated $380 million
    to help states upgrade their election technology. The money is
    now in the hands of the Election Assistance Commission and on
    the way to the states. It ought to be used to bolster security.
    Unfortunately, it is not clear at all how the Election
    Assistance Commission is actually using the money to do this.
        My concern, as you and I have talked about, Mr. Chairman,
    is the states could go out and buy a whole lot more hackable
    technology from these stonewalling voting machine companies.
        Let me just wrap up by saying before we conclude, the
    statements of the Commissioner who is number two at the
    commission, Commissioner McCormick, also concern me greatly.
    She stated publicly last year that she disagrees with the
    intelligence community that Russia sought to influence the 2016
    election.
        Mr. Chairman, you and I have heard again and again that it
    is the view, and Senator Lankford has heard this as well, it is
    the overwhelming view of the intelligence community that Russia
    sought to influence the 2016 election. I cannot for the life of
    me figure out why the number two official of the Election
    Assistance Commission is dismissing the analysis of the
    Government's and the Administration's intelligence experts.
        You can set aside the outcome of the 2016 election. No
    matter who you pulled the lever for the last time around, all
    of us here in the Senate have to care about defending our
    elections from foreign hackers going forward.
        Again, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for your courtesy
    and the time you and I have spent talking about this.
        I look forward to working with you in the days ahead.
        Chairman Blunt. Well, I look forward to you and I
    continuing to work on this, Senator Wyden, as I do with Senator
    Lankford.
        Senator Lankford, we are pleased you are here this morning
    as well.
        Senator Wyden. Mr. Chairman, I just want to apologize to my
    colleague for ducking out because I know he has something
    important to say. The Finance Committee is pending.
        I thank my colleague, and the Chair, and the Ranking
    Member.

    OPENING STATEMENT OF HONORABLE JAMES LANKFORD, A UNITED STATES
                   SENATOR FOR THE STAKE OF OKLAHOMA

        Senator Lankford. Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting me
    back again to the Rules Committee. It is good to be back in
    this conversation again. There is a lot that still needs to be
    done.
        Senator Klobuchar and I have worked very hard on the Secure
    Elections Act. This has been a work in progress that was
    written in pencil, so it could be used to be able to be erased,
    edited, rewritten, re-erased, reedited over and over again as
    we have gone through this multiple iterations of the Secure
    Elections Act.
        We do need to deal with the obvious threats that are coming
    at our Nation dealing with elections. We should have learned
    the lesson from 2016. Though this will take a long time to be
    able to roll out real results and responses over the course of
    our Nation, we do need to deal with these threats.
        The Secure Election Act tries to go focus on improving the
    ability of the states to be able to counter issues and threats
    that they face in the elections. Let me reiterate this.
        I have absolutely zero doubt that the Russians tried to
    influence our elections; that they were trying to engage in any
    way that they could to bring instability to our democracy. But
    I also have no question that our states are not only qualified
    to be able to handle the elections, but they are
    constitutionally responsible to be able to handle our
    elections. The states need to be able to continue to control
    elections.
        With Senator Klobuchar and others, what we have worked on
    together is to be able to form how do we head off this issue
    from coming at us again. It is not so much about the next
    election because, quite frankly, there is a lot of attention
    being paid to the next election.
        It is what is the election structure 20 years from now?
    Will we let our guard down? Will the focus not be there? To be
    able to put some processes in place to say, ``How do we make
    sure 20 years from now, we have not forgotten the lessons that
    we should have learned from 2016?''
        Some basic things have come out of that conversation. One
    is increasing the communication between the Federal Government
    and states. There was not near enough communication between the
    Federal Government and the states leading up to the 2016 time
    period.
        We also discovered there was not security clearance for
    individuals in the states, so when issues were discovered,
    there was no one to be able to communicate that with quickly
    that already had clearance.
        Many elections across the Nation do not have auditable
    elections. They are done completely electronically and there
    was no way to be able to audit it at the end of the election
    and determine did everything go correctly? It was simply a best
    guess of, ``Yes, everything looks like it went correctly,'' but
    there was no way to really know.
        There are many states that do risk-limiting audits after
    the election is over, but some states do not. When it is a
    Federal election, it is difficult if there is a threat to any
    one entity in any one state. That affects every other state as
    well.
        There are some basic things that can be done that we feel
    could be done and could be done still allowing states to be
    able to control their election structure, and to have
    flexibility on the type of election machines they want to have
    and the type of election systems that they want to have. It
    should be completely up to the states to be able to run that.
        Senator Klobuchar and I have worked very hard and have
    refined the Secure Elections Act. We have had a tremendous
    amount of feedback, as Senator Klobuchar mentioned before, from
    secretaries of states and heads of elections officials from the
    EAC and the DHS.
        We met with a bipartisan group of state secretaries in
    April, including the president of the National Association of
    Secretaries of State, Secretary Ashcroft from Missouri,
    Secretary Schedler from Louisiana, and Secretary Simon from
    Minnesota when we incorporated their advice.
        We have exceptional feedback, quite frankly, from the Chief
    Election Official in my state, Paul Ziriax, as well as former
    Election Assistance Commissioner Matt Masterson.
        We have also talked extensively to Secretary Nielsen from
    DHS and received a tremendous amount of feedback as well what
    DHS is doing.
        We do want to be able to see improvements and we do believe
    the coordinating councils can share a lot of that information
    with other states and with the Federal Government. But there
    are some simple things that can be in place that we feel do not
    usurp the authority of the states to be able to run their own
    elections, but do give us a secure election system for the
    future.
        Again, the issue is not so much 20/20. We are all paying
    attention and we are all watching. What would the elections be
    like 20 years from now? Will we still have a process in place
    that protects the elections when our guard is down?
        We think it is a wise idea to be able to continue that
    ongoing cooperation and communication so when issues are
    discovered, it can be shared state to state quickly. It can be
    shared from the state to the Federal Government and the Federal
    Government to the states. To be able to make sure we continue
    to protect our elections and to make them as secure as
    possible.
        Mr. Chairman, thank you, again for the invitation to be
    here and it is my honor to be able to join this conversation if
    only for a brief moment.
        Thank you for holding this hearing because this will be
    exceptionally important that we actually get a bill across the
    floor, get it passed, and to be able to help secure our
    elections for the future.
        Thank you.
        Chairman Blunt. Thank you, Senator Lankford.
        We will call our first full panel up, we do have two panels
    this morning, and that will be Chairman Hicks and Commissioner
    McCormick, along with Dr. Romine from the National Institute of
    Standards and Technology, and Mr. Masterson from the Department
    of Homeland Security.
        I would say, as you are coming up and we are getting
    nameplates up, that your full statement will be in the record.
    We do, as I mentioned before, have another panel after you and
    we certainly want to have a chance to ask questions.
        You can deal with your time however you would like to, but
    if you want to summarize anything in your statement, we will
    have your statement in the record, and we are glad to have it,
    as we are glad to have you here today.
        We will start, Chairman Hicks, the Chairman of the Election
    Advisory Commission with you and then go to Commissioner
    McCormick, and then Dr. Romine, and Mr. Masterson.
        Chairman Hicks.

      OPENING STATEMENT OF COMMISSIONER THOMAS HICKS, CHAIR, U.S.
        ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION, SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND

        Mr. Hicks. Good morning, Chairman Blunt, Ranking Member
    Klobuchar, members of the committee.
        I am pleased to testify before you today to discuss the
    U.S. Election Assistance Commission's work to support state and
    local election leaders in their efforts to conduct efficient,
    accessible, and secure elections.
        The Commission takes great pride in the resources and
    assistance we provide to election officials and voters, as well
    as the vital role we play as a national clearinghouse of
    election administration information to our partners in
    Congress, other Federal agencies, state and local governments,
    private industry, advocacy organizations, academia, and others
    in the election industry.
        As emphasized by witnesses at the last election related
    hearing, the EAC is focused solely on elections serving as an
    essential hub for other Federal agencies that spend only part
    of their time working on this important issue, including those
    who specialize in technology and cyber security.
        Our partners, ranging from the Department of Homeland
    Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Postal
    Service, and the DOD, rely on the EAC to provide a deep
    knowledge of how elections work and a clear line of
    communications to those in the field who administer the vote.
        Most recently, our partner agencies have counted on the EAC
    to fulfill this role with regard to election security. This
    topic is not new to the state and local election officials who
    run elections, the tens of thousands of election administrator
    staff, and election workers who support that work. It has long
    been a primary focus for the men and women on the frontlines of
    elections. Something they think about 365 days a year and
    during a Presidential year 366 days a year.
        The job description of the election official is everything
    from ADA compliance and voter registration to mail management
    and human resources. This is why it is so vital that Congress
    and the Federal agencies, especially EAC, provide election
    administrators with the resources and tools they need to
    succeed.
        The establishment of election systems is part of the
    Nation's critical infrastructure was one way the Federal
    Government sought to improve the mechanisms it uses to
    accomplish this goal. In many ways, the EAC's work during the
    2016 Federal election set a fundamental effort for this.
        At that time, prior to the critical infrastructure
    designation, we worked with DHS and the FBI to distribute
    security alerts and threat indicators to state and territories
    to help protect election systems from specific cyber security
    threats.
        We also met this goal with our Federal partner agencies by
    meeting with the White House to discuss these threats to the
    election systems, the security protocols, and the dynamics of
    the election system in the 8,000-plus jurisdictions nationwide.
        Following former Secretary Johnson's critical
    infrastructure announcement, the EAC actively worked to provide
    state and local election officials with a voice at the table
    during this discussion and how the sector would function.
        DHS has often stated that the Sector's Government
    Coordinating Council, the GCC, was formed faster than any other
    similar critical infrastructure sector council to date. The EAC
    takes great pride in this role, one that we played to make that
    happen.
        It is proof of how local, state, and Federal Governments
    can effectively work together towards a common goal of
    protecting our Nation's infrastructure. I serve on the GCC's
    executive committee, which has worked diligently to ensure the
    critical infrastructure designation has a tangible, meaningful
    impact across our Nation.
        We all know that there are many solutions to the security
    challenges, but it takes resources. We were pleased that the
    members of this committee, and your congressional colleagues,
    recognized this reality when supporting the Congressional
    Appropriations Act of 2018.
        That legislation contained $380 million for the states and
    territories to improve the administration of Federal elections.
    Just 3 months after that appropriation bill was signed into
    law, the EAC has received requests from more than 97 percent of
    those funds from 51 of the 55 states and territories designated
    to receive funds.
        That is a remarkable percentage and demonstrates the EAC's
    responsiveness and the states' urgency in addressing methods to
    make election systems more resilient.
        Less than 2 weeks after President Trump signed the
    appropriations bill into law, the EAC personally notified each
    eligible jurisdiction and issued grant award letters to every
    state and territory.
        Just 1 week after that, your home state, Mr. Chairman,
    Missouri, received its funds. It was the first state to request
    its funds and receive its funds.
        In the weeks that followed, the EAC conducted a Webcast
    public forum and explained the funds and worked directly with
    NAS, NAS head to share this information. The EAC also conducted
    webinars, published FAQ's, and other resources on our website,
    and educated nongovernmental groups including those focused on
    accessibility and security. Our expert grants administration
    team has also helped states navigate this hurdle.
        On behalf of the states and territories, I want to thank
    you again for these vital resources, and I assure you that they
    are being put to good use. Our Vice Chair, Commissioner
    McCormick, will detail some of the efforts for you.
        In the meantime, I want to thank you again for inviting the
    EAC to testify today, and I look forward to answering any, and
    all, of your questions.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Hicks was submitted for the
    record.]
        Chairman Blunt. Thank you.
        Commissioner McCormick.

       OPENING STATEMENT OF COMMISSIONER CHRISTY MCCORMICK, VICE
      CHAIR, U.S. ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION, SILVER SPRING,
                                MARYLAND

        Ms. McCormick. Chairman Blunt, Ranking Member Klobuchar,
    and members of the committee.
        Thank you for inviting the EAC to testify today about the
    vital issue of election security.
        My name is Christy McCormick and I am a former Chair of the
    EAC, and currently serve as the Vice Chair, and I have been
    working in elections for three decades, starting out as a local
    voter registration assistant.
        When Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002, it
    established the EAC as an independent, bipartisan commission
    charged with developing guidance to meet HAVA requirements;
    adopting voluntary voting system guidelines, and certifying
    election systems; serving as the national clearinghouse of
    information on election administration; as well as dispensing
    and auditing HAVA funds.
        I am pleased to report that our capable team continues to
    fulfill this mission and that election officials across the
    Nation consistently affirm that our work does indeed help
    America vote.
        Today, I will focus my remarks on the impact of the newly
    appropriated HAVA funds and the EAC's efforts to supplement
    these resources.
        As Chairman Hicks noted, states and territories are wasting
    no time in applying for their portion of the $380 million that
    was appropriated in March. This is no surprise.
        The U.S. election officials are well known to be
    resourceful, dedicated, and innovative. Their work to serve
    American voters, and to protect the integrity of elections, is
    deserving of our praise and support. Thanks to them, election
    systems from coast to coast produced accurate results in 2016
    and were resilient in the face of reported security threats.
        I have every confidence that the newly appropriated HAVA
    funds are helping officials to continue this vital work to
    strengthen their systems ahead of this year's midterm election
    and the 2020 Presidential election.
        While election officials are continuing to work with state
    legislators, local elected leaders, advocates, and other
    stakeholders to fine tune how they will spend these funds,
    today, I will provide a brief snapshot of some of the efforts
    we know are already underway to make the Nation's election
    systems more accessible, efficient, and secure.
        South Dakota is using the $3 million it received to upgrade
    voting equipment including ballot marking devices and ballot
    tabulators. Their existing equipment was purchased in 2005. The
    state will make crucial cyber security upgrades to its
    statewide voter registration file and election night reporting
    page.
        New York received over $19 million. The state plans to use
    this infusion of funds to implement a state and local cyber
    security risk assessment program, remediate identified
    vulnerabilities, monitor ongoing security operations, and
    respond to incidents, should they occur.
        In West Virginia, the Secretary of State's office developed
    a plan after surveying local election officials for cyber and
    physical security assessments. The state will increase election
    system protections, bolster protection capabilities, and
    prepare for corrective action, if necessary.
        The territories, many of which suffered catastrophic damage
    during last year's hurricane season, are especially grateful
    for their HAVA funds.
        For example, ahead of this year's midterm election,
    American Samoa is using a portion of the $600,000 that they
    received to restore the territory's election office and to
    replace equipment damaged during Tropical Cyclone Gita.
        They are upgrading their voter registration system,
    increasing accessibility at the polls, broadening voter
    education efforts, and improving election workstations and data
    bases.
        As part of the EAC's clearinghouse function, we are
    highlighting each state's initiatives so other jurisdictions
    may refer to them as they might determine the best ways to
    utilize their appropriated funds.
        Right now, the EAC's priority is to get these funds out the
    door as quickly and responsibly as possible. I am pleased to
    report that we are, indeed, meeting that challenge.
        The EAC has a broad spectrum of ongoing work that
    complements our role as the administrator of HAVA funding. We
    kicked off 2018 with an election summit that convened election
    administrators, security experts, academics, Federal Government
    officials, and many others to discuss approaches to strengthen
    election systems and better serve American voters.
        Building on the momentum coming out of that event, the EAC
    has continued to release new resources, conduct trainings, and
    participate in initiatives focused on election security.
        For example, EAC staff has traveled to nearly a dozen
    states to present, ``Election Officials as IT Manager,''
    trainings for state and local election officials. These
    trainings are ongoing and we are working with DHS to put the
    training online through the FedVTE platform.
        Chairman Hicks and I regularly travel to election
    jurisdictions throughout the Nation where we meet with state
    and local election officials and hear firsthand how our
    commission, and the Federal Government, may improve the
    assistance that we provide.
        We also conduct public hearings and forums to gather
    feedback. For example, earlier this year, the EAC held a public
    forum to discuss the HAVA funding and to hear from election
    officials about ways they are working to secure their systems
    and improve their processes.
        Most recently, we held a public forum in Baltimore where
    hundreds of Americans with disabilities were gathered for the
    National Disability Rights Network's annual conference. At that
    gathering, we addressed the need to secure election systems
    consistent with the legal requirements that ensure voters can
    cast their ballots privately and independently.
        The EAC plays the unique role as the only Federal entity
    solely focused on the administration of elections. We
    appreciate Congress' support of our efforts in the states and
    territories we serve.
        I look forward to providing additional details about the
    commission's work and answer any questions that you have.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. McCormick was submitted for
    the record.]
        Chairman Blunt. Thank you, Commissioner.
        Dr. Romine.

       OPENING STATEMENT OF CHARLES H. ROMINE, PH.D., DIRECTOR,
       INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF
            STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY, GAITHERSBURG, MARYLAND

        Dr. Romine. Chairman Blunt, Ranking Member Klobuchar, and
    members of the committee.
        I am Charles Romine, the Director of the Information
    Technology Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards
    and Technology, known as NIST.
        Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to
    discuss NIST's role in election security.
        NIST's role in helping secure our Nation's voting systems
    draws on our expertise in measurement science; in working with
    standards and development organizations, and stakeholder
    communities; and in the development of testing infrastructures
    necessary to support the implementation of standards.
        Additionally, our experience working in multi-stakeholder
    processes is critical to the success of NIST's voting program.
        For more than a decade, the NIST voting program has
    partnered with the Election Assistance Commission, or EAC, to
    develop the science, tools, and standards necessary to improve
    the accuracy, reliability, usability, accessibility, and
    security of voting equipment used in Federal elections for both
    domestic and overseas voters as outlined in the Help America
    Vote Act of 2002, or HAVA, and the Military and Overseas Voter
    Empowerment Act.
        HAVA authorized NIST to provide technical support to the
    EAC's Federal Advisory Committee. The support includes
    intramural research and development to support the development
    of a set of voluntary voting system guidelines that are then
    considered for adoption by the EAC.
        The first set of guidelines was adopted in 2005, and they
    significantly increased security requirements for voting
    systems. Version 1.1 of the guidelines was approved in 2015 and
    NIST immediately began work on the next iteration of the
    guidelines, Version 2.0.
        The guidelines are used by accredited testing laboratories
    as part of both state and national certification processes by
    state and local election officials, who are evaluating voting
    systems for potential use in their jurisdictions, and by
    manufacturers, who need to ensure that their products fulfill
    the requirements to be certified.
        The guidelines address many aspects of voting systems,
    including determining system readiness, ballot preparation,
    ballot counting, safeguards against system failure, and
    tampering and auditing.
        NIST established a set of public working groups to gather
    input from a wide variety of stakeholders on the development of
    the next iteration of the guidelines 2.0. There are currently
    963 members across seven working groups, three of which are in
    the election process; three groups focused on cyber security,
    usability and accessibility, and interoperability; and one that
    will address issues related to testing.
        The Cyber Security Working Group has grown to 162 members
    and engages in discussions regarding the security of the U.S.
    elections.
        As U.S. election infrastructure has evolved, so have its
    security concerns, which today range from unauthorized attempts
    to access the voter registration systems of multiple states, to
    errors or malicious software attacks.
        The guidelines address these evolving concerns, including
    support for advanced auditing methods and two-factor
    authentication that security protections developed by industry
    over the past decade are built-in to the voting system.
        Other security issues to be resolved include the need for
    regular and timely software update and security patches.
    Networked communication is another important security issue
    currently under discussion. Many election jurisdictions rely on
    public telecommunications networks for certain election
    functions, such as reporting results to state agencies and
    media outlets the night of an election. These connections,
    however brief, are a significant expansion of threat surface
    and their security requires further study.
        In January 2017, the Secretary of Homeland Security
    designated the Nation's election infrastructure as critical
    infrastructure. In support of this effort, NIST is providing
    technical leadership in the creation of an Election Profile of
    the NIST Cyber Security Framework. This profile is another tool
    NIST developed to help election officials identify and
    prioritize opportunities to improve their cyber security
    posture.
        NIST also conducts evaluations of independent laboratories
    and provides the EAC a list of those laboratories proposed to
    be accredited. NIST developed uniform testing for critical
    security, usability, accessibility, and functionality
    requirements to achieve uniformity in testing among
    laboratories.
        NIST is addressing election security by strengthening the
    Voluntary Voting System Guidelines for voting systems, and by
    working with our Government partners to provide guidance to
    state and local election officials on how to secure their
    election systems, including voter registration and election
    reporting systems.
        Thank you for the opportunity to testify on NIST's work
    regarding election security.
        I will be pleased to answer any questions that you may
    have.
        [The prepared statement of Dr. Romine was submitted for the
    record.]
        Chairman Blunt. Thank you, Dr. Romine.
        Mr. Masterson.

     OPENING STATEMENT OF MATTHEW MASTERSON, SENIOR CYBER SECURITY
    ADVISOR, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, WASHINGTON, D.C.

        Mr. Masterson. Thank you, Chairman Blunt, Ranking Member
    Klobuchar, and members of the committee.
        Thank you for today's opportunity to testify regarding the
    Department of Homeland Security's ongoing efforts to assist
    state and local election officials, those who own and operate
    election systems, with improving the resilience of America's
    elections.
        Today's hearing is timely. Later this week, DHS senior
    leadership will meet with election officials and their private
    sector partners as they gather in Philadelphia, the birthplace
    of our democracy, for their national summer conference and
    meetings of both our coordinating councils.
        Throughout my career, I have worked with state and local
    election officials to advance the use of technology to better
    serve American voters. For the last three years, I served as a
    Commissioner at the Election Assistance Commission and now I
    serve as the Senior Advisor at DHS focused on the work the
    Department is doing to support the thousands of election
    officials across this country.
        In this decade of work, I can tell you the best part is
    working with the dedicated professionals who administer
    elections. In the face of real and sophisticated threats, these
    officials have responded by working with us, state and local
    resources, the private sector, and academia to mitigate risks
    and improve resilience.
        The risks to elections are real. The 2018 midterms remain a
    potential target for Russian actors. While we have yet to see
    any evidence of a robust campaign aimed at targeting our
    election infrastructure like in 2016, the intelligence
    community continues to see Russia using social media, false
    flag personas, sympathetic spokesmen, and other means to
    influence or inflame positions on opposite ends of
    controversial issues.
        We remain vigilant and will continue to work with our
    election partners to strengthen the resilience of our election
    systems. As I travel the country working with state and local
    officials, it is clear that they are taking these risks
    seriously.
        For example, Florida's election officials are engaged with
    DHS and the University of West Florida to conduct robust
    trainings across the state. In addition, the State of Florida
    and its supervisors became the first state to have every county
    join our elections information sharing center. We are currently
    working with Florida counties to employ network sensors across
    the entire state. There is remarkable progress in a short
    amount of time.
        Our mission at DHS is to ensure that our stakeholders have
    the necessary information and support to assess and mitigate
    risks. We have made significant progress. State and local
    officials, as well as those private sector partners who support
    them, are at the table working with us.
        We have created government and private sector councils who
    collaboratively work to share information and best practices.
    We have created the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing
    and Analysis Center, or EI-ISAC, growing to almost 1,000
    members, including all 50 states, in just under 5 months. This
    is unprecedented growth compared with other sectors.
        Since February 2018, working with EI-ISAC, we have
    quadrupled our awareness into election infrastructure through
    network monitors known as Albert sensors.
        We are sponsoring security clearances for multiple election
    officials in each state, which allow officials to receive
    classified threat information.
        We have increased the availability and deployment of free
    technical services to election officials. DHS offers a variety
    of services, such as cyber security assessments, intrusion
    detection capabilities, information sharing and awareness,
    incident response and training. Our suite of services will
    continue to mature as the requirements identified by our
    election stakeholders mature.
        We understand the only way to deliver a resilient election
    system is to work collaboratively with those officials on the
    frontlines running the process.
        DHS has been leading an interagency effort to support state
    and local officials through an elections taskforce. This
    taskforce brings together the Election Assistance Commission,
    NIST, the FBI, the intelligence community, and DOD. The purpose
    of the taskforce is to ensure that information is actual and
    timely shared broadly across the election sector.
        The two partners sitting at the table with me now, EAC and
    NIST, have been invaluable resources for DHS as we have worked
    to develop and grow the maturity of this sector.
        For example, as Dr. Romine referenced, we are working with
    NIST and the EAC, along with our Government Coordinating
    Council, to utilize the NIST framework to further empower
    election officials to better secure their systems.
        The Department will continue to coordinate and support
    state and local officials to ensure the security of our
    election infrastructure. Malicious cyber actors can come from
    anywhere, within U.S. borders or from abroad. We are committed
    to ensuring a coordinated response from all levels of
    government. We understand the only way to do this is to work
    collaboratively with those officials that run the elections
    process.
        Before I conclude, I want to take a moment to thank
    Congress for the legislative progress thus far in strengthening
    DHS' cyber security and critical infrastructure authorities.
    Specifically we strongly support passage of legislation to
    create the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency,
    or CSISA, at DHS, which would rename and reorganize the
    National Protection Programs Directorate.
        This change reflects the important work we carry out every
    day to safeguard and secure our election infrastructure.
        Thank you and I look forward to your questions.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Masterson was submitted for
    the record.]
        Chairman Blunt. Well, thank you, Mr. Masterson.
        Senator Klobuchar and I plan to stay for both panels and
    through this one. I am also interested to hear what other
    peoples' questions are.
        There are two areas that Members of the Congress generally,
    and the senate specifically, think they are experts at:
    elections and air travel.
        [Laughter.]
        Chairman Blunt. You are here for the elections part of
    that.
        We will start with Senator Capito, followed by Senator
    Cortez Masto.
        Senator Capito. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank the
    Ranking Member.
        Thank you all for being here with us today.
        I would just like to ask a clarifying question. In the
    past, last year I was the lead appropriator on the FSGG
    subcommittee, which provided the $380 million to the EAC.
        The way I looked at the budget the previous year, 2017, it
    appeared as though the EAC had a $9 million budget.
        Is that correct, Mr. Chairman?
        Mr. Hicks. Yes. Our operating budget is about $9 million
    and so that additional $380 million was just for appropriations
    to the states.
        Senator Capito. For the grant. I am going to admit to being
    a skeptic because I am thinking, ``Do you go from $9 million to
    $380 million? Are they really going to be able to handle
    this?''
        The testimony that I have heard so far, while I have some
    questions, kind of rests my mind. I want to thank you all for
    being here today.
        Mr. Hicks. I also just want to say that we have given out
    $3.4 billion over the lifetime of HAVA.
        Senator Capito. Yes, so you are well versed in this.
        I do think, too, our election systems, because of the
    diversity of the states and local is in some ways, and this may
    be a bit of a naive thought, but I do think it does lend us to
    preserving security. Rather than having a one, singular system
    all across the Nation that if it got hacked or something would
    present even greater problems than what we have seen in the
    past.
        I also want to give a shout out to my Secretary of State,
    Mac Warner. West Virginia has been very much at the forefront
    of this. We were the first state to get our narrative grant
    explanation in to you, and we have received the $3.6 million
    from the appropriation.
        Part of what I believe Secretary Warner wants to do, and
    will be doing with those dollars, and you explained this in
    your testimony, is to purchase new equipment and update some of
    the 2004-2005 equipment.
        Could you speak to what the increased security is that
    those systems have now as compared to, say, 12 or 13 years ago?
        Mr. Hicks. Yes and no, in terms of being able to talk
    directly because I am not a computer expert overall. But I
    would say that our Voluntary Voting System Guidelines, which we
    are updating now were not updated, have not truly been updated
    since 2007. Those updates, basically, were before the smart
    phones, and iPhones, and tablets, and things like that.
        Since that time, we have gone technologically far in the
    future in terms of security and accessibility and so forth with
    phones and other aspects of computer technology. The EAC has
    updated our standards for that in terms of voting equipment
    overall.
        New voting equipment that is being tested, once those new
    Voluntary Voting System Guidelines are approved, once we get a
    quorum, they will be more stringent, and more accessible, and
    more resilient for security overall.
        Senator Capito. Dr. Romine, do you have any thoughts on
    that topic?
        Dr. Romine. Nothing specific relating to the actual
    technologies, but I will say, again, just like Chairman Hicks,
    we work diligently with the EAC on the development of the new
    Guidelines, the VVSG to ensure greater emphasis on
    auditability, on system security, and other things that are
    critical to the integrity of the elections process.
        Senator Capito. Let me ask another question and topic that
    I have great concern on in the urban and rural areas.
        Senator Klobuchar and I have worked on this, along with
    Senator King, I see in the room, on our broadband caucus
    connectivity. This is sort of an open question for anybody on
    the panel.
        Do you see in the future--and I think Senator Lankford
    talked about, we know maybe what 2020 is going to look like,
    but what is 2040 going to look like--do you see some
    difficulties with certain states that have a lower reach of
    broadband connectivity being able? How would that affect
    election security in your opinion? Does anybody have an opinion
    on that?
        Mr. Masterson. Thank you, Senator, and I will offer a brief
    one.
        This is, in part, I think, why we run elections locally is
    that ability to deploy those systems to those polling places in
    the locality with the local election official and serve the
    process without a need for that connectivity in that way.
        The resource challenges for rural jurisdictions are real
    and I think the money that Congress appropriated is an
    important first step in helping support, not just those larger
    jurisdictions in particular, infuse some money down to the
    local level to help them take the steps they need to do to
    improve the results of the process.
        Senator Capito. Then, my take away from that would be that
    the EAC has built-in to their parameters a flexibility
    component depending on what the individual needs are of urban,
    rural, large, small, whatever those particular needs might be.
        Is that a correct statement?
        Mr. Hicks. Whatever states need, we are there to give it to
    them, whether or not that is what works in Maine might not work
    in West Virginia sort of thing.
        I have gone through, since I have been in this position, 39
    of the 50 states and every state is the same, but every state
    is different, whether or not that is the urban areas or the
    rural areas.
        Because one of the misconceptions that I have noticed in
    this is that elections are not run by these huge jurisdictions
    in terms of having 10 or 15 people and so forth.
        Senator Capito. Right.
        Mr. Hicks. It is one or two individuals doing more things,
    basically from my testimony of ADA compliance or even driving a
    school bus.
        Senator Capito. Right.
        Mr. Hicks. From A to Z.
        Senator Capito. Thank you.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sorry I went over there a little
    bit. Thank you.
        Chairman Blunt. Senator Cortez Masto and then Senator King.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and Ranking
    Member.
        Let me followup on the discussion you talked about. Right
    now, there is not a quorum on the EAC and because there is no
    quorum, you are unable to pass the Guidelines 2.0.
        Is that correct?
        Ms. McCormick. That is correct, Senator.
        Senator Cortez Masto. How else is a lack of a quorum
    impacting the work of the EAC?
        Ms. McCormick. We are able to do almost all of the work
    that the EAC staff puts forth. The day to day operations and
    the support that we can give to the states does not stop.
        We are not able to vote on new policy. That is the one area
    that we are restricted when we do not have a quorum, and that
    would include the VVSG.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Once you do have a quorum, is it
    ready to be voted on and moved quickly?
        Ms. McCormick. It has gone through our Standards Board and
    our Board of Advisors for their input, and they have voted to
    approve it. It needs to go out for public comment.
        If we do get another commissioner, and hopefully we will,
    and establish a quorum, I think it will be up to that
    commissioner to decide whether he or she is comfortable with
    the approach that we are taking. We will have to socialize what
    we have done with that commissioner so that we can all be on
    the same page when it comes time to voting for the new
    standards.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
        Then, it is my understanding that not every vendor is
    certified.
        Is that correct?
        Mr. Hicks. Yes, because these are Voluntary Voting System
    Guidelines.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Can I ask? How long does it normally
    take to certify a vendor?
        Mr. Hicks. It could range.
        I do not want to fudge the answer, so let me get back with
    you on that one.
        Senator Cortez Masto. If you could, that would be helpful.
        [The information referred to was submitted for the record.]
        Senator Cortez Masto. I am just curious.
        How many actually are certified and how many vendors are
    not certified that are actually in our states and machines that
    we are using?
        Mr. Hicks. That we?
        Senator Cortez Masto. If you could followup with that, that
    would be helpful.
        Mr. Hicks. Right. We can get that information back.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you. I appreciate that.
        [The information referred to was submitted for the record.]
        Senator Cortez Masto. Mr. Masterson, how many states have
    asked DHS for risk and vulnerability assessments on their
    election systems? Actually, how many states have received those
    assessments?
        Mr. Masterson. Thank you, Senator, for the question.
        As it stands now, 18 states have requested. We have
    performed 17 of those, or have them in process. They are in the
    process of having our teams deploy out. We have one that we are
    waiting to schedule.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Would you please provide us with a
    list of those states that have received those assessments?
    Would that be information that is public, at least, or
    available for us to know?
        Mr. Masterson. Senator, I will take your request back to
    the office.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Okay.
        Mr. Masterson. Generally, we do not share who we work with
    on any one of these services to preserve the trust and the
    relationships, so that they will continue to engage with us.
    But I will go back and pull together what information we can
    share with you.
        Senator Cortez Masto. I appreciate that. Thank you.
        Mr. Masterson. Yes.
        [The information referred to was submitted for the record.]
        Senator Cortez Masto. Let me jump back to an issue that
    also keeps coming up and we just heard it earlier today with
    the Senators.
        There is a lot of discussion about risk-limiting audits and
    whether or not they should be used more broadly across the
    country. Let me start with the EAC Commissioners, Mr. Hicks and
    Ms. McCormick.
        Can you describe in more detail the types of audits that
    are most effective in the process of putting these audits in
    place and the difference that they may make?
        Mr. Hicks. The audits depend on the state and the way that
    they do their voting.
        For instance, a state like Oregon is an all-mail-in ballot
    state. Doing a risk-limiting audit would be really helpful for
    them.
        A state that does not have a paper audit trail, it is not
    going to really work so well with them, but there are ways to
    audit those systems as well. But it just depends on what the
    states want to do in terms of the way that they want to have
    their audits run.
        We had the pleasure of going out to Colorado recently and
    witnessed their risk-limiting audit, and it functioned fairly
    well. I feel that other states are going to be taking that into
    account, like Rhode Island and New Mexico as well, to see what
    sort of audits can be done. Audits only work if they are being
    done.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Right.
        Mr. Hicks. If states have audits on the books, but they are
    not conducting them, then that is where the real problem lies.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Okay.
        Ms. McCormick. I just want to stress that we need to
    remember that every state does a canvas. The canvases do cover
    a lot of that.
        Some states can do risk-limiting audits, some cannot be
    based on what kind of systems that they are using. But all the
    states do some sort of auditing in some form or another.
        Senator Cortez Masto. That was my next question.
        It is purely voluntary for the states the type of audit
    that they conduct, but the followup is, to your knowledge,
    every state is doing some type of audit.
        Ms. McCormick. I think every state is doing some type of
    audit, if not at least a canvas before they can certify an
    election. I would assume that that would be considered part of
    an audit if you are going to canvas the election before you
    certify it.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Okay. Thank you.
        As my time is up, thank you, Mr. Chair.
        Chairman Blunt. Thank you, Senator.
        Senator King.
        Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        First, I want to thank you and Senator Klobuchar for
    calling this important hearing. I think this is a critically
    important issue and one that, I am not sure gets enough
    attention. I am delighted that we are working on this today and
    that Senator Lankford was here talking about his bill.
        Mr. Hicks, this is complicated: decentralized systems, all
    kinds of voting systems, and machines, and all of that.
        Is it safe to say, though, that the simplest rule should
    be, there should always be a paper back-up?
        Mr. Hicks. Senator, thank you for that question.
        It depends on the state. We cannot basically regulate.
        Senator King. I am not suggesting regulation. I am making a
    suggestion. It seems to me this is a basic thing. I am not
    saying they have to do it, but if you do not have a paper back-
    up, it is very hard to determine whether you have an accurate
    count.
        Mr. Hicks. Paper is interesting because every one cannot
    use paper. If you have a disability, you come back from Iraq
    with no hands, it is hard to do that paper piece of it.
        I would say that if we can do security with paper to make
    sure that it is accessible to those who have disabilities, then
    I would say that that is one hundred percent right that we
    should have a paper back-up.
        Senator King. I want to direct a question to Dr. Romine and
    Mr. Masterson.
        I serve on the Intelligence Committee and we spend a lot of
    time with cyber security issues in the intelligence community.
    One of the most powerful tools we have is the Red Team and bug
    bounties.
        One of my concerns is that the states are at varying levels
    of security. I do not want to say they are overconfident, but
    they have a level of confidence that may not be justified. My
    old admonition from President Reagan was, ``Trust, but
    verify.''
        How about a provision that either NIST or Homeland Security
    could Red Team? Which means, try to penetrate these systems.
    There would be nothing like having a Secretary of State's
    computer have a signal come up that says, ``Greetings from
    Washington,'' to get their attention in terms of what they need
    to do.
        Is that something that you have thought about, because it
    is used in the intelligence community to great effect.
    Everybody can feel like they are really protected until
    somebody shows them they are not. That is what I am suggesting.
        Dr. Romine. Speaking just from the NIST perspective,
    however interesting an idea that is, it would be outside the
    purview of a NIST function. We are not really in the
    operational mode.
        I think we are experts at the development of guidelines,
    and standards, and providing tools to people. But with regard
    to Red Teaming, that is not something that would be appropriate
    for NIST to do.
        Ms. Masterson. Senator, thanks for the question.
        As you are aware, DHS offers a variety of free services to
    state and local officials, including onsite assessments like
    risk and vulnerability assessments, which are in-depth,
    penetration tests of the systems.
        States and localities are able to use these services as
    they see fit. In addition, we offer----
        Senator King. What bothers me in your statement is the word
    ``offered''. The ones who are not asking for it may be the ones
    who need it.
        Ms. Masterson. Senator, I understand your point. I would
    also add that our offerings are not the only offerings that
    states are taking advantage of.
        We have seen--as we have gone out, and met, and talked with
    state and local officials--that state services use the National
    Guard, as well as private sector partners, are being used in
    these same ways with the services that we offer.
        My experience is that the states are taking this seriously
    in engaging. Certainly testing, like penetration testing, Red
    Team testing, is of value and many states are doing that in
    some way within their jurisdiction.
        Senator King. Do you have an overall assessment of how
    secure the American voting system is going into 2018, which is
    now 4 months away?
        Mr. Masterson. Yes, I have confidence that the process is
    resilient in that election officials working with us, state
    resources and localities have the ability to protect based on
    the resources they have, but also the ability to detect and
    recover, which is what we talk about frequently.
        Senator King. We are talking pretty much about voting
    machines and that kind of thing, but I see a real vulnerability
    is voting lists and the lists that are maintained mostly at the
    state level.
        It would not take much to disrupt an election. Take out
    everybody who is named ``Smith'' or something, then people
    would show up at the polls and could not vote.
        Are the registration lists secured?
        Mr. Masterson. The states have taken numerous steps,
    depending on the state, to improve the security. Again, it
    comes back not just to protection--because as you know well,
    these are sophisticated actors--but the plans that are in place
    to respond.
        Senator King. That was in my notes, sophisticated actors.
        Mr. Masterson. Yes, so that ability to respond and recover.
    In Federal law, with your example of registration lists, that
    ability to have that provisional ballot for all voters who
    believe they should be on the list and they are not, that is an
    important piece of resilience in the elections process that
    everyone can receive a ballot regardless if they show up and
    are told they are not on the list.
        Senator King. I am over my time, but the provisional
    ballots, are those provisioned in every state?
        Mr. Masterson. That is Federal law. Yes, sir.
        Senator King. That is mandated.
        Mr. Masterson. Yes.
        Senator King. Thank you very much.
        Mr. Masterson. Thank you, Senator.
        Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Chairman Blunt. All right.
        Before I go to Senator Udall, I would maybe ask our next
    panel if they can begin to think about how their 5 minute
    opening statement could be more like 3 minutes.
        As you think about that, we do have votes at noon. We will
    be able to work through part of that after 12 o'clock time, but
    we do want to get to you and the rest of us want to ask this
    panel questions.
        Senator Udall, it is your time.
        Senator Udall. Thank you, Chairman Blunt.
        Mr. Masterson, I guess to you, and Mr. Hicks, and Christy
    McCormick, what are your agencies doing to further post-
    election audits in every state?
        Mr. Masterson. We worked with our Government Coordinating
    Council that created funding considerations. Considerations for
    the use of the HAVA funds that Congress appropriated.
        Included in those is stressing the importance of post-
    election auditing and the need to conduct post-election audits.
    We are continuing to work with the Government Coordinating
    Council on those practices.
        Senator Udall. Ms. McCormick.
        Ms. McCormick. Yes, we provided a lot of information to the
    states on how they could use the HAVA funds, and post-election
    audits were included in ways that they could use that money. We
    will provide guidance in that regard, if the states choose to
    use their money in that way.
        Senator Udall. Yes.
        Mr. Hicks. The same.
        Senator Udall. Yes. Are states working well with the
    Election Assistance Commission and the Department of Homeland
    Security to ensure ample communication and sharing of resources
    to ensure elections are secure? What can be done to improve
    communication with the states?
        Mr. Hicks. We are working a lot better than we did in 2016.
    With the formation of the Government Coordinating Council, and
    working with DHS and the FBI, we are functioning a lot better
    at this point than we were two years ago during that election
    season.
        Senator Udall. Great, thank you.
        Chairman Blunt, recognizing we will have another panel here
    and we have votes, I am going to yield back at this point, so
    you can get going.
        Chairman Blunt. Well, thank you, Senator.
        Senator Klobuchar.
        Senator Klobuchar. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Masterson, there have been statements indicating that
    foreign adversaries do not pose a serious threat to our
    elections. I am sure you are aware of that.
        Some people have been saying things, but you also know that
    all of our security heads in this country, under both President
    Obama and now President Trump, have stated that this firmly has
    happened and that it is a threat moving forward.
        I think it was former Senator Coats, who is the National
    Intelligence Director, who has said that, in fact, they are
    getting bolder.
        Can you confirm that the threat against our election system
    is real and the work that state and Federal officials are doing
    to update and secure our elections is warranted?
        Mr. Masterson. Senator, thank you for your question.
        As I said in my opening comments, elections are a target.
    There are real risks to the election systems. Whether or not
    there are specific threats targeting election infrastructure is
    irrelevant to the importance of the information that we share
    with state and local officials to continue to build the
    resilience and overall cyber security of the process.
        Our focus remains on helping states identify and mitigate
    those risks, and that work is important.
        Senator Klobuchar. Commissioner Hicks, several of the
    election officials at our last hearing complimented the EAC's
    efforts to quickly distribute the $380 million for election
    security funding from March.
        According to your testimony, in just over 3 months, the EAC
    has received disbursement requests for 97 percent of the funds
    from 51 of the 55 states and territories. I have seen some
    reporting that indicated delays.
        Can you explain these varying accounts very briefly?
        Mr. Hicks. Some of the delays have just been associated
    with legislation, so basically, the chief election official
    having to go back to their legislatures to figure out how to
    request that money.
        Senator Klobuchar. You mean like in my state?
        Mr. Hicks. I did not want to say it.
        [Laughter.]
        Senator Klobuchar. Yes, not the fault of our election
    person. All right, very good.
        Dr. Romine, according to requirements in the Help Americans
    Vote Act of 2002, with the current configuration, there should
    be four technical experts on the Technical Guidelines
    Development Committee.
        How many of these technical experts are cyber security
    experts?
        Dr. Romine. I will have to get back to you on that. I do
    not know that off the top of my head.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay.
        [The information referred to was submitted for the record.]
        Senator Klobuchar. Well, as you may know, Senator Lankford
    and I, our bill would expand the Technical Guidelines
    Development Committee's mission and membership to provide
    additional cyber security expertise.
        With this expansion, do you think the new and improved
    committee would be better equipped to provide best practices
    and recommendations in election cyber security?
        Dr. Romine. I think additional expertise in cyber security
    would be welcomed in almost every facet of anything we do.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay. Then finally, this is building on
    to what Senator Cortez Masto was asking about, but the Secure
    Elections Act calls for states to implement audits in order to
    confirm election results.
        Do you believe--and anyone can take this--that performing a
    post-election audit is a best practice that should be used to
    increase confidence in the outcome of Federal elections?
        Mr. Hicks. Yes.
        Senator Klobuchar. Do you all agree?
        [Panel nods assent.]
        Senator Klobuchar. Very good. May the record reflect they
    all nodded their heads yes. All right. Thank you.
        Chairman Blunt. Thank you, Senator.
        I will ask a couple of questions while Senator Warner is
    thinking about how he would like to close these questions out.
        There will be a time to submit written questions, and there
    will be written questions.
        Commissioner Hicks, the $380 million that was allocated to
    the states through you, how much of that is now out the door?
    How much of that is on the way to states?
        Mr. Hicks. Ninety-seven percent has been requested and we
    usually get it out within less than a week being allocated out.
    I can get the exact number of the dollar amount during our
    written.
        Chairman Blunt. I thought it was mostly gone by now. I know
    $154 million was out within the first 30 days or so.
        Mr. Hicks. It is more than $200 million.
        Chairman Blunt. You are almost totally out now.
        Now the states, there are no required standards they have
    to meet to qualify for that money currently?
        Mr. Hicks. There are requirements that they have to meet
    under HAVA, under the law.
        Chairman Blunt. But things like having an auditable ballot
    trail would not be one of those requirements.
        Mr. Hicks. Correct.
        Chairman Blunt. You mentioned that in a non-paper
    environment, there were ways to audit the returns. I am trying
    to come up with what one of those ways might be that, with
    certainty, would guarantee that what happened on election day
    was what happened.
        How would you audit those non-paper systems?
        Mr. Hicks. They are audited because there are really no
    non-paper systems. It is more of a physical paper ballot that
    people are testifying to.
        Each system has a paper record incorporated in its system
    which is encrypted and so forth. That is where the auditability
    comes.
        Chairman Blunt. They would look at the paper record that
    was generated by the individual voting device?
        Mr. Hicks. Right. The issue becomes whether or not that is
    a voter verified paper record with the auditability.
        Chairman Blunt. I understand.
        Commissioner McCormick, you said that the canvas might be
    the audit. The canvas is really where local officials report to
    state officials what their final county return is. Right?
        Ms. McCormick. Right. They check over all of the paper
    trails from the machines, all the paper receipts and make sure
    that the machines match all the numbers. In a way, those are
    audited numbers before that they are certified. Election night
    reporting is not official.
        Chairman Blunt. Right.
        Ms. McCormick. It has to go through a process where they
    check all of the paper receipts and check all of the voting
    numbers against those receipts to make sure that they can
    certify it as official results.
        It is not exactly an audit, but it is a form of an audit.
        Chairman Blunt. I think it is not exactly an audit, but I
    understand what you are saying. Election night returns are
    always unofficial.
        Ms. McCormick. Correct.
        Chairman Blunt. Always need to be verified. On that topic,
    let me go to one other.
        I think in the Maryland primary that was just completed,
    some of the registrations were not downloaded appropriately. I
    do not know how many provisional ballots were cast because of
    that.
        Do either of you know?
        Ms. McCormick. I do not know the numbers. We can get that
    from Maryland for you.
        Chairman Blunt. No. I think we are in the process of
    getting that.
        One of the things I wonder about there, we have had a lot
    of concern about what happens if the Election Day record is not
    what you would want it to be, which is exactly what happened in
    Maryland.
        I think my two questions on that would be how much does it
    slow down the Election Day voting process, if you have to cast
    that provisional ballot? Maryland may be one of the examples of
    most of those ballots cast in recent times.
        Another question that I would have--and I am just letting
    you know my interest in this--is how much that then slowed down
    the final results?
        Every state does have, as you have pointed out, a
    provisional ballot requirement if a voter shows up and, to make
    the case that they should be allowed to vote in their name, for
    whatever reason is not on. It at least applies to all Federal
    elections.
        Is that right?
        Ms. McCormick. Yes, that is a requirement under HAVA.
        Chairman Blunt. Right.
        Ms. McCormick. All states have to have provisional ballots.
        There have been a number of cases recently where, I think
    Los Angeles was also a jurisdiction recently that had names
    left off of their voter registration lists and probably used
    provisional ballots as well.
        They do add some time. They can create lines and I think
    that is one of the concerns with any possible attacks on voter
    registration systems as well because if there were, we would
    have to rely on provisional ballots to assure that those voters
    were actually registered and eligible to vote in an election.
        That could cause some delay, but a lot of the voter
    registrars across the country have that process down quite
    well, and they do a lot of training with their election
    officials on how to do that.
        Chairman Blunt. Right.
        Senator Warner and then Senator Wicker.
        Senator Warner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        I want to thank you and the ranking member for holding this
    hearing, and the very good work that you have done on this
    subject matter. As you know, it is something that those of us,
    who share a common position on the Intelligence Committee, have
    also bought a perspective to it.
        I appreciate all of the panel being here.
        I really want to give two questions because I know we have
    a second panel coming up. I thank the leadership of the
    committee for getting that $380 million into the budget to try
    to help assist election officials around the country.
        I have a two-part question. The first part is it is hard
    for any enterprise, even large enterprises to evaluate, I
    think, the cyber security claims that firms make in terms of
    what kind of protections that they are going to put in place.
        Does the EAC give any guidance or kind of best practices as
    individual states or localities start to evaluate the
    effectiveness of some of the cyber security protection
    monitoring that is being offered out in the marketplace?
        Mr. Hicks. We do not give that sort of specific advice, but
    we have worked with DHS to say that these are some of the
    things that are free that are available to you, like monitors
    and so forth.
        Individual election officials have to be vigilant in terms
    of knowing that there are going to be pop ups out there who are
    just going to be looking for a quick buck, to earn a quick
    buck.
        But I believe that the way that the EAC has done now in
    providing resources to the states, in terms of things like IT
    management for election officials, has helped them. Basically
    giving them other aspects, and providing videos to them, and so
    forth allows them to have a little more confidence in the way
    the systems work.
        Senator Warner. Are there any independent rating entities?
        Again, we have a lot of the cyber security firms located in
    my state. I applaud all of them. But boy, sorting through who
    can actually produce is a tough, tough challenge.
        I think for election officials in an enterprise that this
    is not their specific expertise domain would be a real
    challenge. As you answer that, let me get to the second part of
    my question, since my time is running down.
        From the intelligence side, and I think we just saw in 2016
    the tip of the spear of the ability for social media entities,
    and others, to manipulate information.
        One of the questions I have is, and I think maybe Colorado
    has actually thought about this, is as you think about election
    monitoring, are any states actually looking at evaluating how
    some of the social media platforms may be communicating, or
    miscommunicating to voters within your states? Could some of
    the HAVA funds be used to acquire that expertise?
        Mr. Hicks. I would say that this is nothing new in terms of
    the misinformation being put out. It used to be that the
    information would be on posters, ``Republicans vote on
    Wednesday, democrats vote on Thursday.'' Now it is a lot
    quicker through social media.
        Senator Warner. But now you can touch a whole universe or
    the world with a keystroke.
        Mr. Hicks. Correct. We, at the EAC, we have met with some
    of the technology groups, those informational social media
    groups to find out some of the things that they are doing to
    ensure that this does not happen again or ways to prevent it.
        They have given us some assurances of things that they put
    in place with this, but I do not believe that the HAVA funds
    overall can be used toward that. I can go back and check with
    our grants department because it is very broad on what you can
    use that money for.
        I would think if you are looking to improve the process of
    the election overall, the administration of elections, you
    should be able to use that money, but I want to make sure of
    that before I give you a definitive answer.
        Ms. McCormick. I will just add that we are encouraging
    state and local election officials to monitor their social
    media to make sure that correct information is out there. If
    they see something that is incorrect to contact the platform
    and make sure that it is taken down or corrected.
        Senator Warner. I would hope that there might be some way
    and I think the social media companies have been slow. They are
    getting better at responding, but there needs to be some level
    of ongoing communication and collaboration.
        I hope we could work with the committee to see how we might
    work on that.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and it is great to attend a
    hearing with you and such a distinguished ranking member.
        Chairman Blunt. Thank you, Senator Warner.
        Senator Wicker.
        Senator Wicker. Mr. Chairman, in light of the fact that we
    have another panel, I will wait.
        Chairman Blunt. Thank you, Senator Wicker.
        Senator Cruz.
        Senator Cruz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Thank you to each of the witnesses for being here, for your
    testimony.
        Mr. Masterson, in 2017, the Department of Homeland Security
    declared state election systems to be critical infrastructure.
        Can you discuss what the practical effects are of this
    designation and what DHS has done differently since that
    designation with regard to state election systems?
        Mr. Masterson. Yes, thank you, Senator, for the question.
        The focus of our work in declaring elections as part of
    critical infrastructure is threefold.
        One is ensuring that state and local election officials
    have access to timely information shared with them such that
    they can mitigate risks that arise to their system. This is
    largely done through our Information Sharing and Analysis
    Center of which all 50 states are members.
        We routinely share information out through the Information
    Sharing and Analysis Center to ensure election officials have
    the information they need, whether general or technical to
    protect their systems.
        Second is providing services to those state and local
    officials on a voluntary basis. We provide onsite risk and
    vulnerability assessments, remote cyber hygiene scans,
    assessments on resilience readiness in order to help support
    those state and local officials, should they need it.
        The third is working at the Federal level with the
    intelligence community to ensure that intelligence is shared in
    a timely and actual manner.
        One of the lessons I think we all learned from 2016 is to
    ensure that the system owners and operators, those in charge of
    elections, are empowered through receiving information and
    intelligence to protect their systems. We have been
    coordinating with the intelligence community across the Federal
    Government to ensure that that information is shared.
        Senator Cruz. In March, Congress allocated $380 million of
    new spending to be put toward election security.
        How is that money being spent? What sort of oversight
    controls are there to make sure the money is actually being put
    to good use helping make elections more secure?
        Mr. Masterson. I will defer to my colleagues on the EAC.
        Ms. McCormick. Yes, we have run that money through our
    grants division in the Election Assistance Commission.
        Most of the money is being used for cyber security efforts
    and for upgrading voting systems, especially the ones that are
    quite old.
        We are requesting all of the states, requiring of all the
    states to provide a narrative and budget, along with their
    drawdown of that money, and we will be auditing how that money
    is used. Every state will be audited on their use of the money
    and whether it was used appropriately.
        Senator Cruz. How significantly do you assess the threat of
    an election being directly hacked in terms of the results at
    the ballot being altered electronically?
        Ms. McCormick. I would say that, Senator, it would be very,
    very difficult to do that given the dispersed character of our
    election infrastructure.
        We have 8,000 jurisdictions. None of the machines are
    connected to each other, so each machine would have to be
    hacked individually and that is one of the greatest securities
    that our election system actually has. It would be extremely
    difficult to do that.
        That said, every system is vulnerable and things can
    happen, but election officials are extremely vigilant.
        We do logic and accuracy testing on every single machine
    before it is used in an election that is open to the public, so
    we can check to see that the machines are actually recording
    the votes correctly. There are numerous ways to check it
    afterwards. We discussed earlier some post-election audits.
        It would be very hard to do that. However, I cannot ever
    say ``impossible''.
        Senator Cruz. Am I correct, there has obviously been a lot
    of discussion about 2016, but am I right that there are no
    indications that there was any actual hacking of election
    equipment that altered outcomes?
        Ms. McCormick. We do not know of any outcome that was
    hacked or changed in any way. What happened in 2016 has been
    characterized by Undersecretary Krebs as overstated and that it
    was mostly drive-bys and scans.
        We actually see thousands and thousands of these types of
    scans every single day across the Nation against every single
    system. I would say that we are concerned about security of the
    system, of the entire election system.
        Nothing happened in 2016, and that is the real untold story
    that the election officials did their job, and they kept system
    safe from any sort of hacking.
        Senator Cruz. What would you characterize as the most
    important security reform that state election authorities
    should put in place to ensure the integrity of the ballot
    process?
        Mr. Hicks. I would say that we need to make sure that the
    confidence of the voter remains high because if we erode that
    confidence, the voters are not going to come out and actually
    cast their ballots.
        I think from A to Z, basically from voter registration all
    the way to election night reporting, all those points are valid
    and important.
        Senator Cruz. Thank you.
        Chairman Blunt. Thank you, Senator Cruz.
        Thanks to the panel.
        At some point, I know one of my followups will be if you
    are having these thousands of attempts to get into systems all
    the time, what do we do and how do we help local and state
    election officials figure out which of those they need to take
    seriously?
        I think we had one group of state officials here last week
    and one of those state officials said they had 100,000 attempts
    in, I believe he said, every day to get into their system. If
    they report 100,000 attempts to you, I do not know what you do
    about that, but that will come in writing.
        Let us move to our second panel. Thank you all for being
    here. Obviously, very great interest to the country and the
    panel, and we are grateful that you were here.
        On our second panel, Mr. Scott Leiendecker is the CEO of
    KNOWiNK. It is a company that provides the iPad registration
    booklets in more than half the states now, I believe, including
    the District of Columbia.
        Mr. Peter Lichtenheld is the Vice President of Operations
    of Hart InterCivic.
        Bryan Finney is the CEO and Founder of Democracy Live. He
    is representing the Sector Coordinating Council.
        We have moved from the government part of the hearing to
    the nongovernment part of the hearing. We will see how this
    goes, but we are glad to have you here.
        We have your written testimony. It is part of the record.
    Mr. Leiendecker, if you want to start by either reading or
    summarizing what that testimony has told us before we get a
    chance to ask you a couple of questions, that would be fine.

       OPENING STATEMENT OF SCOTT LEIENDECKER, CEO, KNOWINK, ST.
                            LOUIS, MISSOURI

        Mr. Leiendecker. Thank you, Senator Blunt, Ranking Member
    Klobuchar, and members of the committee.
        Thank you for today's opportunity to be with you. I am
    grateful for your willingness to engage and take into
    consideration the vendor's perspective.
        What I was here to talk about specifically is my experience
    in the past as a former election director. I think that is a
    unique perspective that I can bring to the table.
        I want to talk about the different things that we do to
    ultimately secure our products, which is our electronic poll
    roster that basically uses the iPad that ultimately helps with
    the security side and leverages the security of the iOS
    operating system.
        To kind of sum up very quickly, in order to continue
    innovating and providing strong security initiatives, we hope
    that the Federal Government will consider us a partner. We hope
    that today's hearing is just the beginning of a new
    conversation with the committee and the Federal Government will
    have with election vendors.
        Together with the local election vendors--like the ones in
    Missouri and in Minnesota that are on the frontlines in today's
    elections and throughout the election process--we want to offer
    this committee, and others in Federal Government, our
    assistance to help shape that public policy and ensure the
    integrity of our most secure process.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Leiendecker was submitted
    for the record.]
        Chairman Blunt. Mr. Lichtenheld.

       OPENING STATEMENT OF PETER LICHTENHELD, VICE PRESIDENT OF
               OPERATIONS, HART INTERCIVIC, AUSTIN, TEXAS

        Mr. Lichtenheld. Thank you, I will keep my comments short,
    as I know we are running short on time. My name is Peter
    Lichtenheld.
        Chairman Blunt and Ranking Member Klobuchar, thanks for
    having us here. committee members, thank you.
        I am the vice president of Operations with Hart InterCivic.
    We are a voting system provider based in Austin, Texas. We
    serve about 27 million voters across the United States of
    America and we are part of the solution on election security
    working with DHS, the EAC, and other bodies, and as members of
    the Sector Coordinating Council.
        I want to clarify that voting systems are not just
    commodities, but solutions and that we are partners with our
    customers. We are constantly working with customers. We do not
    just sell them something and then expect them to run it on
    their own. We are constantly sharing best practices with
    customers, doing Webinars, giving papers to customers, and
    helping them run secure elections.
        I also want to go off my written record for a minute and
    talk about Senator Wyden's comments and address those
    specifically because Hart InterCivic is an important voting
    system provider in the United States. We have been open. We do
    not stonewall.
        We did open and answer the letter that Senator Wyden sent
    to voting system providers, and our core values at Hart are
    about candor, which I am using right now and about integrity,
    which we feel is very important. Really, one of our basic
    tenets is that we are election geeks. We love elections and we
    feel like we are helping America vote.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Lichtenheld was submitted
    for the record.]
        Chairman Blunt. Mr. Finney.

       OPENING STATEMENT OF BRYAN FINNEY, PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER,
    DEMOCRACY LIVE, INC., SEATTLE, WASHINGTON; SECTOR COORDINATING
        COUNCIL FOR THE ELECTION INFRASTRUCTURE SUBSECTOR, U.S.
           DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, WASHINGTON, D.C.

        Mr. Finney. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Klobuchar, and
    members of the committee.
        I am here today as the CEO of Democracy Live, a Seattle
    based voting technology firm delivering electronic balloting to
    members of our military, overseas voters, and the 35 million
    blind and disabled voters in the United States. That includes
    the military and overseas voters, Mr. Chairman, in your state
    on a statewide basis and Senator Warner in your state.
        I recently had the honor of being nominated and selected as
    a founding member of the Homeland Security Elections Sector
    Executive Committee. This DHS Sector Committee represents a
    broad and diverse coalition of more than two dozen companies
    and nonprofits developing, deploying, and supporting elections
    and voting solutions to meet the needs of our Nation's 200
    million eligible voters and the thousands of hardworking
    elections administrators across the United States.
        In addition, our members are working collaboratively with
    the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, as well as state and
    local election offices to ensure secure, stable, and scalable
    voting systems. The SCC, representing the greater elections and
    voting systems providers in the United States, absolutely
    supports the increased focus and attention on the security of
    our Nation's election systems.
        As we know, foreign attempts to probe government voter
    information platforms during the Presidential campaign were
    clearly aimed at undermining faith in America's democratic
    institutions.
        While the consensus among the intelligence community
    remains clear that no vote tallies were altered in any way--and
    there is no hard, proven evidence that any private sector
    provider was compromised--the existence of foreign threats
    means that we need to continue to be extremely diligent in
    protecting our Nation's critical voting infrastructure and
    instilling confidence in our U.S. electoral systems.
        The SCC members are prepared to meet the threats and
    challenges that exist. However, with less than two dozen
    providers serving the needs of over 6,000 elections localities,
    representing over 200 million voters, expectations must be
    aligned.
        First, existing levels of government investment must
    correspond and increase to meet the growing threats to the
    entire electoral system.
        As the inventors, innovators, providers, and partners to
    what is truly the engine of our democracy, it is critical that
    we are engaged at the start of any strategic planning, testing,
    educating or other security initiatives relating to voting
    systems.
        As this committee considers how to better secure our
    Nation's election infrastructure, I would encourage your
    members to remember that the voting and tabulation systems,
    although they get the lion's share of the attention, is only
    the endpoint of a long process with potentially hundreds of
    voter touch points before that voter even casts a ballot. These
    touch points must also be secured.
        They include items like voter registration, poll books,
    election night reporting, mail balloting, which is the fastest
    growing method of voting, and information about who and what is
    appearing on your ballot.
        Finally, laws and certifications exist that can, and
    should, be strengthened to better secure our voting and
    tabulation systems, but if the information systems are
    corrupted or manipulated, then all the work and resources we
    put into hardening our voting systems may, in the end, be
    negated.
        In this era of voter bots and social misinformation, more
    and more voters are turning to their local elections officials
    for accurate objective information. As it was information
    systems that were manipulated in the recent Presidential
    election and not tabulation systems, I would encourage Congress
    to materially support elections officials to offer secure,
    objective and accessible voter information that voters can
    trust.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Finney was submitted for the
    record.]
        Chairman Blunt. Thank you.
        Mr. Leiendecker, you provide the iPad poll book in how many
    states?
        Mr. Leiendecker. Currently, we have Poll Pad, which is the
    iPad-based solution. We are in 25 states, 600 jurisdictions
    nationwide.
        Chairman Blunt. In Canada?
        Mr. Leiendecker. Canada just recently acquired our
    solution.
        We actually--just so you know and I think this is some good
    information--we went through the Ministry of Defense. They did
    an audit on our solution. The results were just released
    yesterday and there were zero vulnerabilities in our source
    code, which was nice to see.
        Chairman Blunt. Could we get a copy of that?
        Mr. Leiendecker. As soon as I get a copy of it, I could
    provide that for you.
        Chairman Blunt. Good.
        [The information referred to was submitted for the record.]
        Chairman Blunt. I think Senator Klobuchar would want to
    know this. You are now transitioning a number of Minnesota
    counties.
        Is that right?
        Mr. Leiendecker. A number of Minnesota counties. We have
    been working with Secretary Simon in Hennepin County. They have
    been using our products for about two years now; close to two
    years.
        I think in the primary elections coming up in August 15 or
    16, I believe, we will be----
        Senator Klobuchar. The 14th.
        Mr. Leiendecker. The 14th.
        Senator Klobuchar. Not that I would know that.
        [Laughter.]
        Mr. Leiendecker. I will be there and a number of us will
    also be there, but we have about 50 counties that will be
    moving toward that solution.
        Chairman Blunt. How many voters do you think were included
    in the registration material you were managing in the last
    election cycle in 2016?
        Mr. Leiendecker. 2016.
        Chairman Blunt. This is just an estimate.
        Mr. Leiendecker. It would be several million.
        Chairman Blunt. Where I am really going here is this
    question of how many people try to get into these systems and
    what do you do to determine the vulnerability of the systems
    that your company works with?
        Mr. Leiendecker. There are a number of things that we do.
    From our knowledge, nobody tried to tamper with our product.
        One of the nice things about using the iPad is the baked-in
    security that is already offered. That is one of the things
    that I really liked about this solution when I was a former
    director in St. Louis looking at the different solutions
    available to me.
        The baked-in security is a big thing, so I do not have to
    be a security expert. I am leveraging what is the Apple iPad,
    which is secured by NIST, and has all the bells and whistles
    that NIST offers, the FIPS 140-2, all of that.
        We leverage security from the security experts. We are not
    trying to be security experts at our organization, although we
    do have individuals who are security experts on staff. That is
    a big part of it is leveraging the right type of hardware and
    software.
        The other thing that we do is obviously encrypt everything
    on the iPad, so anything that is in transit is encrypted. That
    is a big part of what we try to do to make sure that we are
    responsible and thoughtful throughout the process with regard
    to security.
        Chairman Blunt. Does anybody in your organization try to
    find the weaknesses in any system that you are trying to
    manage?
        Mr. Leiendecker. Absolutely. After we get done testing the
    application, such as the one in Minnesota that we just got
    finished with a few months ago, it goes through a number of
    tests, whether it is internal, that is the first course where
    we go through and do our own testing. Then ultimately, we send
    it through penetration tests.
        That is a big thing that we have been doing since day one.
    This was not something that we just decided to do because the
    Russians decided to try to meddle in our elections process this
    past election.
        This is something that we did from day one to make sure
    that we were being responsible to our clients. Our clients are
    provided that information once those penetration tests are
    done, especially before major elections.
        But we have actually started to do more penetration tests
    throughout the year just because we know that it is important.
    It is something that is on everybody's mind. We want to be
    responsible and thoughtful for the product.
        Chairman Blunt. If somebody was monitoring the people
    trying to get into their voter registration system, part of
    that could be a legitimate effort on your part to see if it was
    possible to get in.
        Mr. Leiendecker. We do not deal directly with the voter
    registration system.
        Chairman Blunt. Got it.
        Mr. Leiendecker. We are just, I would say, the poll book,
    the paper poll book.
        Chairman Blunt. What would your penetration effort be?
        Mr. Leiendecker. The only concern that I could see is there
    are jurisdictions that do like to connect these devices in,
    like a vote center scenario, where the information can move
    from one area to the other, to one polling location to the
    other to make sure that that individual is checked off of the
    list.
        Now, the application is local and it is up to the
    jurisdiction to so choose if they want to do that, but that
    would be the only way.
        But again, all of that data is encrypted.
        Chairman Blunt. Okay, thank you.
        Senator Klobuchar.
        Senator Klobuchar. Senator Cortez Masto.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you and I know we under a
    deadline, so I will be quick.
        I was talking with the Secretary of State's office in the
    State of Nevada, and one of the things they brought to my
    attention, as we talked a little bit about the risk-limiting
    audits.
        But I also understand that the risk-limiting audits and
    other sophisticated post-election audits require a voting
    system that can produce what is known as a Cast Vote Record,
    which is basically an identifier for that ballot. Many of the
    new voting systems have this capability, but lots of states are
    still using the older systems that do not produce a Cast Vote
    Record.
        The new HAVA funds are not enough for all the states to
    purchase all of the newer voting systems.
        Is there anything that you, as vendors, are doing to
    support expansion and upgrades of risk-limiting audits and
    other sophisticated post-election audit processes?
        Mr. Lichtenheld. Yes, I will answer that one.
        We do have a new voting system at Hart. We started
    developing that voting system in 2015. It is new from the
    ground up, so it takes advantage of all of the new security
    features. The first person we hired to help us build that was a
    security officer and it does support risk-limiting audits.
        We have customers who have risk-limiting audits required in
    their states or as optional in their states. We do encourage
    that every state have some sort of audit and that a lot of
    thought be put into risk-limiting audits.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Any other comments?
        Mr. Finney. As an executive member of the Executive
    Committee at the Homeland Security Coordinating Council, I
    would say that the emerging technologies, almost all of them
    will provide some of either a voter verified paper trail or a
    cast ballot record.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Okay, thank you.
        Then just one final thing, you heard the previous
    discussion on certifying the machines. That is purely
    voluntary. My understanding, after talking with some of the
    folks in the State of Nevada, the reason why some of them do
    not go through that process is because it is cumbersome. That
    is what I am told.
        Is that right?
        Mr. Lichtenheld. That is correct.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Okay.
        Mr. Lichtenheld. I am glad you brought that up. I took note
    of your question about that. Different voting system providers
    have different approaches to that, so I can only speak for my
    company.
        At Hart InterCivic, what we do is we always go through the
    EAC because it is a trusted method of having your system tested
    by an independent testing lab, and then having a stamp of
    approval from the Federal Government before you go to the
    states.
        Not all states require an EAC certification, but most
    states require at least a voting system testing lab, and that
    lab for most states has to be approved by the EAC. What we
    figure is why not go through the other step of having it EAC
    approved?
        Senator Cortez Masto. Right.
        Mr. Lichtenheld. Everyone then has a feeling of confidence
    in that. A lot of this is about voter confidence. We want
    voters to be confident that their votes count and that they
    have faith in the franchise.
        Senator Cortez Masto. I appreciate that and I agree with
    you.
        But is there a reason why some are not going through that
    process? Should we be looking at that? Is it cumbersome? Is it
    slow? Is it too expensive? I do not know. Should we be looking
    at it to make sure everybody goes through that process?
        Mr. Lichtenheld. Yes, yes, and yes. I cannot speak for the
    other companies. It is cumbersome. It is sometimes slow and it
    is expensive, and we do not always agree with the
    interpretations of the written VVSG.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Okay.
        Mr. Leiendecker. Senator, again, I would just caution that
    the voting machines themselves are only one element of the
    entire electoral process.
        You can harden the machines. You can have a Cast Ballot
    Record. You can have the audit. You can have the voter verified
    paper trail.
        But again, if the way that we are either registering to
    vote, if we know how to vote because of maybe corrupted sample
    ballots, or other information from social media is manipulated,
    then at the end of the process, no matter how secure that
    tabulation system was, if the information was manipulated going
    to the voter, that perhaps is an even larger concern.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
        Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        Chairman Blunt. Senator Klobuchar.
        Senator Klobuchar. Very good.
        From your testimony, I know you were all taking this threat
    seriously. I was pleased Senator Shaheen and I wrote a letter
    asking if any of the top three voting machine companies have
    been asked to share the source code or other sensitive details
    with Russian entities. I was very pleased to receive a prompt
    response that that had not happened.
        But I just need to know very clearly on the record whether
    you acknowledge that your company, and companies like yours,
    may be a target for foreign adversaries seeking to disrupt our
    elections. This does not mean that you have been or that they
    have gotten through, but you could be a target.
        Mr. Lichtenheld. We are very aware of that and we are very
    diligent about defending against that.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay.
        Mr. Leiendecker. Yes, that is accurate.
        Mr. Finney. We take that very seriously and we believe that
    part of our job is to protect the engine of our democracy,
    which are the voting systems and the voter information.
        Senator Klobuchar. We have heard that election officials
    are often limited in their ability to fully assess their cyber
    security vulnerabilities because of vendor contracts.
        Do your contracts restrict election officials from
    conducting third party vulnerability assessments?
        Mr. Leiendecker. With our system? No. It allows them to do
    it and we would work with them to do so.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay.
        Mr. Lichtenheld. Our contracts do not prevent a customer
    from doing that. We would like customers to let us know if they
    are doing that.
        Senator Klobuchar. That would be nice, yes. Okay.
        Mr. Finney.
        Mr. Finney. We, in fact, embrace that. We encourage that.
        Senator Klobuchar. Do you think it is responsible to sell
    paperless election systems in 2018, given what we know?
        Mr. Leiendecker. To sell paperless voting systems?
        Senator Klobuchar. Yes, with no paper back-up.
        Mr. Leiendecker. My experience, just as a former election
    director, I do not see a reason not to. I think it is
    responsible to have a paper attachment to it.
        I understand some of the concerns that Chairman Hicks had
    brought up, but I think that there are things in place with the
    Help America Vote Act that secures that. But I do not see why
    there would not be.
        Mr. Lichtenheld. We at Hart, we support local choice. If
    local choice is for a paperless voting system, then we do
    provide that and it is based on state certification guidelines.
        There are, I want to make clear, there are Cast Vote
    Records on electronic voting systems and electronic voting
    systems can be audited. There are redundant copies of the Cast
    Vote Record and they can be compared against each other for
    audits.
        Mr. Finney. I would caution the Congress to always think
    about paper as the panacea in part because of the 35 million
    blind and disabled voters.
        Perhaps they cannot see the ballot. They have a reading
    challenge. They have literacy issues. They have visual
    impairments coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. They are
    blind.
        There are innovations that are taking place, the State of
    Washington, as an example. The State of California developed
    and is deploying accessible audio capabilities.
        For things like my home State of Washington, where it is
    100 percent paper, that is wonderful for most of us in this
    room here today because we can see the ballot. But if you
    cannot see the ballot because you are blind or visually
    impaired, what can you do about that?
        We have to leave room for innovations and accessibility.
        Senator Klobuchar. Thank you.
        How do you communicate with your customers about security
    concerns? Do your contracts generally contain language that
    clearly establishes responsibilities for notification of cyber
    security incidents or vulnerabilities?
        Mr. Leiendecker. How we communicate is typically before
    elections, we work with the jurisdiction, as I spoke earlier.
    We have done penetration tests.
        We help them better understand what we have done. We also
    give them talking points if there are concerns that they can
    provide to outside sources like media and things like that.
        We have been doing this for some time. This has been done
    not just in response to the past election, but this has been
    something that we have been doing almost since day one with our
    jurisdictions.
        Senator Klobuchar. Last August, we heard about 1.8 million
    in Chicago voter records and potentially sensitive information
    was being exposed.
        The ``Los Angeles Times'' reporting on the incident,
    explained that the data were exposed by the city's poll book
    vendor, which had placed on an Amazon Web Service server a
    back-up file containing information on every voter in the city.
        Mr. Leiendecker, does your company store voter registration
    data in Amazon Cloud Services?
        Mr. Leiendecker. We do store data in Amazon's Dev Cloud
    that is protected, and has the FIPS protection, and everything
    like that.
        The incident that happened in Chicago was a mistake by that
    vendor. It was not us. But from my knowledge in what they----
        Senator Klobuchar. Because of the portion of the cloud they
    put it on?
        Mr. Leiendecker. It was not due to the portion of the
    cloud. They just did not apply a password and they left it wide
    open, from my knowledge.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay.
        Mr. Leiendecker. That is what I would consider a stupid
    mistake.
        Senator Klobuchar. Okay, well, that is very blunt. We
    appreciate that. Thank you.
        Mr. Leiendecker. Thank you.
        Senator Klobuchar. I think Senator Warner has returned.
        Chairman Blunt. Did you really say that was very blunt?
        Senator Klobuchar. I said it was, yes. It was blunt. That
    was my little segue to Senator Warner.
        Chairman Blunt. That is a good thing, though.
        Senator Klobuchar. Yes.
        Chairman Blunt. Senator Warner.
        Senator Warner. Very efficient committee and I wish all
    committees worked this efficiently.
        First of all, I will make a generalized comment. I am very
    concerned that there is a lot of chest thumping about how well
    we did in 2016.
        I think we should be very cautious in terms of some of the
    claims that have been made and the ongoing threat. An ongoing
    threat that has been confirmed by every member of the Trump
    intelligence community that Russia and/or others will be back
    in terms of trying to penetrate our systems.
        Second, I was a businessman longer than I have been in
    politics. I believe in competition. But it worries me when you
    have three vendors that control over 90 percent of the market
    for our voting systems.
        I have to take exception following some of the comments
    that Senator Wyden has made, but I have to take exception to
    your opening comments, because I can tell you the Commonwealth
    of Virginia, after the 2016 elections, did an extraordinarily
    thorough review. I pushed that review. I pushed to make sure
    that we would have that paper audit trail because we had
    statewide elections in 2017.
        During that time, the 2017 elections, many of our local
    voting systems elected to turn over their machines to the state
    when we were that close to the election.
        You are one of our vendors. Yet, your company refused to
    work with the Commonwealth of Virginia in making that equipment
    available.
        The comment that you are transparent and the comment that
    you are willing to work with all these systems was not the case
    in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
        On a going forward basis, I would like to get a commitment
    from you that you will work not only with the Commonwealth
    Virginia, but with other states that are doing such a review.
    That we are also going to be willing to look at a second half
    of this problem, which is vendor lock-in.
        One of the things we know about IT systems is once you sign
    that contract, you have that ongoing maintenance contract that
    oftentimes means--even if a state wants to choose a different
    servicer--they are not able to do that.
        I would like to get a commitment from you that you are,
    one, willing to work with the Commonwealth of Virginia on a
    going forward basis and other states.
        Two, what you and Mr. Finney, what you are doing, what your
    systems are doing about moving toward interoperability.
        Three, how do we make sure, in terms of third party
    servicing contracts, that your existing contracts do not
    preclude that so that you can get fresh eyes.
        My fear is by precluding third party servicing, you have
    that lock-in where a system then does not have the ability to
    even bring in a third party researcher or others to look at
    your systems.
        Mr. Lichtenheld. Yes, I will answer all of those questions,
    sir, or comments.
        First of all, yes, I make that commitment to the
    Commonwealth of Virginia. At that time, we only had a few
    customers in Virginia and all of them were looking at going to
    our new system. The point was moot as far as our old system.
    They all were moving on.
        Senator Warner. The Commonwealth of Virginia requested you
    return those machines. You did not.
        Mr. Lichtenheld. Okay.
        Senator Warner. That is the record.
        Mr. Lichtenheld. Okay.
        Second, do we box customers into a service with us? No, we
    do not. Other vendors can provide service to our machines, and
    we actually make our equipment self-serviceable by our
    customers.
        We do not need to go out and touch the equipment, for
    example, for our customers. We have tried to make it very much
    more open going forward.
        Senator Warner. So a third party could come in and be the
    ongoing servicer?
        Mr. Lichtenheld. Yes, and we have customers who do that.
        The interoperability, that is a thing of the future
    probably. We are not currently working on that and that will
    depend on certification, and NIST, and all that good stuff.
        Senator Warner. Mr. Finney, do you want to add anything?
        Mr. Finney. Certainly.
        In terms of the three vendors sitting here today, we
    represent three different components of the entire electoral
    system. We have electronic poll book. You have a tabulation
    system. We happen to provide balloting to overseas, and
    military, and voter information tools.
        The modularity of which you speak, I believe, is critical
    to the ongoing innovation within the elections industry, so not
    one vendor can own the entire electoral apparatus for one
    jurisdiction.
        I think we do believe in letting a thousand flowers blossom
    by innovation and modularity, making sure that the three of us
    can work seamlessly together. So if Mr. Lichtenheld's system
    works with an electronic poll book or provides the data, so we
    can provide information to overseas and military voters or
    blind and disabled voters that we are all working together
        I think that actually helps to secure and harden the
    overall electoral system.
        Senator Warner. The Chairman has given me discretion. I
    know he has got to go vote. I have to go back and vote again.
        Let me just say, Mr. Chairman, I believe we have such
    concentration in these systems on the backend, and 90 percent
    concentration, and the vulnerabilities that I believe exist and
    still exist.
        I think we need to at least think about, with this level of
    concentration, the ability to have potentially, at least,
    independent cyber security researchers having some access to
    give us that ``Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval'' at some
    point on some of these systems.
        I am afraid if not, the vulnerability of the current, some
    of the self-accolades that have been given by some of the
    panel, may come back and bite us.
        Chairman Blunt. I am certainly willing to work with you,
    Senator, and see if we should look at this more closely.
        I thank our witnesses for being here.
        The record will be open for 1 week. I would ask you to
    respond quickly if you get questions in writing.
        [The information referred to was submitted for the record.]
        Chairman Blunt. The committee is adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 12:24 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

                          APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED

                                  ----------

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                      [all]