Discussions we are going to have this year which is on voting integrity. The system on which we all rely for democracy. The topic of todays address is about the trust we have in our the system on which we all rely Voting System which is central and fundamental to everything we rely on for government. Is true despite the clear statements from the leaders on both sides of the aisle that russia attempted to interfere, President Trump continues to dismiss such evidence as fake news. This underscores that now more than ever before protecting the security is a matter of National Security and the states stand on the front lines. The midterms are over me nine months away and the president ial elections are fast approaching. If we want to safeguard from attacks, we must understand the steps that every state must take to strengthen their infrastructure. Thats why todays cap is proud to report the current state of security in all 50 states along with the district of columbia. Our report covers several categories of best practices including paper ballots, minimum Cyber Security standards for the Voter Registration systems and post election audits and it concludes while many have taken strides that we acknowledge him every state remains vulnerable. 23 states got a c. And received either a d. Or an f. So, we have a lot of work to do to protect our democracy. The report also recognizes the hard work of state and local officials despite significant constraints in funding personality and technology. We hope this report will fuel the conversation around the vital importance of security and to provide local leaders the resources they need. Just consider this one simple fact. Congress can supply the funding needed to modernize and conduct detailed threat assessments. I hope leaders from both parties will embrace the urgenc increasf making greater investments in the infrastructure. States need help right now. You can download a full version of the website, and i want to say a special shout out to the people that have been working on this for many months, danielle, Elizabeth Kennedy and daniel for their outstanding work. Today we are thrilled to welcome a lineup of guests to help amplify and discuss the findings. And as you notice im thrilled i will be sitting down with the Homeland Security j. Johnson former secretary at the front of the Obama Administration effort to for infiltrating and later my colleague will lead a panel. Now i have a great honor of introducing the keynote speaker, senator amy klobuchar. Senator klobuchar has led us on so many vital issues shes cosponsored important elections with senator langford and we are happy to have her here to talk about why its important for congress to act and why this issue should be at the forefront of all of our conversations in the democracy. Senator klobuchar . Further dreamers and the hope that we can stop people from being deported is a pretty good goal. And also for the work that youve done its good to see secretary johnson i began my day with the portrait unveiling. I didnt want to believe honestly. They did a beautiful job and now i see secretary johnson who i enjoyed working with and admired. I read an interview from last week where on the topic he said 2016 is a wakeup call and before the democracy is attacked again. So i want to thank him for 15 seconds and go from there. This comes from my state. We are known as a Good Government state and we are proud of our election laws. From minnesota we like to be above average. Its the election day registration and have been cuttinhas beencutting edge in as and we have a lot of voter turnout in the country in 2016, 81 of the registered voters turned out as you could imagine that. But i did with senator Lindsey Graham is to make sure that it isnt a democratic or republican issue. This isnt a partisan issue, it is about america. So, when we learn what happened in 2016, that is unamerican to have this russian interference which is a minnesota nice term for criminal activity. Since we know that the right to free and Fair Elections is the heart of america is when you leave today remember that simple concept. Walker revealed himself with his oneparty and candidate and the next time its going to hit the other one. Think of it in the bath blends and then number 266. That is the number of days left before the 2,018th election. A little more than nine months and we still cannot ensure american that they are secure. It is unacceptable and at this point now it is on us. We know what happened in 2016. Intelligence reports made clear that used covert Cyber Attacks come as the march, harmful propaganda and they did. The Department Confirms russia launched Cyber Attacks against at least 21 state elections. We learned of a targeted at the officials into the american Voting Software company and in e Voting Systems in illinois in the information on the thousands oof the thousandsof voters thaty exposed. The National Security officials sounded the alarm and they are saying that this is just the beginning. Its not just former Obama Administration officials. Last week the secretary said that russia is already trying to influence the u. S. Midterm elections. The cia director said that he has every expectation that russia will target the u. S. Midterm elections. Former president george bush said they made a project of turning americans against each other and that gets to the divisiveness so many of the posts that you saw on social media. Media. Former directo director of natil intelligence James Clapper said i believe now russia is emboldened to continue subject is in the future both here and around the world and to do so even more intensely. I could go on and on but we all understand again my point that current Security Officials that are appointed by you an handworr the Trump Administration. 36 days from now, the states that the russians packed into in 2016 will hold a primary for the midterm election. So why havent we acted . This people in opposite corners of the boxing ring but in fact there doesnt seem to be the whale and it has to come from the people that voted in the election so here are Six Solutions and all of them have bipartisan support. First, state steve need supporto protect the systems. We have a secretary of state or official heads here from virginia and colorado and they will tell you this. Right now there are more than 40 states that rely on the system that are at least 10yearsold. Im not telling any secrets here. The russians know this. Think about this, ten years ago we were using flip phones. Some senators still do, chuck schumer, but now we have smartphones that we update regularly. We need to protect ourselves and this was in a report issued by the center for American Progress. That is why senator langford and i along with terres and Lindsey Graham introduced this bill the secure elections act that will help bring the resources. In this amount of money its 3 of the cost of one single aircraft carrier. And also, it makes clear that the federal Homeland Security officials can share secure information with state Election Officials and that is what was thrown up in the face of officials when they were not able to access the data because they were one of the first states that were hacked. So it creates a process and allows that to happen, and then the final thing is that it creates some requirements for best practices for auditing. If you have a number of states that dont have backup paper ballots, you have no way to check if there is a hack. So that is the first thing, passed a bill like this and theres no reason it couldnt be done in the omnibus coming up in a few weeks. Second, we need reliable measures in place when something goes wrong, and that is my third point. Each state administers its own elections. It is a strength to have multiple states using multiple systems because it is harder to hack in to them. However it also makes it so you might have one that is weak and doesnt have enough to protect it. We saw this in 2016. They attempted to bridge the system of many states bu that we are only successful in one. Many do not have reliable auditing procedures in place. As you know, you are not able to check when something goes wrong. I think theres less than a dozen states were Something Like that that dont have the backup paper ballots. But that is something we have to fix. Third dramatic dramatic moment were free at the picture of the woman who was in an ad with a text and the text was saying you could vote for Hillary Clinton by simply taxing this number and you didnt have to go to the polls. Thats criminal. Those were ads were showing up on peoples social media feeds. One example of this that i use at home because its sometimes all these political ads. I heard this firsthand when i was at the Munich Security Conference with senator mccain and we are in the are in a room with a norwegian Prime Minister. She told the story about how russia was getting angry at norway because they have been putting funding into their military at a higher pace. So russia started running fake news stories on russian tv about our way. One of the things they kept emphasizing was norways economy had completely changed and that they had no agriculture and they didnt even have fruits or vegetables to give to their people or the Prime Minister of norway told us the story that all of these wellmeaning russians who would watch this on tv and who had friends or relatives of norway came over to visit them with bags and bags of cucumbers and apples inferred because they believed the story that there were no fruits and vegetables in our way. Thats just an example of how convincing these ads can be. You can imagine how convincing they are in a political context. When in fact in the last election in 2016, 1. 4 billion was spent on social media and they expect that thats a triple to go into the range of 4 billion, 5 billion. We have no idea but its a place where the wild west governance. There are no requirements right now for disclaimers and there are no disclaimers for disclosures. Thats why i introduced and i was so pleased that senator Mccain Company wants cosponsored with me the honest ads act. All it does is it takes the rules that are in place for print, for radio and tv and puts them in place for social media ads. We know this wont solve everything because this is about paid ads but theres absolutely no excuse that we would have the same rules applied when all this money is migrating over to social media. The way this would work right now is that people can put up campaign ads and some of the social media sites with candidate ads will require disclaimer and will require that you keep it on file. But they are not doing it for issue ads. Under federal law issues of National Legislative importance are the things you see on tv all the time about any issue before congress whether its energy, whether its civil liberties. Those ads that you see, they require that the tv station or the newspaper and the radio look at the ad make sure to disclaimer and disclose it to people. We dont do that on social media and what of the funniest answers i got at the hearing was one of the executives from a social Media Company said they couldnt do it because they couldnt figure out what those ads were. Unlike really because my Radio Station in deep river falls minnesota can figure it out. They can figure out what our ads are of international importance. This is not just about foreign powers. This is about a democracy because all the dark money and as will migrate to social media and they will flip up on your page for one second. Theres not going to be me tracking unless they change it so its more fundamental than our topic today on foreign interference. That is why we have to change this as well because otherwise you are going to have Unlimited Money going on that side and you will have propaganda coming in. As someone who runs for office who ran with very little money, i always like to joke when i first ran for money for office i did know how to raise money. And in my Previous Office he could only take 100, this is true, for a county attorney in the off ears for many person. That was the limit so suddenly im running for u. S. Senate with no money myself and thats why i feel so passionate about trying to even the Playing Field for our democracy. I did set an alltime Senate Record back then. I gave up trying to call nationally and i call everyone i knew in my life and i raised 17,000 from exboyfriends. That is a true story. [laughter] that is not an expanding base. The president pointed that out to my husband. In any case i really care about this idea of an evening even Playing Field when you have a foreign country trying to come in and influence races for candidates who have no money and are just relying on the fact that we have rules in place you dont have those rules in place on the social media market you dont have a chance. We must send a message that this behavior is unacceptable and this means getting those sanctions that Congress Passed, 98 votes out of the senator Something Like that those sanctions should be taken seriously and it administrations should put them in place. That has not happened. I spent last year and the year before last on new years eve 2016 right after donald trump had gotten elected with john mccain and Lindsey Graham and the baltic countries and lithuania latvia and estonia and ukraine on new years eve and there we were with president poroshenko blizzards coming at us at the dark with all their troops. First of all i would get a picture me with mccain in the graham on new years eve at midnight. Which one do you kiss . There you are. These families where they have lost 10,000 people in ukraine fighting for their own freedom and for them to have america stands with them with everything everything. So that is why when russia sees americas standing in these countries to mean something because they have tried this before. They have gone into these countries when estonia tried them remove a statue from the Public Square to a cemetery of a russian soldier the russians retaliated by shutting off their internet or when one of the countries invited members of the Ukrainian Parliament from crimea who were in exile to their 25th celebration of independence. When they invited them they got hacked. Those are things that are happening right now. For our country to just let this go and not take action when we have been hacked into when we have had russia try to influence our elections is the opposite message and thats why the senate voted 982 for those sanctions. This administration has refused to implement them and it makes no sense to me because when we do that we are empowering russia and announcing to the world that there are no consequences for Foreign Governments to interfere in american elections. Finally we must understand the full extent of our control in our 2016 election. Thats why my colleague senator cardin introduced a bill to establish an independent commission and i was the original cosponsor that because i agreed and that is that we must examine exactly what went on in order to fix fix it fix it is the very same reason we must allow the investigation, whether it is director muellers investigation or whether its the work going on in the bipartisan work i emphasized in the Senate Intelligence committee we must allow those to go forward. In the end i envision a more 9 11 commission and we are not quite there yet where we can actually go back through it so we are able to an act just as we did after 9 11 policy changes to respond to it. At the same time we allow these other investigations to go forward. All of these tools would help to secure our election. You look at the cybersecurity bill that i started out with this weekend and the one that puts the money into our state election system republican and democratic former National Security officials support the policy. Republican and Democratic State and local officials secretaries report it. The head of the Freedom Caucus disc carrying the bill in the house mark meadows because they are so concerned that theres going to be a hack that they support the idea of our state election system. They are so afraid its going to happen they are afraid it will federalize the election after it happens. You take your support where you can get it. That is what is happening. Its time to put politics aside and come together to secure the future of our elections so whether you are a fourstar general, fourthgrade teacher or computer engineer at foursquare this is an issue that unites us. I will end with the quote from joseph stalin. Theres a reason for this. That is probably jarring the audience. In 1923 just as stalin than general secretary of the soviet communist was asked about a vote and a Central Committee of his party. Stalin was unconcerned about the vote. After all he explained, he said who voted was completely unimportant. What was