Hello everybody welcome to the brookings event on election and here at the Brookings Institute to have several colleagues to join me for an indepth discussion on this topic we will do a twopart event today starting with what you see before you. With the integrative process and then as second panel on the problems tackling this implication with a campaign were in the midst of. And with those keynote remarks some one from someone on the front lines. And the infrastructure security with the department of homeland security. And with they are doing with those t issues and then to go into a discussion with mark harvey with the National Security council for the person in charge of coordinating all of the initiatives. And with Election Security and integrity. And at the Harvard Institute of politics will also trying to work with the outreach on those issues and to understand whats involved on the various issues and to be and in the midterms. And with the organization especially devoted with the issue we are dealing with today. With the Pew Research Foundation looking at polling Public Opinion and last but not least suzanne hennessey. Those dealing with elections and you may know her work at welfare. E so without further ado thank you for joining us today and then to receive questions from the audience. And then to send in questions ahead of time. And to spend the incredible amount of time on this issue the past three and a half years that my tenure here at the department. And then the federal government we are the nations risk advisors. And to be in support we dont have a compulsory mission we engage in publicprivate partnerships the ways that i describe the top of the mind is i describe it to 1957 the sputnik moment for us when the soviets puts sputnik into orbit it was a moment for the United States it was the fact by putting a satellite in space to demonstrate the capability that could overcome the defenses we have built with those geographic defenses we have in the atlantic and pacific and polar i. C. E. Caps to defend against assault by a foreign adversary that icbm demonstrated the ability to reach out and touch us 2016 was a similar sort of wakeup call to the United States and the American People. Previously cybersecurity was an issue and with attacks on banks and intellectual property and sony because you did not like a video this is truly an affront to the American People the potentiality to undermine democracy atpl large. Thats why we take it as seriously as we do. What i want to talk about today where we need to go in the next couple of months and with the a few thoughts with you as an American Voter in particular what you can do. Over the last three and half years we have developed what didnt exist before and more than anything that is a vibrant Election Security of practice theres always been elections on security but previously what we have been able to create our Partnership Mechanisms is a True Community practice bringing all levels of government and the private sector together to work on the issues to identify trends and develop best practices and guidance that led to another key achievement that establishment of an establishment sharing center that all other sectors have like the Financial Services but prior to 2017 no such existed for the Infrastructure Community we establish that with the help from upstate new york and then thousands of local jurisdictions participate in the partnership to share information and trend information with emerging threats to share quickly and effectively with our partners second we have improved the posture i said it before ill say it again the 2020 election will be the most secure election in modern history. Why is that . In part through the practice we have been able to truly raise the awareness of cybersecurity threats with our partners now they are taking action this is a great example the time to patch for critical vulnerabilities has been cut in half over the last year and a half bad is a critical step to improving the hygiene of the networks the other aspect is we have more sensors on intrusion detection centers on every single state Election Network all 50 states in fact in the state of florida all 67 counties have these systems so compared to every other Critical Infrastructure sector may have the best comprehensive visibility than any other sector there is a tremor in the force we can feel it and act on it that is the absolute metric of success. Another with the 2016 election 80 or 82 percent of votes why is a paper record important because it leads to auditability that is a key element to determine the integrity of the vote roll it back to make sure you got the right results through the audit process that the votes are cast where we in 2020 . We were on track for 92 percent of states for those dont have paper ballots associated that what we are seeing with covid we may be over 92 percent that ability to audit postelection audits is critical to establish the integrity of the election we have truly developed a united front lawn unified unitedal states government. We absolutely have a coordinated support from the Intelligence Community day in and day out but others in the Intelligence Community also seeing very active engagement you heard director ray two weeks ago mentioned a kick off chinese related counterintelligence many of tthose were about political interference great partners and cybercommand for they go out there with russia and ukraine and nec activities so what we are able to do with that information in ukraine and elsewhere they are targeting Voter Registration database those is that we can provide state and locale partners here to funnel investment so the top three things we have done to develop that community of practice and increase cyberSecurity Posture with a unified effort behind this mission. One hundred days out from november 3rd so we are absolutely in the pipeline for the very significant election. First and foremost changes in the air and i mean that literally. Cove it is changing pretty much how every election across this great country will take place in november. Its critical voters understand and can share the information on whats happening in these elections. How come back to that and compared to 2016 we are not seeing that level of coordinated determined cyberactivityte we absolutely have better visibility we just not seeing that same level of activity from 2016. Im paranoid by nature so i say what we think the bad guys can do . We kicked off and initiative was state and local partners primarily informed by the increase of ransomware a taking on attacking state and local networks. When it be a pretty bad day with the Voter Registration databasese a r was attacked by e incentivized actor in the months ahead of the 2020 election . So with our state and local partners to increase the posture and to make sure they are not next on the list of ransomware. We do anticipate if we would do something the next couple months not just through d and that. After the election youre absolutely right for a disruptive attack so we have to be ready thats we put so much emphasis on the backup. The last thing is educating voters covid has changed the way pretty much everyone across the country will vote whether Voting Centers a number of the volunteers there absolutely will be changes expanding early voting absentee voting so its critical state and local partners get the information outs there but also social media platforms so day number one working closely from the Government Coordinating Council with the cdc and hhs to get guidance out there and they can disinfect and sanitized to implement good social distancing d like a mask on election day and in person voting but to understand they will use other types for the absentee. Its critical to understand that any kind of voting hasf risks be issue to identify the appropriate motives put in place ready paper ballot backup that will lead to the postelection audits success. Now we want to leave with a few parting thoughts, first our top priority is to ensure American Voters decide american elections theres no greater priority for us. To do that we take the unprecedented steps across the ntus government all levels whether dhs or the Intelligence Community or Law Enforcement in support a state and local partners to make sure we achieve the topline goal. We have also taken incredible steps the state and local communities to make it that much harder for the bad guys to achieve success we are not fooling ourselves there are bad guys who want to do bad things russia wants to destabilize iran probably once another state we will be prepared we have defenses up and we are ready with the American Voter what we are looking for is a prepared voter. Please make sure you have a plan. Educate and understand how things may have changed in your stay in jurisdiction if you have a normal pollingndsd place then make sure it is still that location we may go to another. We also want participating voters. We will need hundreds of thousands of election official volunteers to help support the election in november. Please if youre interested in have the ability, i encourage you to volunteer to be an election official. David becker has thoughts on that as well. If we need patient voters this is a time of change. Processes will change it may not be the case we have all the information on november 3rd we will need patient voters to understand that because of the changes it may take more time party on prepared and patient and a secure and safe election so with that thank you for the opportunity to speak to the groupsun today. Thank you so much thats very important to bear in mind that weve all been talking in preparation for this event is more process thanat the event in terms with those results because you read a couple of questions i will elaborate a little coming on those issues d u just talked about. For those wanting to volunteer you partly answer that as the head of the ngo can give some concrete ideas those that are worried about the consolidation of polling places so for example asking what we will do and then talk about preparing. The spokesperson for those aboard in belgium to say that it is under way to get exactly to your point of participation and this is the difficulty of the timing and now than they have anticipated because of covid19 and they cannot return in person to the universities or ways that people get involved or the way they have thought about this. About whether there mige compromised somewhere. And also about the general mailin voting and enough capacity to handle that. I will circle back to you and getil back to the rest because a lot of people are worried about the mailin ballots. Youve touched on this, but what would you say to people . Airbridge then we can see what everybody else is doing. Officials are natural risk managers. Ive never seen a group so think about what they have to deal with over time, look at Hurricane Michael a couple of years ago in florida wiped out account he pretty much in the panhandle of florida and were able to stand up alternative locations. Natural risk managers and over the last several months inen the primary data in a good job of anticipating some issues for the consolidation of the centers and polling locations to see what transpired where they used a big arena and that is another issue i didnt touch on, but we should expect a to make sure they are secure. One of the great ways to do this is the sports arena is down in atlanta these are big open spaces the courts intervene and allowed voters to continue through i think there was 2200 ballot configurations in that location and they would have to gin up or spit out and that shows us the complexity of the foreign adversary in particular first getting special card stock or paper for the small number of vendors. Then understanding the different configurations about that gets checked on the backend and that is one of the methods of validating. Every kind of voting as a risk associated with it. Its critical to identify the security controls and implement them in a way to mitigate that risk. When i look at new jersey you touch the screen and it goes to the removable media im going to turn quickly because he worked all different dimensions of this in your career and you now ask for Something Else and we see you in a very unusual location to start t tackling on did a quk observation to see what they are doing with the public at large one of the teacher voters. Thank you so much for having us today. Its a tremendous panel. Chris had some incredible words and frankly for having been there from the early meetings between the state and local government, but the biggest things is to develop a trust relationship with them and this wouldnt happen without it. They were hesitant to start and they worked hard over the last three years and gained a lot off trust out of the state localities. It is the most important parts to consider here. How do i make sure the vote is counted and has integrity. Think about what has to happen in order to certify because that includes registering voters, generating, giving us the polling locations, recording the votes and tabulating demint reporting them back to the Central Source of the state level and certifying them in communicating that certification to the appropriate place where the officeholders will enter into their new service division. That is a number of different systems together. The second part is the system of systems and you realize all of the resources necessary to do all of that from focus on cybersecurity after 2016. But lets recognize the resources necessary along the way. Youve got people and data and or physical infrastructure and facilities and transportation and plans necessary to make this happen, then youve got your Information Technology communications. So the layer of resources has to be working together because we could have wonderful Cyber Security controls and the best centers in play but as we saw with twitter once you have an insider that is willing to corrupt the entire process, now youve lost trust and faith in that. So weve got to think about all of those resources together than the best word chris used as controls. One of the controls we have in place to make sure every step along the way that we add in the ability to apply for the michael vick a little of integrity just like we do on the other Cyber Systems out there and those are things that are going to have to happen before the vote in terms of the legal controls placed on how they get to register and how somebody closebrace for an election and how the ballots are generated and then afterwards on the certification process and the audit process. Lets also recognize the creativity of problems for ourselves. In Information Technology how they are used in configuring them for the vulnerabilities in the system that could be exploited to cause harm we have to think through the fact that we are rapidly changing every single one of those categories we are going to use a different set of people to administer and in many cases that happened in iowa during the primary base ofn they said they want one final result, part three we are using new or different physical infrastructure and to go to an arena and a sports facility, civic center, anything different from what weve done before we are now introducing and affordability system. And we are also using new Information Technology. Many, many states have the voting equipment with what is made available after 2016 that are being configured and firsttime we are also asking people to change how we utilize all of that said this to the key point and i think for november its to tell everybody take the week off, so the media, dont report a single result fo or the ballots cast, take thises week d 1776 mr. Smith goes to washington and hamilton and have a great week of civic pride and we will announce who is one because i will give us time to come to balance for every capability and it will give us time to identify if and where there are connections that need to be adjudicated appropriately its not unfolding that its being counted is that theres a lot wrapped up in the system when there is a lot of motion with each bit of that right now. Your organizations also new in the terms of the necessity after 2016 and in terms of the activeti outreach thanks for having me on the panel. I completely agree with everything the director just said. I think one thing that has been very clear over these last several years is in a highly partisan devices to talk to officials across the political spectrum across the country, they will say, they will tell you how well it. Ive been doing elections for a long time and then my new Organizational Research its clear since 2016 there are two potential targets that we need to be concerned about. One is the actual infrastructure as it was accurately pointed out weve been relying upon technology more and more and in someno ways it is good to do something very well and it accounts more accurately and quickly for access for people that have challenges etc. But it does become a target and it has been a target for instance we know the database and a couple of states. Many other attempts were made but perhaps the bigger target was in the mind of the American Voter and to diminish confidence that we all have this system of democracy is working into the results reflect the voice of the people. We have to be very considerate of those targets. Officials have a very difficult job because they have to secur