Voting system vendors shouldn’t write their own regulations

 

I’m honored to be giving a presentation at 2:30 ET today at DEFCON 29’s Voting Village in Las Vegas, where some of the world’s leading cybersecurity experts have come together to answer one question: Does the United States have the will to demand vendors provide highly secure, accurate, voter-verifiable voting systems? Unfortunately, this is TBD. Recently, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) deleted key provisions in proposed federal voting security standards to allow the inclusion of wireless networking devices, significantly degrading the security of our voting systems. We uncovered that this was done at the urging of voting machine manufacturers. These standards were drafted over the course of several years, in a weedy, wonky federal process. At Free Speech For People, we committed to watchdogging every step of that process, and we relentlessly monitored the EAC and all its actions. We clued into evidence indicating that the EAC was holding illegal, secret meetings with voting machine vendors and filed Freedom of Information Act requests for those communications. When the EAC refused to produce those communications, we sued, forcing the EAC to produce documents that established the fact that the EAC was meeting privately with the voting system vendors to unlawfully solicit vendors’ comments on the federal voting system standards, at the expense of the most basic cybersecurity best practices. We stayed on top of the situation and when it was clear the EAC had removed a ban on wireless networking, we enlisted computer security and election experts to speak out to oppose the changes. The EAC failed to listen -- so we sued to reinstate the wireless ban under federal laws that require the federal voting systems standards be developed in a completely transparent and public process. Though the EAC has not banned wireless devices (yet), our advocacy has already succeeded in Ohio, where the Secretary of State and Board of Voting System Examiners were swayed by the information we publicized and banned wireless devices in voting machines throughout the state. This is just one of the many ways Free Speech For People is fighting for free and fair elections. We are taking state elections officials to court for voter suppression and unequal voting practices. We are advancing our victory in our Minnesota voter intimidation case, brought on behalf of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Minnesota and the League of Women Voters of Minnesota, as a model for challenging voter intimidation across the country. And, we are working with allies across the country to demand the US Senate end the filibuster and pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to protect our democracy and the fundamental right to vote. Thank you for being part of our nationwide movement to ensure every American has an equal voice and an equal vote in our democracy. Your support is critical as we continue to fight to defend our democracy. In solidarity, Susan Greenhalgh Senior Advisor for Election Security, Free Speech For People