Competence, not clowns needed to protect voting
It’s bad news that Russian hackers targeted election systems in 21 states last year, as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed Friday in calls to states. And it would be bad news if we had to rely on President Trump’s Commission on Election Integrity to protect us. Fortunately, we don’t.
Trump’s commission has been in the spotlight as members trade accusations.and refutations of voterAfraud. It happens, but wild allegations of oceans of fraud evaporate to drops once vigilant election officials and law officers conduct their investigations. Meanwhile, another group is quietly tackling the cyberattacks that are a potentially greater threat to the integrity of our elections.
In the closing days of the Obama administration, under the cloud of Russian interference in 2016 campaigns and voting, the DHS designated elections as critical infrastructure. This triggered work to form an Election Critical Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council to address cybersecurity.
The differences between the voter fraud and infrastructure efforts reveal much about what is wrong and right about contemporary politics. The Trump commission is stacked with partisan hacks and appears to be tilted in favor of validating Trump’s baseless claim that three to five million fraudulent votes gave Hillary Clinton the popular vote victory.
One member, Hans Von Spakovsky, objected to naming Democrats and even “mainstream Republican officials.” Why? Both groups strongly rebutted Trump’s massive vote fraud claims.
The election infrastructure group, by contrast, is highly credible. It includes representatives from the National Association of Secretaries of State, the National Association of State Elections Directors, the United States Election Assistance Commission, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the DHS and the FBI, among others. They are cybersecurity experts and bipartisan leaders chosen by their peers.
The Trump commission is driven by contentious arguments about next-to-non-existent vote fraud. The other group is providing timely information to those who need it to counter real threats to election security.
State and local election officials are responding with appropriate gravity to information about attacks and attempted attacks on their election technology. In the future, the election infrastructure council plans to distribute alerts to election officials about suspicious IP addresses and other intrusion attempts so they can be on the lookout and take action.
It’s unfortunate that a compromised commission is burning up valuable bandwidth to push inflammatory and unsubstantiated claims. But at the same time a serious effort is under way to improve election cybersecurity. Those who care about the security of democratic elections can take solace that serious people are taking action, even if their efforts don’t percolate into the public consciousness.
Clowns are amusing to watch, but they should not govern. We should ask ourselves, what sort of country do we aspire to be? One driven by the spectacle of political infotainment or one ruled by boring competence?