The task force on Election Security is a group of House Democrats looking into the voting rightvotingrights issues6 general election. They held their First Public Forum on thursday to hear from the Homeland Security secretary j. Johnson and former secretary for the National Protection suzanne spaulding. Topics include efforts to respond to and address russian interference and recommendations for congress to secure the 20 team and 2020 election cycle. This is an hour if we might, we can begin our hearings. Obviously was delay with the arrival of the former president members. They continue to pray for his continued recovery and his families constantly in our mind. This is our Congressional Task force on Election Security. We are kind of looking forward rather than backward trying to figure out did we miss something, can we use this as an opportunity to fix things for the future. We have obviously the cochair and the Ranking Member on the house administrations have a comment for the record. In the interest of time im just going to submit it for the record. We are joined here by the former secretary of Homeland Security j. Johnson and former undersecretary for the National Protection and Program Director at for the department. Welcome, mr. Secretary. We will allow you to begin and we will now hear from you thank you for inviting us. I accepted this invitation first because it is an opportunity for me to reconnect with undersecretary spaulding. Im here because the respect i have for the members of congress who invited me to be and im here because of the importance of the issue. I intend to speak my mind as a concerned private citizen having been the secretary for 37 months as everyone knows in this country we elect the National Leadership through the electoral college. As long as thats the case and to the constitutional requirement and given our politics, National Elections will be decided in the key precincts in key states. In other words, the integrity of our Election Outcomes on a National Level dances on the head of a pin. If the writers of the tv series house of cards figure that out, than a lot of other people can do the same. Last Years Experience was a wakeup call. As i sit here, i know of no evidence that last year the ballots were altered or votes were suppressed through a cyber attack that last Years Experience exposed certain cyber vulnerabilities in the infrastructure. It was a wakeup call and so the question now is what do we do here in washington and what do we do at the state and local level. As you know beginning a round august 2016 we began to see the various state officials systems specifically but not limited to the Voter Registration databas databases. On august 15, september 16, october 1, october 7, october 10 about this threat. While attempting to interfere in the process thanks to the leadership of the secretary spaulding and others, 33 states have come to us to seek our cybersecurity assistance in the runup to the election and 36 cities and counties have done the same. We are able to identify a number of vulnerabilities in providing the assistance and of course on january 6, 2017 utilizing the authority to the Homeland Security by designated election infrastructure in the country is critical. These steps must be regarded for the infrastructure. My understanding is that some progress has been made but there is more to do. I look forward to our discussi discussion. We very much appreciate the opportunity to be here today to discuss with you this vitally important subject of security and of course it is a great pleasure to be here with my former boss, secretary j. Johnson who has laid out the steps we took up in the runup last year. I would like to focus my brief remarks on the lessons i think can be learned from the experience. First, as the undersecretary for thundersecretary forthe nationas director did i found it valuable to be able to bring together what i call our cyber ninjas as well as our infrastructure experts who developed relationships with state and local officials over many years and at th the office of cyberinfrastructure analysis which i created in 2014 to give us a holistic approach to understanding cyber and non cyber elements of the infrastructure. This helps us prioritize the risk and develop technical and nontechnical ways to reduce the risk. As we have seen in so many other contexts, having flavor and infrastructure efforts together under one roof is key to effectively managing these kind of risks. That said, another lesson we learned is that the relationships have typically developed for the governors and their offices and the degree to which some secretaries of state offices are separate and apart politically, administratively and sometimes even technically with separate networks which leads to another important lesson. Work with state and local Election Officials needs to begin early. By the time we were getting their reports and engaging with the secretary of state late last summer, they were already well into their countdown for the election. Most said that it was too late to make significant changes. This is why we need to have a strong sense of urgency with regard to upcoming elections. I was glad to see theyve been working closely with virginia and the runup to their election november. We need to be focusing now on the Midterm Election next november and in 2020. In addition to being timely we need to be bipartisan. As matt noted the recent workshop for the state and local officials, one thing the democrats and republicans can agree on is that the foreign adversaries have no place in our domestic politics. The defending Digital Democracy project aims to identify and recommend strategies, tools and technologies to protect the democratic process and systems from cyber and information attacks. The key message that we are sharing with state officials is as important as all of the upfront security measures taken in advance. Officials doubt about the integrity of the election and making sure you have a way to audit the results to restore confidence may be as important as keeping the bad guys out of the system to begin with. Securing the elections are vital for National Security. But it is also important that we recognize russias interference didnt begin the war and with elections. Russia is engaged in an effort to undermine democracy both tactically to weaken the west and strategically to reduce liberal democracies appeal not just in the United States but to the own population and others in Eastern Europe and around the world where russia competes. These measures are designed not only to show chaos but discord generally. We need to broaden our focus to the way the measures undermine other fundamental pillars of democracy including the press and the judicial system. Its for the fundamental democratic institution. The development of this strategy are long overdue. It must be led by the federal government but must include the whole of the nation responds to this very serious and determined threat. I urge congress to request such a strategy from the executive branch and to enact any necessary legislation to implement a national strategy. This cannot wait for the outcome of the various investigations in as important as they are in as much light as they may shed on additional details. We know enough now to understand what needs to be done. Its time to act. Thank you very much and i look forward to your question. If it is all right with my cochair, i will start. Mr. Secretary, you were in office when our election system was identified as Critical Infrastructure. Can you give the committee how you arrived at that designation and what your expectations as the secretary happened to be Going Forward with that designation . Yes sir. In the summer of 2016, we were looking proactively for ways to shore up the cybersecurity of the infrastructure. We were beginning to see the activity around Voter Registration databases. We were alarmed by it and seeing a growing list of states that were the targets of the activities and also seeing the intelligence picture about the russian hacking of the dnc and other individuals, so i am sure suzanne was part of this conversation about what we could do in addition to encouraging the states to seek assistance and i was told that it was within the authority of the secretary to declare the election infrastructure as Critical Infrastructure alongside the 16 existing Critical Infrastructure sectors. I think thats very interesting. I would like to hear more about that. And what it basically is it means dhs will prioritize providing cybersecurity assistance if the customer in effect asks him if the customers are on the Critical Infrastructure and its Critical Infrastructure that enjoys the protection of the various International Cybersecurity norms and it enables the dhs and the sector to have Confidential Communications protected by the law and regulations and so i wanted to get their reaction and as i testified in june before the community initially the reaction was between neutral and negative in that there was a misperception that in Critical Infrastructure designation would be a federal takeover of the process itself. I relayed those concerns and addressed them the best i could. This was going to be a hot button issue and it wouldve misperception in the short term goal that had to be giving the states to come in to seek the same persistence and to bring the horse to water and so i put that designation on the back burner until after. We had a larg have a large numbs actually come in and i was pretty convinced that he was the right thing to do but i wanted to hear the states one more time about their concerns and reservations. I herded heard them out and i wl convinced that it was a good idea so i made the designation on january 6. My expectation is that the things i mentioned earlier will now occur. The dhs prioritized providing assistance to the state officials that they will enjoy the protections of Confidential Communications and Data Infrastructure will be part of one of our cybersecurity norms on the international basis so theres a lot more work to do on the implementation of that designation. Hispanic theres been quite a bit of discussion about what our role is for the members of congress. You talked about the word at harvard and the effort. Click me for the record indicate that it was to have a Bipartisan House Committee to look at it. We were unsuccessful but we felt Strong Enough that we needed to go forward and analyze the information available. One of the things i think we were looking at is whether or not there was a role for congress and securing the election infrastructure Going Forward. Youve had some opportunity to look at this and i would love to hear your opinion on it at this point. Hispanic i do think there is a role for congress. A couple Things Congress could do and i know there are some legislative package is under consideration even now. Certainly one area of the states made clear they would benefit from our Additional Resources to do the things they need to do. My sense is for example the Grant Program to provide funding to the states you might want to think about connecting bath with a requirement that they do a full assessment of the system. We share with private sector and local to start with the assessment and move to the prevention and Detection Response and recovery and that is a very important step. It is resource intensive and requires two to three weeks. So, the dhs could use Additional Resources to staff up the teams but to the extent that the states are nervous about having federal employees, the patrol officials coming into the system, thirdparty entities could be certified an as offerig substantial existing services and perhaps resources to contract with the thirdparty companies by dhs whether state and local officials so there is a resource bare butt the assessments are equally important. Another interesting recommendation that has been made on a bipartisan basis both by former leaders in the Intelligence Community and as recently as yesterday by the former National SecurityHomeland Security adviser in the bush administration. Its before the National Election that the Intelligence Community provided a threat assessment with regards to any threat activity that they might see related to the election and that helps remove the implication that whatever administration is in place at the time is to put a thumb on the scale of the election that would go a long way. We respect the independence of each state i and the locality of the conduct and one of the challenges we have is how to integrate our processed without becoming a nuisance. We have some experiences that tell us we have to set up some neat tricks his and other things and not just give him money. I would first like to thank the witnesses. There were enemies that want to harm the elections it interferes as an attack on the nation. But now there is no doubt that they lost an unprecedented attack and we can expect more as you said in expressing it to 20. It should be a partisan issue. Fair, free and secure election s are the cornerstone of democracy and i think you for joining this to work on how to secure the system. I heard what you said about what we can do and what we need to do on the assessment. Is there any way you would know if the current systems are secure and i dont know how we could possibly secure them as the cochair said that if without funding and maybe interfering too much of a states rights i dont know whether they need to be replaced. I know in the city for healthcare we just had recently replaced the Voting Machines but im not a real technically savvy guy, nor would i want to be. But i do know that they would want to come in and i guess what im saying is we are struggling among ourselves that we do respect the states right but also respect we are and what we can do to possibly still bestow upon the them by major importanf the system to make sure that the process does work and it cannot be hacked by anybody else. Theres been some talk about the internal states and cities may be doing something. We have some inappropriate things happen and they come out to be miniscule, very minor and it never changed the outcome except now we tell people that need to come out and vote we have to increase Voter Participation and yet we cant let them know that we are doing nothing if their vote really doesnt mean anything because somebody else is voting for them or nullify the vote so this is important and we appreciate you being here. And its financial. Its purely financial. I know you cant tell us or anybody if it is going to cost money and we just hope that we can impress upon people that we do need Fair Elections and what happened in the past whic past e biggest thing to happen again we can impress upon them the importance of that, so thank you you are a powerful private citizen and i do appreciate you speaking your mind as you always do. Thank you mr. Sharon. Thank you very much. The gentle lady from florida. Thank you mr. Chairman as well as to the cochair and both of you for being here with us tod today. Under secretary, you mentioned some states have taken some initiatives to better secure their election systems and you mentioned virginia. But it doesnt appear that the governors have a whole have taken an active role or upfront public role with making recommendations for securing their systems and being engaged in the process. If we do believe what happened is a National Security issue, then what should we in congress to do or under secretary, what can the dhs to do to assist the governors to see the need to play an upfront active leadership role . Congresswoman, thank you. I would say our sense from sinsm working with the secretaries of state both in the runup and my work since leaving office with state and local Election Officials reaffirms the sense that we have that they take this very seriously. They take the responsibility to assure the free fair and safe election very seriously but by having said that, my sense is also that most of them would welcome some additional assistance in improving still further the ability to withstand from a sophisticated nationstate actor, but as a formidable threat. Is there anything you would like to add . Yes maam. I was impressed by a number of the things that suzanne suggested about how to shore up cybersecurity and what congress can do. I think the idea of an intelligence assessment is a good one. At some point in advance of the election, requiring that and if the states a