Last week, six Secretaries of State testified to U.S. Congress about the current state of election security ahead of November’s Presidential election.
Some of the same topics came up as usual — disinformation campaigns, influence from foreign actors, and the physical protection of poll workers on election day.
It’s good that these conversations are continuing after the various revelations that came out after the 2016 presidential election, and election security is an issue globally, especially this year when there are major elections taking place in hundreds of countries.
As with many things in politics and life, though, there is still an issue of money.
Talk of the importance of election security is positive, but at the end of the day, states and municipalities will need monetary and human resources to implement the appropriate defenses and protect everything from voting machines to online vote-tallying systems and social media disinformation campaigns.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes used his time in front of Congress to ask for additional funding, because his state has been unable to execute all their election security goals.
“None of this is free and none of it is cheap,” he said. “Our operations, administration and security depend on intermittent, rare and never enough funding for the Help America Vote Act grants that we are occasionally given by Congress.”
Additional federal funds became available for U.S. elections in 2017 after the Department of Homeland Security deemed election systems to be critical infrastructure. But this year, Congress only allocated $55 million in federal grant dollars to states for security and other improvements to elections. For comparison’s sake, presidential and Congressional candidat ..
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