Transcripts For CSPAN3 Cybersecurity Election Process Panel

On the council. I want to say a few words of thanks and welcome. Let me thank marissa shannon, laura bresnehan and alex grigsby for helping put this together. We want to thank pwc, which has provided funding to help us run this and a number of other programs in the digital and cyberspace policy program. Like many of the other think tanks, we are doing more and more work in this space. Just this month we published a cyber brief giving some policy recommendations on how they can counter russian operation information if you havent seen that, please take a look. Its available on the website. Last month we ran we rolled out a Cyber Operations tracker. Thats the website you might have seen when you walked in. It is a list of publicly revealed state Cyber Operations back to 2005. We have approximately 200 known incidents. And the plan is to add more as they happen and as they become more known to us. Please check that out. Its updated every quarter. If you have an incident that we dont know about, please let us know. And we will go ahead and add it. Please find me today if you have ideas and suggestions about how we can be happiful in this space, what we should be doing. If were doing things we shouldnt be doing or things we should not, please come and find me. And thanks for spending the day with us today. I think its going to be a great discussion. Good morning, everybody. Im sam feiss, the Washington Bureau chief for cnn. Were going to have a conversation this morning on hacking into our election systems. The next panel, the 10 00 a. M. Panel is going to focus on hackers and how hackers and other mischief makers are trying to influence Public Opinion and influencing the public and how that might change votes. But this panel is going to focus on how mischief makers might actually try to change votes and hack into our election systems. Were going to talk about the security of our election system, Voter Registration system, tabulation systems. And if you think back and think well, they might be able to hack here or hack there, but can they really impact an election, we can just look to the election that happened last night in atlanta. If you havent if youre not familiar with what happened, it is yet undecided. The democrat is ahead at this moment by 729 votes in one of americas largest cities. So any mischief could affect any election. In fact, one of our panelists who happens to be connie lawson, the secretary of state of indiana, told me about a race this morning in her state that was decided by just one vote. So these things do matter. So id like to start by introducing our panel. I mentioned connie. Connie laws luau son is the secretary of state of indiana and is currently the president of the National Association of secretaries of state. To her right is matt blaze. He is an associate professor of computer information and science at the university of pennsylvania. Recently helped organize the defcon voting machine hacking experiment to test the vulnerability of our election Voting Systems. And to my right is Michael Sulmeyer who is the director of the cybersecurity project at the harvard balfour center. He worked in the office of secretary of defense. Thank you all for joining us. Well spend about a half an hour visiting and having a conversation. And then at about 9 15, id like to open it up and have you all ask questions for our panel, and well continue the conversation until about 9 45. So i want to start with connie. Connie is responsible for Voting Systems in the state of indiana, but also works with secretaries of state across the country. So would you describe our Voting System in your opinion as currently safe from hackers and mischief makers, or are you particularly concerned . Where do you fall on the continuum . First of all, obviously, and i know people in the audience have heard this before. There is no evidence that any votes were tampered with in the 2016 election. I think that Election Security has always been a priority of secretaries of state. And i think that the email that every chief election official received in august or september of 2016 changed the way we do business. So were making especially cybersecurity a priority. And weve done a number of things working with department of Homeland Security, the fbi, and to become to make sure that we get the information we need. So the number one activity since the 2016 election for the National Association of secretaries of state and the secretaries of state has been to improve the communication between the intelligence agencies in the United States. And we as chief Election Officials so that we can get the information we need in order to prevent and or react quickly if there should be a cyber attack. Im just going to put you on the spot. Are you comfortable at this point knowing that no system is perfect . But are you comfortable that we have done as much as we can do . Are you comfortable that if there were an election tomorrow in the state of indiana that it would be safe . By the time you say youre comfortable, thats when you should be worried. Im never going to say im comfortable about it. Im always going to say im going to be very vigilant. I do believe we are doing everything we possibly can in indiana to make sure what our elections are safe. I am very fortunate. Not every state has the support from their General Assembly. My General Assembly appropriated 1. 4 million so that we could make sure that our system is secure. We migrated our data. Weve done a number of things to secure our outward facing websites. We certify our Voting Machines for use in indiana. We have what we call the Voting System technical oversight program. So we know where every machine, every type of machine, every serial number, every tabulating machine, we know where it is and when its in use in the state of indiana. So i feel good what were doing. And weve been told by dhs and multistate information sharing and Analysis Center that were doing the right things. Matt do, you feel good . I mean, i feel good that connie is doing the best that can be done. But what i worry is that the best that can be done is almost certainly either not good enough today or the honeymoon is going to end very, very quickly. A little bit of background from my perspective. Im a computer scientist. Im a technologist. In 2007, i led teams that were contracted by the states of california and ohio to do a top to bottom review of their election system technology, including the Voting Systems and backend systems from the vendors used in those states, which turn out to be the same vendors used in the other 49 states. And what we discovered in 2007 was that these systems were riddled from top to bottom with exploitable security vulnerabilities in virtually every component of the systems. And some of those vulnerabilities were sort of coding error, bugs in the programs that could be fixed. Some were more architectural, particularly in the socalled dre systems, direct recording electronic Voting Systems, the touch screen Voting Machines that record voter selection electronically in their internal memory, and the selections that process those. Interestingly, we know those can be exploited. In many cases, they can be exploited with no more physical access than you would need as a voter or as a poll worker at a precinct. But there has been no evidence that theyve actually been exploited in any election. So we have to kind of walk a fine line between saying, look, this technology very desperately needs to be improved and, you know, falsely telling people that our elections are illegitimate. I dont want to say that our elections are illegitimate. But i dont know how to prove that they arent. Because in some of the cases, the technology that were using doesnt really tell us. And that concerns me greatly. Im going to bring michael in. What do you think the biggest vulnerability of our Voting System is . First, thanks to the council for putting this on and for having us here. I was at dod, so i never feel good about anything. Okay. I never feel comfortable. The challenge is one that strikes me at least of risk reduction, not elimination. So you have to set your standard, your objective in some way thats reasonable. And so youre always going to have some level of uncertainty here. The challenge and the opportunity is to reduce that risk as much as possible. Its nice to hear the General Assembly in indiana wants to help you do that with some appropriation. The challenge that i really see is it doesnt take much to have an effect on the vote count. You dont actually need to have National Wide intrusions, right . Reducing the risk of gaining unauthorized access. Thats what the risk were trying to reduce. Gaining unauthorized access. You do that in a couple of key jurisdictions, get the timing right, you can change a count. You can make things a lot more difficult for the folks who are trying to make sure that our elections are conducted in a way thats High Integrity as possible. You can really complicate that effort in just a couple of key ways. So thats thats my perspective on it from my experience. It doesnt take much. But weve got to reduce that risk as much as possible. Connie . I just want to make sure that everybody understands that the last election we questioned was the 2000 election when we were virtually using paper and punch cards. So if you think about the way we do elections today, you know, ive been a county clerk. And ive been on the ground, and ive run elections. I did that for eight years. And i will tell you that there are security measures that are local Election Administrators take that make it nearly well, it make it very impractical for someone to get to our Voting Machines. First of all, these machines are kept under lock and key. And most of them have a visual scanning of the facility. So we know who comes and goes. They use logins. So we know, again, who comes and goes. We do public tests. And once those public tests are run before an election and we know that the votes are recording properly, and that there are no votes that will be present on election day before someone comes to vote, those are sealed. And when a brushfires team arrives on election morning, they cut the seal from the machine and they record the number. And one of the first things the Election Administrators do at night when they get the votes from the election level is they look to make sure that the serial number that was on the lock that was cut off the machine is actually the serial number that was placed on the machine after the public test. So in a Bipartisan Team, again delivers these results. So is it possible . Yes. Is it practical . I would say no. And there are many physical aspects of these Voting Machines and tabulation machines that take place and have taken place for years that it just seems i mean we dont put them thought the middle of the courthouse and say have at it. So i covered the 200011th, the florida recount. Those are 35 days i will never get back. But as a result of the florida recount, the federal government and state government, the federal government spent billions of dollars to help replace our many of our election machines. The florida system used punch card paper ballots that had punch cards that were as we know sometimes not always easy to read. And that was one of the issues. But we replaced them with to a large extent these electronic touch screen ballots that didnt necessarily have paper records at all. They were completely electronic. In fact, in indiana, what percentage right now are those machines . We have 92 counties and about there is 50 plus that use the dres. However, the dres that we use do have an audit trail, a paper audit trail inside the machine. Its a mirror image of the ballot. Its not a voter verifiable paper trail. But there is a paper trail. Did the florida debacle make things worse, matt . It made them different. It essentially shifted us from a system in which you could have very vulnerable to small scale retail mishaps to one in which small scale retail mishaps have probably become less critical since the help america vote act. But we pay for that by exposing ourselves to catastrophic failure in ways that we previously werent. Our elections are far more dependent on the integrity of software. And thats something that we simply dont know how to do. So if we were if we had all the money in the world to design our system today, what sort of equipment, machines, system, what would you, if you were in charge of voting in the United States of america, how would you have americans vote to get us the safest the safest possible outcome so that at the end of the day, the day after the week after election, the losing candidate or anybody else cant come and question and say this vote is not right . Id hire matt. Okay. Thats a fine idea. Thank you. The two things, i would say youve got to have paper backup some way to have an audit trail on every machine. And you got have a way to turn off the wifi on some of these devices. Im with you on physical access. I dont have concerns about anybody rolling into the courthouse and having at it. But wireless access through a network is a problem. Some of the machines we looked at in a report called hacking chads we found couldnt even turn off the wireless. Was not possible to turn it off. Thats a security problem. Connie, if the legislature gave you 20 million, 200 million, what would you buy . I have no idea. I need the experts. But i would certainly be doing a lot of research. I would say the most important thing is education for our local Election Officials. You know, a number of states, our governors have set up cybersecurity councils. We have one in indiana and were working with our local elected officials. Were running phishing, email campaign so we can educate them on what to notice, what not to notice, what to click on before they notice to do that. We are working on multifactor access so that their passwords are stronger. So those are the things that were doing in the state of indiana, and i think most secretaries are doing that as well. I would just say that the very first election i ran as an election administrator was in 1989 in hendricks county, indiana. And we used lever machines, which are pretty there might be one in the state museum now in indiana. So im dating myself. But i will tell you that it wouldnt make you feel very well if you saw the way those results were taken in. We would get a written total from the precinct. And you have a tally sheet. And i remember sitting on the floor with this huge tally sheet, and numbers get transposed, and youre adding all these up. It was a disaster. It really was. I think we finally ended up with the result that was fair and correct, but 2 00, 3 00 in the morning youre still working on these paper tallies. People are not that patient today. I think the worst thing that we could do would say that we would have to go back to all paper. What we need to do is think about how we can make our Technology Work the way we need for it to work. If you had billions of dollars, what would you do . So, you know, its funny. Im in the one branch of Computer Science that has most of my time is spent pointing out how terrible Computer Science at building reliable things. And we really are truly terrible at building Reliable Software systems. It is literally the first problem of Computer Science. We dont know how to build programs that dont have bugs in them. And that may at some point in the future, there may be some breakthrough that makes that less of a problem. But it has not yet happened. Arguably, this problem is getting worse rather than better as we build larger, more complex systems. So whats is the solution . The best solution that anyone has come up with for elections is a concept invented by professor ron rivest at mit called Software Independence. That is to say were going use software. It has all sorts of benefits to have computerized election systems. But we dont want the integrity of the election to depend on the integrity of the software because thats simply a herculean task. So the technology that exists today, that has this property of Software Independence is a combination of two existing things that we can do today. One is whats called precinct optical scan ballots. That is ballots where the voter marks a ballot, or maybe uses a ballot marking device to create a paper optical scan ballot thats fed into a reader at the polling place that records the selections and keeps the tally, and then captures the physical ballot and scores it in a locked box. And that technology has the advantage that it maintains an artifact of the voters choice that the voter actually marked. The second thing you need to do is make sure that the software that is doing the tallying has not been tampered with or doesnt have bugs in it. And that can be achieved with a technique called risk limiting audits, where you do a statistical sample of the polling places, do a manual count of the paper ballots, and ensure that that matches the electronically recorded results. If it match, great. If it doesnt match, you know you have a problem and you have to do more of the recounts. The combination of doing both of those things properly gives you this Software Independence property that just eliminates a wide swath of potential vulnerabilities that are really hard to counter in any other way. But why i watched the Cyber Operations<\/a> tracker. Thats the website you might have seen when you walked in. It is a list of publicly revealed state Cyber Operations<\/a> back to 2005. We have approximately 200 known incidents. And the plan is to add more as they happen and as they become more known to us. Please check that out. Its updated every quarter. If you have an incident that we dont know about, please let us know. And we will go ahead and add it. Please find me today if you have ideas and suggestions about how we can be happiful in this space, what we should be doing. If were doing things we shouldnt be doing or things we should not, please come and find me. And thanks for spending the day with us today. I think its going to be a great discussion. Good morning, everybody. Im sam feiss, the Washington Bureau<\/a> chief for cnn. Were going to have a conversation this morning on hacking into our election systems. The next panel, the 10 00 a. M. Panel is going to focus on hackers and how hackers and other mischief makers are trying to influence Public Opinion<\/a> and influencing the public and how that might change votes. But this panel is going to focus on how mischief makers might actually try to change votes and hack into our election systems. Were going to talk about the security of our election system, Voter Registration<\/a> system, tabulation systems. And if you think back and think well, they might be able to hack here or hack there, but can they really impact an election, we can just look to the election that happened last night in atlanta. If you havent if youre not familiar with what happened, it is yet undecided. The democrat is ahead at this moment by 729 votes in one of americas largest cities. So any mischief could affect any election. In fact, one of our panelists who happens to be connie lawson, the secretary of state of indiana, told me about a race this morning in her state that was decided by just one vote. So these things do matter. So id like to start by introducing our panel. I mentioned connie. Connie laws luau son is the secretary of state of indiana and is currently the president of the National Association<\/a> of secretaries of state. To her right is matt blaze. He is an associate professor of computer information and science at the university of pennsylvania. Recently helped organize the defcon voting machine hacking experiment to test the vulnerability of our election Voting System<\/a>s. And to my right is Michael Sulmeyer<\/a> who is the director of the cybersecurity project at the harvard balfour center. He worked in the office of secretary of defense. Thank you all for joining us. Well spend about a half an hour visiting and having a conversation. And then at about 9 15, id like to open it up and have you all ask questions for our panel, and well continue the conversation until about 9 45. So i want to start with connie. Connie is responsible for Voting System<\/a>s in the state of indiana, but also works with secretaries of state across the country. So would you describe our Voting System<\/a> in your opinion as currently safe from hackers and mischief makers, or are you particularly concerned . Where do you fall on the continuum . First of all, obviously, and i know people in the audience have heard this before. There is no evidence that any votes were tampered with in the 2016 election. I think that Election Security<\/a> has always been a priority of secretaries of state. And i think that the email that every chief election official received in august or september of 2016 changed the way we do business. So were making especially cybersecurity a priority. And weve done a number of things working with department of Homeland Security<\/a>, the fbi, and to become to make sure that we get the information we need. So the number one activity since the 2016 election for the National Association<\/a> of secretaries of state and the secretaries of state has been to improve the communication between the intelligence agencies in the United States<\/a>. And we as chief Election Officials<\/a> so that we can get the information we need in order to prevent and or react quickly if there should be a cyber attack. Im just going to put you on the spot. Are you comfortable at this point knowing that no system is perfect . But are you comfortable that we have done as much as we can do . Are you comfortable that if there were an election tomorrow in the state of indiana that it would be safe . By the time you say youre comfortable, thats when you should be worried. Im never going to say im comfortable about it. Im always going to say im going to be very vigilant. I do believe we are doing everything we possibly can in indiana to make sure what our elections are safe. I am very fortunate. Not every state has the support from their General Assembly<\/a>. My General Assembly<\/a> appropriated 1. 4 million so that we could make sure that our system is secure. We migrated our data. Weve done a number of things to secure our outward facing websites. We certify our Voting Machines<\/a> for use in indiana. We have what we call the Voting System<\/a> technical oversight program. So we know where every machine, every type of machine, every serial number, every tabulating machine, we know where it is and when its in use in the state of indiana. So i feel good what were doing. And weve been told by dhs and multistate information sharing and Analysis Center<\/a> that were doing the right things. Matt do, you feel good . I mean, i feel good that connie is doing the best that can be done. But what i worry is that the best that can be done is almost certainly either not good enough today or the honeymoon is going to end very, very quickly. A little bit of background from my perspective. Im a computer scientist. Im a technologist. In 2007, i led teams that were contracted by the states of california and ohio to do a top to bottom review of their election system technology, including the Voting System<\/a>s and backend systems from the vendors used in those states, which turn out to be the same vendors used in the other 49 states. And what we discovered in 2007 was that these systems were riddled from top to bottom with exploitable security vulnerabilities in virtually every component of the systems. And some of those vulnerabilities were sort of coding error, bugs in the programs that could be fixed. Some were more architectural, particularly in the socalled dre systems, direct recording electronic Voting System<\/a>s, the touch screen Voting Machines<\/a> that record voter selection electronically in their internal memory, and the selections that process those. Interestingly, we know those can be exploited. In many cases, they can be exploited with no more physical access than you would need as a voter or as a poll worker at a precinct. But there has been no evidence that theyve actually been exploited in any election. So we have to kind of walk a fine line between saying, look, this technology very desperately needs to be improved and, you know, falsely telling people that our elections are illegitimate. I dont want to say that our elections are illegitimate. But i dont know how to prove that they arent. Because in some of the cases, the technology that were using doesnt really tell us. And that concerns me greatly. Im going to bring michael in. What do you think the biggest vulnerability of our Voting System<\/a> is . First, thanks to the council for putting this on and for having us here. I was at dod, so i never feel good about anything. Okay. I never feel comfortable. The challenge is one that strikes me at least of risk reduction, not elimination. So you have to set your standard, your objective in some way thats reasonable. And so youre always going to have some level of uncertainty here. The challenge and the opportunity is to reduce that risk as much as possible. Its nice to hear the General Assembly<\/a> in indiana wants to help you do that with some appropriation. The challenge that i really see is it doesnt take much to have an effect on the vote count. You dont actually need to have National Wide<\/a> intrusions, right . Reducing the risk of gaining unauthorized access. Thats what the risk were trying to reduce. Gaining unauthorized access. You do that in a couple of key jurisdictions, get the timing right, you can change a count. You can make things a lot more difficult for the folks who are trying to make sure that our elections are conducted in a way thats High Integrity<\/a> as possible. You can really complicate that effort in just a couple of key ways. So thats thats my perspective on it from my experience. It doesnt take much. But weve got to reduce that risk as much as possible. Connie . I just want to make sure that everybody understands that the last election we questioned was the 2000 election when we were virtually using paper and punch cards. So if you think about the way we do elections today, you know, ive been a county clerk. And ive been on the ground, and ive run elections. I did that for eight years. And i will tell you that there are security measures that are local Election Administrators<\/a> take that make it nearly well, it make it very impractical for someone to get to our Voting Machines<\/a>. First of all, these machines are kept under lock and key. And most of them have a visual scanning of the facility. So we know who comes and goes. They use logins. So we know, again, who comes and goes. We do public tests. And once those public tests are run before an election and we know that the votes are recording properly, and that there are no votes that will be present on election day before someone comes to vote, those are sealed. And when a brushfires team arrives on election morning, they cut the seal from the machine and they record the number. And one of the first things the Election Administrators<\/a> do at night when they get the votes from the election level is they look to make sure that the serial number that was on the lock that was cut off the machine is actually the serial number that was placed on the machine after the public test. So in a Bipartisan Team<\/a>, again delivers these results. So is it possible . Yes. Is it practical . I would say no. And there are many physical aspects of these Voting Machines<\/a> and tabulation machines that take place and have taken place for years that it just seems i mean we dont put them thought the middle of the courthouse and say have at it. So i covered the 200011th, the florida recount. Those are 35 days i will never get back. But as a result of the florida recount, the federal government and state government, the federal government spent billions of dollars to help replace our many of our election machines. The florida system used punch card paper ballots that had punch cards that were as we know sometimes not always easy to read. And that was one of the issues. But we replaced them with to a large extent these electronic touch screen ballots that didnt necessarily have paper records at all. They were completely electronic. In fact, in indiana, what percentage right now are those machines . We have 92 counties and about there is 50 plus that use the dres. However, the dres that we use do have an audit trail, a paper audit trail inside the machine. Its a mirror image of the ballot. Its not a voter verifiable paper trail. But there is a paper trail. Did the florida debacle make things worse, matt . It made them different. It essentially shifted us from a system in which you could have very vulnerable to small scale retail mishaps to one in which small scale retail mishaps have probably become less critical since the help america vote act. But we pay for that by exposing ourselves to catastrophic failure in ways that we previously werent. Our elections are far more dependent on the integrity of software. And thats something that we simply dont know how to do. So if we were if we had all the money in the world to design our system today, what sort of equipment, machines, system, what would you, if you were in charge of voting in the United States<\/a> of america, how would you have americans vote to get us the safest the safest possible outcome so that at the end of the day, the day after the week after election, the losing candidate or anybody else cant come and question and say this vote is not right . Id hire matt. Okay. Thats a fine idea. Thank you. The two things, i would say youve got to have paper backup some way to have an audit trail on every machine. And you got have a way to turn off the wifi on some of these devices. Im with you on physical access. I dont have concerns about anybody rolling into the courthouse and having at it. But wireless access through a network is a problem. Some of the machines we looked at in a report called hacking chads we found couldnt even turn off the wireless. Was not possible to turn it off. Thats a security problem. Connie, if the legislature gave you 20 million, 200 million, what would you buy . I have no idea. I need the experts. But i would certainly be doing a lot of research. I would say the most important thing is education for our local Election Officials<\/a>. You know, a number of states, our governors have set up cybersecurity councils. We have one in indiana and were working with our local elected officials. Were running phishing, email campaign so we can educate them on what to notice, what not to notice, what to click on before they notice to do that. We are working on multifactor access so that their passwords are stronger. So those are the things that were doing in the state of indiana, and i think most secretaries are doing that as well. I would just say that the very first election i ran as an election administrator was in 1989 in hendricks county, indiana. And we used lever machines, which are pretty there might be one in the state museum now in indiana. So im dating myself. But i will tell you that it wouldnt make you feel very well if you saw the way those results were taken in. We would get a written total from the precinct. And you have a tally sheet. And i remember sitting on the floor with this huge tally sheet, and numbers get transposed, and youre adding all these up. It was a disaster. It really was. I think we finally ended up with the result that was fair and correct, but 2 00, 3 00 in the morning youre still working on these paper tallies. People are not that patient today. I think the worst thing that we could do would say that we would have to go back to all paper. What we need to do is think about how we can make our Technology Work<\/a> the way we need for it to work. If you had billions of dollars, what would you do . So, you know, its funny. Im in the one branch of Computer Science<\/a> that has most of my time is spent pointing out how terrible Computer Science<\/a> at building reliable things. And we really are truly terrible at building Reliable Software<\/a> systems. It is literally the first problem of Computer Science<\/a>. We dont know how to build programs that dont have bugs in them. And that may at some point in the future, there may be some breakthrough that makes that less of a problem. But it has not yet happened. Arguably, this problem is getting worse rather than better as we build larger, more complex systems. So whats is the solution . The best solution that anyone has come up with for elections is a concept invented by professor ron rivest at mit called Software Independence<\/a>. That is to say were going use software. It has all sorts of benefits to have computerized election systems. But we dont want the integrity of the election to depend on the integrity of the software because thats simply a herculean task. So the technology that exists today, that has this property of Software Independence<\/a> is a combination of two existing things that we can do today. One is whats called precinct optical scan ballots. That is ballots where the voter marks a ballot, or maybe uses a ballot marking device to create a paper optical scan ballot thats fed into a reader at the polling place that records the selections and keeps the tally, and then captures the physical ballot and scores it in a locked box. And that technology has the advantage that it maintains an artifact of the voters choice that the voter actually marked. The second thing you need to do is make sure that the software that is doing the tallying has not been tampered with or doesnt have bugs in it. And that can be achieved with a technique called risk limiting audits, where you do a statistical sample of the polling places, do a manual count of the paper ballots, and ensure that that matches the electronically recorded results. If it match, great. If it doesnt match, you know you have a problem and you have to do more of the recounts. The combination of doing both of those things properly gives you this Software Independence<\/a> property that just eliminates a wide swath of potential vulnerabilities that are really hard to counter in any other way. But why i watched the British Elections<\/a> this summer, okay. Reasonably well developed nation, the united kingdom. Held an election for parliament this summer. They used paper ballots. Theyre tabulated at each constituency. The people who voted for candidate x, there is a pile there. There are poll watchers that are checking. They count. They recount. They rewrite them all down and someone stands at a microphone and reads off the results without ever touching a computer. The only one who seems to add them up are the Television Networks<\/a> back in london where they literally add them up do and the arithmetic and thats it. Whats wrong with that . Isnt that foolproof . Why do we have to get all fancy . Seriously. There is nothing wrong with that. But the United States<\/a> has are we just impatient . Well, we are impatient. Were americans. And were an impatient people. But the more serious problem is the u. S. Elections are the most logistically complex in the world. We vote on more contests on a single ballot. We have more different ballots. We have School Board Elections<\/a> and the dogcatcher election and referenda depending where you are, bond issues and so on. So in england, theyre voting its a parliamentary democracy. Theyre voting for a single representative in general in these elections, or maybe one or two issues. Here we might i vote on about 20 Different Things<\/a> in philadelphia. All right, michael, you work for the department of defense. The word we have not said adam mentioned it earlier we have not said russian on this panel. But thats the backdrop for this, at least right now. Do you believe that the russians or any other bad actors, but well use the russians for this, tried to hack our election, want to hack our election . Are actively trying to break through all of matts fancy systems . Or is this really just something that were a problem were overstating . Do i believe that a Foreign Intelligence Services<\/a> would love to gain unauthorized access or hack into systems that would reveal information . Absolutely. Would Foreign Intelligence Services<\/a> love to be able to gain access to systems to try to change tallies . I think in their dreams, theyd love that ability. Its hard for me to see a proposal being discussed in the kremlin and the security service, and they say no, no. Lets let that one go. Were not trying to hack their elections, are we . Who knows. But the point is that i think its i think they may want to be able to achieve these outcomes is predictable and understandable. Being able to see the causation from intent to actually being able to realize an objective, thats the tricky part. Its not always that there is a doctor evil plan hatched, and then everything falls perfectly into place. Its usually lets see what happens if we try moving some pieces around the chessboard, right . Send a bunch of phishing emails, see who clicks. Once youve gained access to one system, what does that open up . A lot of times you have to play on the line of scrimmage in audibles, and it doesnt always work according to a playbook. The Voting Machines<\/a> we spent so far most of the time talking about the Voting Machines<\/a>. Connie, you can walk through, for those of us that dont count votes at a local and state level. Just walk me through when if i go into if im voting in indianapolis and im a voter, i go in through a polling station. I push my vote on a machine. What happens between the time i vote and the time that the secretary of states website reports the total . Just walk me through the who is in control of those numbers, and how does the vote the information than vote move from my finger all the way up the line . Once the vote is cast, obviously its up to the Election Officials<\/a>, a Bipartisan Team<\/a> of Election Officials<\/a> at the precinct level in indianapolis to bring the results back to the county level. And then the count totals dirks and how do they do that . They will do that depending on the type of machine. On a dre, it would be a recording device. I believe on the optical scan, it is as well. Im not as familiar as those. But they bring those results back. Is it in a key fob or do they write a number down . Its some sort of Electronic Device<\/a> that they bring back. And then its run through a tabulation machine. There is a machine that reads the device, the usb port or whatever. And then the precincts are totaled together. And then the counties call the results, fax the results. We call the counties. Its not connected to the state in any way. Each county. So 1,200,000 votes in this county. Thats a lot. Anyway, and someone calls your office on a land line . Yes, yes. But the results are not final for ten days. Because, remember, folks are able to cast a provisional ballot. If they got to the polling place, for example, and they forgot their photo id we have a photo id requirement in indiana. They have ten days to go to the Clerks Office<\/a> on the county level, take their id, and a the provisional ballot is then counted. Can somebody on the telephone back in your office hears the votes and they type them into a computer. Thats right. And the computer does the math, and then it gets published on the website. Thats right. And thats how the world nose about it . Thats how the world nose about it. But again, the counts have the opportunity to do their audits. They make sure the results are final. And they dont actually certify the results to the state for ten days. Okay. So, matt, if michaels friends in these Foreign Intelligence Services<\/a> are trying to make some mischief, what are the points of failure . We talked about the electronic Voting Machines<\/a>. But what are the points of failure in any secretary of state system from vote to report . So i worry less about the secretary of statewide system than i do about the counties. There are 3,000 counties in the United States<\/a> roughly. About a 2500 of them have responsibility for running elections, which means we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 2500 to 3,000 different local Election Administrators<\/a>. Some of them are quite good at protecting their systems. Some of them are less good. You know, there is pretty wide variance among them. You know, and this has nothing to do with intentions or good will. This is simply a matter of very widely different capabilities. To the extent that our Voting System<\/a>s have been secured, and weve seen horrible when we look, we see really horrible exploitable vulnerabilities in them. But to the extent theyve even been designed against a threat, its a threat of conventional corruption. Somebody trying to get themselves elected mayor. Or sell votes or what have you. Nation state adversaries were not even in the threat model that these systems have been designed against. And so when you think about the capabilities of a National Intelligence<\/a> service like the gru or really of any country, they have capabilities that certainly include everything that a corrupt candidate may want to do. But also, theyre going to have additional capabilities. Theyre going to potentially do supply chain attacks where the equipment that gets shipped may get tampered with even before its received. They may do attacks against infrastructure thats being used. So they have Additional Resources<\/a> and capabilities. But thats actually not the most serious problem. The most serious problem is they actually have an easier problem to solve than someone who wants to cause the result to go a particular way. State adversary may be absolutely satisfied with simply disrupting an election, casting doubt on the legitimacy of the result. Causing chaos on election day. And that is significantly easier than causing a determined result. So they both have more capability and a wider range of things that may satisfy their goals. Okay. So michael, elections are run by states. Theyre run by counties. Theyre run in towns. Is this a policy issue for the federal government in the same way after the 2000 recount mess the congress got involved and we had billions of dollars appropriated for new election machines that are now causing another problem. But is this a federal issue . And if so, what should the federal government be doing to address this before perhaps the next president ial election in three years . The federalism questions here are thorny there is no doubt about it. I think that for the federal government to say that federalism is too difficult so were out, good luck. To the states and local, i dont think the federal government would take a pass. What id like to see is some sort of a playbook that the federal government would be able to put together for best practices and counsel. My colleagues at harvard put together a playbook for campaigns. I see no reason why the federal government couldnt provide an updated playbook for states and local authorities on these issues as well. So we saw at the end of the 2016 election, or late in it, president obamas department of Homeland Security<\/a> seemed to get involved in this game in a different way. Do you feel like the current president trumps Homeland Security<\/a> is interested in this issue, as interested in this issue, taking a leadership role, continuing obamas how do you see them playing right now . Well, theyre playing a huge role. Department of Homeland Security<\/a> is working with the secretaries of state and other chief Elections Officials<\/a> on a number of items. First of all, every chief state election official is going through getting their security clearance so that we can get up to secret not top secret, but secret information. I, for example, i just received my interim clearance. Then the tier 2 of that clearance will be our staff, the staff that needs that information. Thats number one. Number two, we created a Government Coordinating Council<\/a> so that we can determine what level of what the definition of the Critical Infrastructure<\/a> means for states. So we have the Government Coordinating Council<\/a>, which is a large group of National Association<\/a> of state election directors, the secretaries of state, the local Election Officials<\/a>, the election assistance commission, the dhs, nist. All those agencies are involved. And were talking about all sorts of things for an example, communication. There are seven pilot states that are msi sec, multistate information Analysis Center<\/a> out of albany, new york is giving these states monitor so they can be monitoring the Internet Activity<\/a> on our election systems. Not all election systems are on this state system. And so it becomes a little more complicated than what you might think. And so were doing the seven pilot states. And hopefully by the primary of 2018, every state will have a monitor on their Internet Activity<\/a> so that we can be informed of that. Do you have a sense the Trump Administration<\/a> is making this a priority . Are they doing what they need to do . Or how would you grade their efforts so far, knowing that were still three years away from a president ial election . Its hard to tell on an administration level. I mean, just hearing some of the specific dhs people talk about how they want to be helpful, i think those folks who are in the specific offices that would work on this, they certainly see it as a priority. The question about how fast they can push through clearances, id rather they be able to do a drug deal with the rest of the intelligence community, just declassify certain information and call you, rather than work through an entire government process to figure out how to give clearances to everybody. But life is imperfect. What do you think . How would you grade the federal efforts and what should the federal government be doing now while we have time . First of all, were three years away were one year but were 11 months away from the midterm election. So there isnt in fact a lot of time for the next nationally significant election. There are extremely capable people in dhs and nist. Obviously, i cant speak to the administrations posture on this. But certainly, there are very, very capable people who need to be empowered to assist. Do. You think theyre empowered . I have no opinion. Okay. On that note, i want to open it up to questions from everybody here. So raise your hand and wait for a microphone. A microphone will come your way. And then also say your name and your affiliation, please. Hi, russell wald with the hoover institution. I have a policy question thats probably better for a later panel. But since we have everyone up here, im curious. Given the ubiquitous nature of vulnerabilities, it seems to be that deterrents by defense does not seem really feasible. So this question is probably more likely for you, michael. What is a good policy that says to adversaries u. S. Elections are sacrosanct and the risk is too high for another nation state to become involved . The challenge is if youre going to leave bags of money on the lawn overnight and then try to deter and talk tough about dont come take that money, and then youre stunned the next morn when the money is gone, deterrence is not quite the model there i think there actually is a lot that we can do across the board to just bring the money inside, forget locking the door for a minute. No defense is perfect. Im completely agree, right . But before you talk about deterring and imposing costs, i think you do have to look at are we really just talking about not wanting to put more resources into architecture and very unsexy things that would actually make it much harder to hack. In the back. Yes, maam . Great, thank you u. Im mirabelle the ceo of policy interrupted. We have been talking about the actual voting, but we havent talked about what happens before the voting. And particularly facebook and social media and how people are influenced by so im going to push pause, only because thats the next panel. So this panel is really focused on voting, Voting System<\/a>s and such and the information war. But i do have a question for connie, because i think this is something that not only on a facebook level or social media level. But what are states doing . Are they looking at this . Is this something that states are getting involved in . In the information in looking at the influence of how elections are being influen influenced . No, i dont think the states are involved in that. Obvio obviously, weve known for years that foreign nations have tried to influence peoples opinion here in the United States<\/a> regarding candidates and how they should vote. And so, i mean, obviously, we do voter outreach. We encourage the accessibility of our Voter Registration<\/a>, our accessibility. I think indiana may be the only state in the country that has an app. Its called wayo, who are your elected officials. And you can find out from school board to president how to contact your elected officials. So were doing everything that we possibly can for people to get the correct information. But i dont have control over facebook or twit other some place like that that puts out the wrong information. Yes, sir, in the third row . Wait for the microphone. Thank you. In addition to security, the other election issue going on at the moment is suppression. To what degree does the risk of technology or technology opposed risks in terms of wiping people off registration roles and some of these other things that seem to be going on at the moment. In other words, before people even get to the voting booth. This is actually we havent talked about we talked about the Voting System<\/a>s. We havent talked about the Voter Registration<\/a> roles. So lets talk than for a moment. Go ahead. And how safe how safe connies systems are im sorry you. Happen to be here. So youre the example. So how safe connies systems are so that when someone walks into the voting booth, their nameston role, and theyre allowed to vote, ooh that a mischief maker hasnt erased my name before i get there . I have no idea whats going on in indiana. You seem great, and im sure your systems are terrific. Pick colorado. But, you know, this is definitely a point of vulnerability, particularly for a nation state interested in disruption. In many states and many jurisdictions, the pole book at the polling places and the Electronic Device<\/a>, those devices are often often have security weaknesses in them. If your name isnt there, youre at best going to be casting a provisional ballot. How often are for either of you guy, how often is there a paper backup . If i walk in, even though the poll worker uses an ipad to check my name, does he or she have a book under the table in case everything goes haywire likely . Or not likely . There are 2500 different answers to that question. They should. In different counties. Let me just say that when we were notified last fall before the election that there were two ip addresses that had responsible for getting into the illinois Voter Registration<\/a> system and getting into a small county in arizona that had actually then had allowed that ip address to have access to the arizona statewide Voter Registration<\/a> system. So we checked our Voter Registration<\/a> system from january 1 until that day. So indiana has 92 counties. We have 6. 7 i see professor or mike mcrob is here. We have 6. 7 million residents in the state of indiana. 4. 8 million registered voters. We checked. 15,500,000 logins into our system. And the reason we had to check that many is because thats how busy the counties were. They were look at petition signatures. They were registering voters. Candidates were filing their declarations. All these activities absentee ballots. Everything was going on. So thats how busy these systems are. And thats why states are looking at things like multifactor access into the statewide Voter Registration<\/a> system. We are implementing a timeline. So for an example, if its after midnight, maybe its just the supervisors of the elections that have access to the statewide Voter Registration<\/a>. All those things were looking at. In indiana, though, if i were to vote before i pushed that vote in indianapolis, if i walked up and their ipads quit working, is there a paper book that i keep going back to paper. Paper sounds so sophisticated right now. They would have a poll list, yes. Id just like to add one thing to do. The data breaches on a large scale are literally daily events. They dont even get reported unless theyre on the scale of equifax or Office Personnel<\/a> management. The only reason we havent seen if we have not yet seen a large scale data breach of Voter Registration<\/a> databases, its because no one has seriously tried. The individual states and counties, whatever their best efforts are, are going to be no better than what the office of Personnel Management<\/a> or equifax or any of the long list of equivalently complex systems that have been catastrophically breached are. And we may be in a honeymoon where it hasnt happened yet. But its only a matter of time. On that comforting note, lets take another question. Yes, maam, right near the second row. Just wait for the microphone, please. And state your name and affiliation. Here is your microphone. Oh, here we are. Hi. Can you tell me how many states have that commendable independent system that you talked about, or how many are working on it . And conversely, which states in your experience are the most vulnerable . So there are a few states that are using both exclusively precinct counted optical scan plus risk limiting audits. Virginia just decertified all their dre machines. They have risk limiting audits. But i learned recently that they actually happened after the certification period rather than before. So there are some adjustments that need to be made. Colorado has made significant headway there. So there are a few states that are starting to pick up on this. But theyre the exception rather than the rule. But i will say that nast, the National Association<\/a> of secretaries of state have a winter meeting, and well be talking about risk limiting audits. And weve got the belfiore center coming to us to talk about table talk exercises and incidents response and cyber all those things are on the table. Its not like anybody is ignoring those. So i want you to know that those have been a definite priority of chief Election Officials<\/a> prior to 2016. But its been a heightened priority since that time. Michael, when you go to an event like that, the bellfor center, for example, what is it . Whats the most important thing that youre telling the secretaries of state . What are you saying to either that you have to do or youre trying to scare the daylights out of them . I mean, whats the message . Fear is always a great motivator for pretty much anything. But i think in this case, there is enough Awareness Among<\/a> the secretaries of state, you dont really need to do that. Youve got to give news you can use. I think everybody now is geared up to the reality of whats at stake. So the most helpful thing that ive seen my colleagues bring to the table is, again, Something Like<\/a> a playbook. Something like an implementable best action process that the secretaries and other colleagues can use. Yes, sir, second row. Just wait for the microphone. Name and affiliation. Good morning. Adam getty with ionic security. I spent the better part of the last six years of my life doing nothing but Data Security<\/a> and data integrity for some very highly targeted clients, including the federal government. One thing weve been discussing all morning is the security of the Voting System<\/a>s and the voting process. But the intent should be that the constituencies of our democracy trust the result s ultimately, thats the goal, right . While there is a lot being done and is being done to secure the security of the process, what i havent heard discussed this morning is there a way to have a common private only voter verifiable and reconstructible audit overlay on top of the results that can ensure the trust and integrity of the outcome of all of the things such that any of the lack of integrity and the rest of it may not necessarily cause the outcome that nation state adversary might be seeking, a la voter disruption or changing a candidate. The audit is independently verifiable. I know, matt, particularly in your case, i didnt hear you mention anything about security computational overlays or random function overlays to do some of these things. So im interested as to why. Just do it in english. Basic problem is the systems that do that are extraordinarily complex. And they essentially make our elections more dependent on the integrity of Underlying Software<\/a> systems, particularly as part of the vote casting process. So they may have the effect when you look at the overall usability of decreasing the confidence in our elections rather than increasing them. The other problem is its a really heavily overconstrained problem. We have we want elections to have transparency, and we also want them to be have a secret ballot. We want it to be impossible for somebody to learn how somebody else voted. We also want it to be impossible to prove how you voted because we dont want people to be able to be coerced into revealing that. Thats a pretty difficult set of things to achieve. Instead, i think we have to rely on making systems simple and publicly auditable with processes that include the chain of custody of the ballots, a public ritual where we do the risk limiting audits and so forth. And in practice, thats likely to do much better than any fancy cryptography. And i say that as fancy cryptographer. Matt, you used the term risk limiting audit several times. For those of white house dont live and breathe this stuff, just explain that a little bit. So the basic idea is once youve captured the paper ballots and electronically counted them you want to make sure that the software that counted those ballots hasnt been tampered with or doesnt have bugs in it thats reporting an incorrect result. So you sample the precincts in the various races, do a manual recount in every race of a statistically significant sample. And verify that what you handcount matches what youve electronically counted. Do it every time . And you do that every time. And you do it every time before the votes are certified by the secretary of state . Thats right. And if you discover a discrepancy, then you to do more hand counting circumstances this happening in indiana . And if so, how does it happen and what triggers it . We dont do risk limiting audits right now. But we have our Voting Technical Oversight Program<\/a> working on that right now. Weve had conversations with colorado. And i just heard on a call this week that new mexico is working on that as well. So we are going to be doing that. Thats something i definitely support. I think we should. I will say that after the 2016 elections, we had a Congressional District<\/a> in a state senate race. Both were in a recount. And recounted an entire Congressional District<\/a>. And the results were the results. Exactly the same . They were the safe. People in atlanta may be calling you for advice if its still 729 votes when we finish this session. Yes, maam, in the very back. Go ahead. Ashley kendell from google. When you talk about the federal policy sporngs responses, do you think theyre doing enough to design the systems that are the most secure . And what can the u. S. Government do to get the workforce to do this . I cant answer. Michael, you want the take a stab at this . Youre mr. Policy guy. Thanks, astri. Great question. No, i dont think the government is doing enough. Its not that there is ignorance about it. I think the biggest problem is that there is no singular set of skills that will solve everything or equip everyone to do everything technical. There is a lot of this kind of information that you can learn just factually. Dare i even say free youtube videos to just learn about how different systems work. You said that for her . Youtube . Exactly, yes. There are some types of skills, that yes, require a large type of federal investments to steer people towards. But that actually doesnt need to be the way to really solve the stem crisis as a hole. Whole. Question . Yes, sir. Front row. Allen raul, sidly austin. First the thorny question of federalism as a possible constraint on the federal governments responsibility here. I would note that article 4 of the constitution obligates the federal government to guarantee a republican form of government every state. So if the elections are compromised, i think that would be called into question. But my question concerns the discussion has centered around whether there is any evidence of impact on u. S. Elections in terms of hacking the voting or the results. Where what do we see internationally . There are a lot of other elections held, and presumably many of them are held to electronic procedures as well. And the nation state adversaries might have an interest in chaos, uncertainty, and maybe even in installing particular candidates in other countries. Do we see any evidence around the world that is relevant to us . So probably the largest country that uses electronic Voting System<\/a>s is india. They have a customdesigned voting machine. Questions have been raised about the security and integrity of the design theyre using. It is a paperless dre system. And, but, to a large extent, the u. S. Has been on the leading and bleeding edge of rolling out computerized Technology Election<\/a> posts help america vote act. I think were seeing we have to look inward as well as outward to see whats going on. And i will also say that the situation very much reminds me of Internet Security<\/a> in the 1990s. When technologists were basically warning these systems that we have on the internet in general are going to be are insecure and are going to be attacked. And for a while, people were saying oh, youre just chicken little saying the sky is falling. And then sure enough, the sky fell. And, you know, we really havent been the same since. The situation with electronic Voting System<\/a>s is remarkably reminiscent of the situation with general Internet Security<\/a> in the mid 1990s. The example you mentioned that there were issues in illinois and arizona. In the last election. Did we ever actually learn who the hackers were, who was trying to penetrate those systems . We actually has that actually been discovered and announced . I dont i have information on that. But i dont think i can say. Oh you dont have your clearance yet. I dont have my clearance. Just kidding. Sorry, whoever is watching in russia. No, i cant say. Its a great question. I think, a, you had me at article 4 of the constitution. Thats good. And then in terms of where else, you can look at where are things vulnerable, india. And then look at where is an attractive target for people who want to be in this business. And that is eastern europe. The russian have an interest. So not surprising that they would be poking around. I think if there are some aspiring grad students who are watching, a good masters thesis could be trying to do some comparative studies in the baltics, looking at ukraine, some recent elections, to go get some travel support money and investigate. Were not done yet, but viet to be convinced that any of these systems are superior to paper so far. I mean as we have been talking for the last 45 minutes, paper sounds better and better and better. The idea that many or all of the systems in india are dre systems in the Worlds Largest<\/a> democracy. Anyway, im troubled by it. Thats neither here nor there yes, sir, in the middle . Thank you. Fred from resilient solution, a drone safety and security company. Id just like to ask the Panel Questions<\/a> about if there are similarities from the Financial Markets<\/a> and the cyberprecautions we take there, or the coming autonomous transportation markets that were going to be looking at, are there any Lessons Learned<\/a> from those that could be applied to the voting cyberissues . Well, for my money, the Financial Sector<\/a> i think has invested the most for the longest amount of time. Because they realize they had money to lose. So they took it upon themselves to defend themselves. And i think the federal government is actually had the best type of relationship with an Information Sharing Analysis Organization<\/a> that is managed by the Financial Sector<\/a>. So there is definitely some good lessons to be learned there. The questions, though, you start getting across different industries. Whats been the governments role in requiring different kinds of transparency, reporting about intrusions. There is some Defense Authorization<\/a> language requiring defense contractors to report to the military when there have been certain kinds of intrusions. We can start to think about how transparency and report asking lead to better practices going forward. Id also point out that in the financial industry, there is a really straight forward Feedback Mechanism<\/a> that tells you how much you should be spending on security. Because, you know, we know how much you stand to lose, and you can do pretty straight forward risk calculations that tell you what your budget for given exposure is. In the case of integrity of elections, that Feedback System<\/a> doesnt really exist. So unfortunately, we spend far more on election campaigns than we spend running elections themselves. And, you know, most election operations are within counties. The budget for Voting Machines<\/a> and rung elections competes with the budget for fixing roads and building fire stations. And so, you know, the probably the most important lesson we can take from this is we need to think about how much we value the integrity of election systems in understanding how much work to put into this. Connie, you mentioned indiana has invested some money recently, which is i presume a good thing. Do you sense that the other 49 secretaries of state are in a spectacular situation to you, or are more of them underfunded or not funded either at the state or the county level . Is this really where the rubber meets the road . I would say im very fortunate as a secretary of state of indiana to have the support of the General Assembly<\/a>. I dont know that its a common practice across the states to get the appropriation that i was able to get to modernize the system. But i think as the attention continues to be drawn to these issues that the states will step up and fund. But obviously, there are some folks who would like to see the federal government step up as far as the funding goes as well. Article 4. Yes, sir . I guess this is really a question for matt. To what extent would we know if these things have occurred . There are cases, you know, of intrusions hiding out for 500 days in the corporate sector. And thats question number one. And question number two is if we put in all the various things weve been talking about, are you convinced that that would secure against this sort of thing . So the answer to the first question is it depends. Unfortunately, in a lot of these systems, the audit trails are just as vulnerable as the other aspects of the system. So there may not be good forensic evidence of the successful intrusion. In other cases, there may be signs. We saw in 2016 certainly there were indications of attempts. And, you know, i would say that we cant with the current design, we cannot be universally confident that it hasnt happened. An optical scan, paper art fact of the voters. Record gives us a pretty good assurance within a statistical certainty that the count of votes cast is accurate. It doesnt help us with the other piece of that can is the disruption piece, Voter Registration<\/a>s and so on. Those we have do the same hard thing we do with any other online system. Training, put resources into it. Keep systems up to date. Monitor them and so on and we just to love them enoof pay enough attention. Tim lite, spectrum group. Is there a political mass of public concern about the issues that you have been explaining this morning. Do they not care or believe the Electoral Systems<\/a> have been nibbled around the edges and this is just another way to do it . Because without the political mass of public awareness, not press awearness and not on those involved professionally in the process but do people really kaer that much . What do you think, michael . No . I wish for was a broader mass. Its stunning i know to most who are at harvard. I guess the rest of the world isnt like cambridge, massachusetts. There everyone is focussed on it. But im concerned about a leadership deficit on this topic. No one wins political points by talking about this. You need a leadership level of it to generate that mass. It can be bottom up and top down. So to talk about how an election is rigged before the election, right, is difficult and when youre trying to actually improve peoples confidence and get a grain of truth on tis. I think they need to. You need to come to the indiana secretary of States Office<\/a> and answer the telephone and youd understand people are concerned about it. We get calls every day. Hot awhat are they saying . Whats going on . I just read in the paper about the russians hacking the state of illinois. Is indiana good . Is there Voter Registration<\/a> fraud in indiana . Whatever is in the news, we get a number of calls. I get a report every week on the types of calls that come into the office and this is an offelection year and i will say i have had had just as many calls regarding the security of our elections this year, this offelection year as i have ever had. I mean ive had more. So i think the public does care. Front row. Audrey cronin from american university. Following up on that question is there not a sense that theres a plitizati plits itization where they feel it falls more upon a particular type of election hads or our latest president ial election or a particular election locally . How can we truly remove this issue from the partisanship and polarization that we have domestically . I think were in a rare moment where its more bipartisan than it has been in the past. In every election theres a most recent loser and the risk is that it looks like the people complaining about it are simply upset about their candidate losing. But but in the 2000 election we saw bipartisan issue that led to the passage of the help america vote act which had had significant problem hads and led to Bad Technology<\/a> but at least was a bipartisan effort. Im optimistic, which is rare to me but were approaching another one of those moments. You have somebody over here thats been raising his hand for a long time. Thank you. From and kraum well. I want to go back to the question earlier about the great vulnerability of data breaches. Are these just information theft issues . In other words is the risk just a risk of loss of privacy or does in the data breach do you also get an ability to manipulate or disrupt . So the goal of particularly a nation state adversary who attempts to breach a backend system, particularly one with voter end regivation information would be disruption. And so theyre likely to want to first of all control their future and continued access to the system. They may want to they may try to delete legitimate records, add records to make it appear theres been widespread registration fraud, disenfranchised selected voters in some way that advantages them or simply cause havoc and delete everything or cause systems not to be ready on election day. So particularly when we look at this from the perspective of arrival inhadtelligence service, attempting an Information Operation<\/a> against us and we have to look at a very Broad Spectrum<\/a> beyond merely leaking data. I would just like to add in june one of the undersecretaries of dhs stated that 21 states had been targeted. And so that was a surprise to all 50 states because we have not been told wed been targeted. And so the language that we use is so important because what does targeted mean . And just this last week, i believe chris from dhs said you need remember just because someone targeted or tried to get in a state data doesnt mean there was an actual brief and when we use the word targeting, it meant they were scanning, trying to get in. So it made us all very concerned. Indiana was not a state that was targeted even. But it took three or four months after that to find out the 21 states that had been targeted or scanned. But we know of no additional states besides arizona and tennessee that had got an breach. Yes, sir. David martinez state department. I agree with the moderator that i fail to be convinced thus far that safest and most secure way of guaranteeing the integrity of the results would be a return to paper ballots but i also irk withed briefly for my home state of new mexico where i was able to observe polling in practice and saw that also presents vulnerabilities. I was hoping you could expand on what some of the cost either political, logistical or financial of a return to paper ballots would be. In a 24hour news cycle we simply dont have the patience to wait for that counting. I cant imagine. Obviously i think its a balancing act. We need the technology but we also need varwhat were doing and i couldnt answer the exact question but it would be a large one, i would think. I know the hours it took me and my staff to count that first election that i ever administered in hendricks county, indiana and that was a small special election. So i cant imagine what the would be in a county like Marion County<\/a> in indiana. I cant imagine what it would be. They count their absentee ballots centrally and they have over 300 teams of people, Bipartisan Team<\/a>s who count just it absentee ballots. So can you imagine what it could take in addition to that to count the additional paper ballots. In the end of the day it does make it more complicated for the russians but dont necessarily lead to a more accurate count. Going back to the stone age. Sglo so youre talking 100 counted ballots. I think everybody in the Election Security<\/a> world is pretty uniform in advocating paper ballots. The question is whether or not theyre completely hand counted. So i think we need optical scan has the benefit that you get some ainsurance that your ballot is being fed into the system and a record is being made as soon as you submit it. And thats an increase in integrity. The problem is we are also now dependent on soft ware. And so thats why you need the risk limiting audit back up behind that. So were just about out of time. We always end on time. I want to try to end with a simple question and as close to a oneword answer as possible. Ill even give you your choices. Looking ahead to 2018 and 2020, are you optimistic or pessimistic that it system will be materially safer than it was in 2016 . Im convinced that the threat actors will be emboldened. Hmm. Im optimistic. Pessimistic. Well, all right. Perfect. On that note, thank you very much. Thanks for coming today. The next panel, if youre joining starts at 10 00. So thanks very much. The Senate Committee<\/a> on Health Education<\/a> labor and pensions will come to order. Were holding a hear nothing titled respondinging to Mental Health<\/a> needs. Senators cassdy and murphy were the leaders in the senate and Mental Health<\/a> reform and","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia902303.us.archive.org\/24\/items\/CSPAN3_20171213_234800_Cybersecurity__Election_Process_Panel_1\/CSPAN3_20171213_234800_Cybersecurity__Election_Process_Panel_1.thumbs\/CSPAN3_20171213_234800_Cybersecurity__Election_Process_Panel_1_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240630T12:35:10+00:00"}