churches help members game experience with organizing and running for political office. sunday at 8:00 a.m. eastern, x recollections of the battle of midway. sunday at 4:00 p.m. eastern on real america, the film "dreams of equality" featuring a recreation of the 1848 women's rights convention. american history tv, all weekend, every weekend. only on c-span3. next, a house hearing on the cybersecurity of u.s. voting machines. and what the federal government and states can do to prepare for the 2018 midterm elections. louisiana, virginia officials and senior dhs officials testify. the subcommittee on information tlej and the subcommittee on intergovernmental affairs will come to order. without objection the chair has authorized to declare a recess

at any time. i'll now recognize myself for five minutes for my opening statement. good afternoon. thanks for being here. it's been over 240 years since our forefathers declared independence and a democratic experiment began. throughout the entirety of our existence our adversaries have sought to suppress our voting process. voting is one of our fundamental rights. our existence as a democracy depends on free, fair and accurate elections. today we are here to talk about the best way to protect the integrity of our voting systems bu the cybersecurity of our voting machines and election systems. there are over 10,000 election jurisdictions nationwide that administer elections and even within states, counties use different systems and different technologies to conduct elections. over a year ago, last september. ranking member kelly and i held a hearing in the subcommittee titled cybersecurity and sharing the integrity of the ballot box

to discuss potential cybersecurity issues with the upcoming election. it was an issue then, and it remains an issue now. former dhs secretary jeh johnson has made clear that to the best of his knowledge the russian government did not, through any cyber intrusions alter ballot, ballot counts or reporting of election results. however, our adversaries have always sought to use our nation's unique qualities to undermine our robust and resilient democracy. just because russia did not tamper with ballots or reporting of results in the last election it doesn't mean they or others won't try to do so in the next election or the one after that. electronic voting is vulnerable to hacking. our voting systems are no exception. dhs designated the voting systems as critical infrastructure. something being discussed at our hear in 2016. we're here to follow up on that. it's essential that states take

appropriate steps to secure their voting infrastructure. it is also essential that states have the ability to audit their balance for accuracy whenever any kind of manipulation is suspected. state of virginia has joined the growing list of states that went to a paper system. i am curious to hear about how the transition went and what the witnesses think about moving to paper-based voting systems. additionally, what are the chances that a foreign entity could tamper with the ballot box? these are questions and issues i want to explore today. i'm interested to hear what the witnesses have to say on the topic and i thank the witnesses for being here today and for their efforts as fellow citizens to ensure that our country's elections are free and fair. now, with pleasure. i recognize the rooanking membe of the information technology subcommittee my friend miss kelly for five minutes in her opening remarks. >> thank you mr. chair. hope you had a nice

thanksgiving. thank you for holding this important hearing today. there is no doubt that russia, at the direction of president vladimir putin, attempted to manipulate our elections and has worked to manipulate those of our western allies. it was a broad and coordinated campaign to undermine faith in democratic elections. earlier this year the i.t. subcommittee explored the kremlin's efforts to use social media to influence voters. today we're looking at another part of their effort to undermine our democracy by hacking our voting machines and election infrastructure. a year ago we held a hearing entitled cybersecurity, ensuring the integrity of the ballot box where we looked at state and federal preparations for cybersecurity on our voting machines. today we're discovering still new facts. in september dhs notified 21 states that hackers affiliated with the russian government breached or attempted to breach their election infrastructure.

in my home state of illinois the hackers illegally downloaded the personal information of 90,000 voters and attempted to change and delete data. fortunately they were unsuccessful. while we continue learning about the full scope of russia's election interference one thing is clear. there will be another attempt to manipulate our elections, whether it be russia, another nation-state or a non-state actor or even a terrorist organization. the threats to our election infrastructure are growing. so what are we going to do about it? earlier this year researchers at the defcon conference successfully hacked five different direct recording electronic voting machines or dres in a day. the first vulnerabilities were discovered in just 90 minutes. even voting machines not connected to the internet still contained physical vulnerabilities like usb ports that can be used to upload

malware. many lack the ability to allow experts to determine they've been hacked. despite the flaws they're still commonly used. in 2016, 42 states used them. they were more than a decade old and some run software no longer supported by the manufacturer. updating the voting machines to paper-based machines such as optical scanners is a step we need to take right now. our election infrastructure is broad and contain numerous vulnerabilities. if we are going to withstand a coordinated attack we need a coordinated defense. in january of this year, dhs designated election infrastructure as critical infrastructure. and this announcement then dhs secretary jeh johnson was clear that this designation was not to be a federal takeover of state and local election infrastructure. rather, it was a designation intended to ensure the current state and local officials had the resources necessary to secure their elections.

since then, former dhs secretary and now white house chief of staff general john kelly has supported this designation. this designation can help ensure that the cornerstone of our democracy, our elections, remain fair and secure. if this designation is to be successful, we will all have to work together, dhs and our state election officials must do a better job of working together to detect and solve problems. again, i want to thank you, mr. chairman, for holding this crucial hearing. thank you to our witnesses for being here. i look forward to hearing from all of you about how we can continue protecting our democracy. i yield back. >> it's always a pleasure to be with you, representative kelly. like to thank my friend, chairman palmer, for the intergovernmental affairs subcommittee's cooperation and work on this important issue. it's a pleasure to recognize the ranking member of the intergovernmental affairs subcommittee, miss demings, for five minutes in her opening

remarks. >> thank you so much, chairman hurd and chairman palmer, for convening this hearing today. i would also like to thank ranking member kelly for her leadership and all of our witnesses for joining us for this very important hearing. i am pleased that we are holding this hearing on a matter so essential to democracy. while there are many issues that divide us, the integrity of the voting process should not be in question. regardless of race, gender, sexual identity, zip code, income, every vote should count. every vote should count the same. i believe that voting is the last true equalizer. however, russia's interference in the 2016 election and intrusion in at least 21 state voter registration databases indisputable and confirmed by u.s. intelligence agencies have forced us to acknowledge voting system security has not kept pace with the current and emerging threats from nations, organizations or even a single

individual determined to undermine our democracy. recently i joined the congressional task force on election security. just as we keep our homeland safe from physical harm, so too must we harden our soft targets against cyberattacks. the task force has heard from security professionals, academia and state and local elections officials. their message is clear. we must act now to protect our vogting systems. in over 40 states elections are carried out using voting machines and voter registration databases created more than a decade ago. these technologies are more likely to suffer from known vulnerabilities that cannot be patched easily, if at all. as we saw in the voting village set up at this year's hacking conference, even hackers with limited prior knowledge, tools and resources are able to breach voting machines in a matter of minutes. we should not assume that state

voting machines are secure enough to withstand a state-sponsored cyberattack and there is no reason to believe that these attacks will subside. congress must do its part. yes, we must. and help states fund and maintain secure election systems. this means funding to purchase newer, more secure election systems and voting machines with voter marked paper ballots helping to establish baseline security standards for those systems and the vendors that service them and encourage states to conduct post-election risk-limiting audits. our democratic process relies on voters' faith that their vote does count. election security is national security, and our election infrastructure is critical infrastructure. with just under a year until the 2018 mid-term elections it is critical that we understand the vulnerabilities of the past and secure our networks for the future. i thank our witnesses again for

sharing their testimony today, and i look forward to this very important discussion. thank you so much. with that, i yield back. >> thank you, ranking member demings. and now i am pleased to introduce our witnesses. first and foremost, the honorable christopher krebs, senior official performing the duties of the undersecretary for national protection and programs directorate. tom schedler from licenses. thank you for coming today. commissioner cortes, the commission on the virginia department of elections. sir, thank you for being here. dr. matthew blaze. associate professor of computer and information science at the university of pennsylvania. and miss susan cline hennessey, a fellow and national security and governance studies at the brookings institute. welcome to you all. pursuant to committee rules all witnesses will be sworn in before you testify.

please rise and raise your right hand. [ witnesses sworn ] >> let the record reflect that all witnesses answered in the affirmative. in order to allow time for discussion, please limit your testimony to four minutes. your entire written statement will be made part of the record and i appreciate your written statements, especially the -- all of you all had outlined a number of interesting solutions to these problems as well as articulating the concerns that we have. so folks that are interested in this topic, many of -- all of these written statements is valuable in understanding the state of where we are. as a reminder, also, the clock in front of you shows your remaining time. the light will turn yellow when you have 30 seconds left and when it flashes red that means your time is up. please also remember to push the button to turn your microphone on before speaking.

we would like to start with mr. krebs. you are now recognized for five minutes. four minutes. excuse me. >> chairman hurd, chairman palmer, ranking member kelly, ranking member demings and the members of the subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to discuss the department of homeland security's ongoing efforts to enhance the security of our elections. in 2016 the united states saw malicious cyber operations directed against u.s. election infrastructure and political entities. since january we have reaffirmed the designation of election systems as critical infrastructure and a clear eye that threats to our nation's election systems remain an ongoing concern. the organization i lead, the national protection and programs directorate at the department of homeland security is leading an interagency effort to provide voluntary assistance to state and local officials. this interagency assistance brings together the election assistance commission, the fbi, the intelligence community, nist and other dhs partners and is modelled on our work with other

critical infrastructure sectors. our nation's election systems are managed by state and local governments in thousands of jurisdictions over the country. state and local officials have already been working individually and collectively to reduce risks and ensure the integrity of their elections. as threat actors become more sophisticated dhs stands in partnership to support the efforts of election officials. we offer three primary types of assistance. assessments, information and incident response. dhs typically offers two kinds of assessments to state and local officials. first, the cyber hygiene service for internet facing systems provides a recurring report identifying vulnerabilities in internet connected systems and mitigation recommendations. second our cybersecurity experts can go on-sight to conduct risk and vulnerability assessments. they are more thorough and result in a full report of vulnerabilities and recommendations allowing the testing. as we continue to understand the requirements from our stakeholders, we'll refine and diversify the offerings. in terms of information sharing,

dhs continues to share actionable information on cyber threats and incidents through multiple means. for example, dhs published best practices for securing voter registration databases and addressing potential threats to election systems. we share cyber threat indicators and other analysis the network defenders can use to secure their numbers. the national cyber security systems works to provide threat and vulnerability information to state and local officials. election officials may also receive information and assistance directly from the ncic or through security advise rsz and protective security advisers. we offer security clearances to senior elections officials and and other state officials. the dhs provides incident response assistance to help state and local officials identify and remediate any

possible incidents. in the case of an attempted hacks. we have a collective defense approach. it's important to note that these relationships are built and sustained on trust. breaking that trust will have far-ranging consequences in our ability to collaboratively counter this growing threat. to formally -- to formalize and coordinate efforts with our federal partners and election officials we established a government coordinating council. we are working to formalize partnerships with private sector industry through a sector coordinating council. within this environment of sharing critical threat information, risk management, best practices and other vital information, dhs is leading federal efforts to support enhanced security across the nation. securing the nation's election systems is a complex challenge and shared responsibility. there is no one size fits all solution. in conversations with election officials over the last year and working with the eac, nist, doj, the department learned a great

deal. you're hear from louisiana, they already do great work but resources remain a challenge. not only budget for modernizing it and work force training and recruitment. as we work collectively to address these and other challenges the department will continue to work with congress and industry experts to support our state and local partners. thank you for this opportunity to testify and i look forward to any questions. >> thank you, mr. krebs. secretary schedler, again, thank you for being flexible. i know this has been rescheduled a few times. your perspective and experience on this topic is important. thank you for being here. sir, you are now recognized for four minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and thank you to this committee for the invitation to participate today. it's important for you to hear the perspective of those who oversee elections across the country. my perspective comes from serving as louisiana secretary of state since 2010 and past president of the national association of secretaries of

state on nast which represents a majority of the nation's chief election officials. securing elections in 2018 and beyond is critical to all of us. we are not naive to the likelihood of future cyberattacks but we also know the use of paper ballots can as easily open up fraud liabilities. that's why all 50 states continue to prepare oy cardingly. first i would like to share the important developments taking place through nast, election cybersecurity task force established in february of this year. this is a bipartisan body of the nation's chief election officials, in addition to helping states share information and combat cyber threats it assists in creating partnerships with is public-private partners. nast has been a key player in the development of new election infrastructure coordinating council.

this council is required as a resolve of the new designation of elections as critical infrastructure. the council is designated or designed to facilitate and improve communications that as you know did not go extremely well in 2016. nast opposed the critical infrastructure designation because our members were concerned about the possibility of federal overreach and because the designation came without meaningful consultation with election officials. my colleagues and i understood that we could continue to get the same support and services from dhs without critical infrastructure designation. so it seemed unnecessary. however, the designation is still with us today, and we have made good-faith efforts to work together with dhs. part of that work includes chief election officials obtaining security clearances. we were often told by dhs that they can't share information because it is classified. hopefully these new clearances will address this problem. ensuring the integrity of the voting process is central to the role of every chief elections

photographer, including myself, and is some examples in rhode island secretary cobella convened over a hundred election and i.t. officials for a cybersecurity in west virginia they've added an national guard cybersecurity specialist to the staff. vermont secretary of state solicited the third party risk second amendment of dataa systems in 2015 leading to his office to build a new fire wall and began regular penetration testing. colorado's secretary offers endpoint protection software for counties to install on their computers to detect viruses and malware functions. many states have or are developing disaster preparedness systems. in louisiana, hurricane season, we are one of the states that is expert in the field. in terms of voting machine security, you remember that with

the passage of the health america vote act in 2002 states were required to purchase at least one piece of accessible voting equipment for each polling place. the election assistance commission and national institute on standards and technology began updating the existing voting system guidelines to address new systems such as dres, last month the update was released to update voting system guidelines. the guidelines are set for manufacturing specifics that are certain standards of functionality, accessibility, accuracy, auditability and security capabilities. final approval by eac is expected in the spring of 2018. in louisiana we take pride and go way beyond current standards with our voting machines. we are a top-down state. the state purchases, warehouses every voting machine in the state. additionally we have the most current software available in all of our machines and test each one before and every elections. once they're tested a tamper proof seal is placed on them to

protect against intrusion. in louisiana because no one touches our voting machines except our staff because they are never sent out to a manufacturer for repair, they are not handled by individuals or companies who program voting machines because they are very tightly controlled by our office, we have the utmost of confidence in the system. we do need to prepare. yes, we do need to continue to update our processes and procedures, yes. we do need to be vigilant, yes. as secretary of states we are currently looking for a better practices that we can solicit from various entities and groups. most of all, we are looking for the remaining 396 million in federal dollars that were never appropriated to help us replace aging equipment purchased over ten years ago. i will certainly be available for any questions. >> thank you, sir. commissioner cortes, i would like the record to reflect that you were prepared to come testify the day after your most recent elections.

i appreciate your willingness to address this body. sir, you are recognized for four minutes. [ microphone not on ] >> i am edgardo cortes, commissioner of elections in virginia. i serve as chief election official for the commonwealth and lead the virginia department of les. virginia has 133 local election jurisdictions and 5 million registered voters. i'll focus on the recommendations that are provided in my written remarks. during my tenure, the department has focused on using technology to create a better voting experience for eligible virgins and reduce the administrative workload for local election officials. while increasing security and accountability in our processes. as part of the mccauliffe administration's focus on cybersecurity, one aspect of the wide-ranging efforts has been to strengthen the security and reliability of virginia's voting

equipment including the machines and electronic poll books to administer elections in the commonwealth. when i became commissioner in 2014, approximately 113 of virginia's 133 localities used paperless dres over a decade old and already past their expected end of life. all virginians voted using a paper based system in the november 2017 election. virginia has been twice put in the position of having to decertify voting equipment and transfer to new equipment in a condensed time frame. these steps outlined in detail in my written testimony were not taken lightly. they placed a financial and administrative stress on the electoral system. they were, however, essential to maintain the public's trust in the integrity of virginia elections. the november 2017 general election was effectively administered without any reported voting equipment issues. thanks to the ongoing partnership between the state,

our hard-working local election officials and our dedicated voting equipment vendors, the transition to paper-based voting systems on a truncated time line was incredibly successful and significantly increased the security of the election. although it's clearly possible to transition quickly, doing so is less than ideal. i request that you consider the following recommendations which i believe will make these issues much easier to manage in the future. number one, congress needs to ensure sufficient federal funding is available for states to procure and maintain secure voting equipment and increase security of all election systems. this is a critical need and must be addressed immediately if the funding is going to provide any assistance in time for the 2018 mid-term elections. number two, the u.s. election assistance commission has been critical to ensuring that a baseline set of standards for voting systems, adequate testing protocols and certified test labs are available to states.

congress must ensure the eac is funded so they can be an exceptional resource so state and local officials. number three, congress should ensure the use of -- to ensure the use of secure voting equipment in the future congress should require federal certification of all voting systems used in federal elections. this is currently a voluntary process. federal certification should also be required for electronic poll books which currently are not subject to federal guidelines. requiring federal certification for both of these will ensure a security baseline for use across the country to ensure the integrity and security of our elections. finally, congress should establish some sort of' creditation system for election administrator training. elections are an integral function of government and we still have much more to do in virginia and across the country to secure our elections

infrastructure from potential threats. especially with the mid-term elections quickly approaching. while we are extremely appreciate appreciative of work and assistance to date, the federal government can and should do more to assist states in safeguarding the most fundamental american right. thank you, again, for inviting me to join you today and your interest in hearing from election administrators about the work being done to secure the nation's voting systems. we look forward to continuing to work with congress to ensure sufficient federal resources are available to state and local election officials to continue this important work. thank you. >> thank you, sir. dr. blaze, great to have you here. and having participated and walked through the voting village at defcon, i saw up close and personal what the white hat hacker community and security research community does and the impact they have on public policy. so thank you for your efforts there. and you are now recognized for four minutes.

>> thank you very much, mr. chairman, ranking members and all of the members who are here today. as a computer scientist who specializes in the security of large-scale critical systems, i have had an interest in electronic voting technology since it was first introduced at large scale in the united states after the passage of the help america vote act in 2002. in particular, i led several of the teams commissioned in 2007 by the secretaries of state of california and ohio to evaluate the voting system products used in those states, as well as elsewhere in the nation. i also helped organize the defcon voting machine hacking village that was held this summer, at which these systems were made available, really, to a larger community for the first time -- for the first time ever. virtually every aspect of our election process, from voter registration to ballot creation to casting ballots and then to

counting and reporting election results, is today controlled in some way by software. and unfortunately, software is notoriously difficult to secure. especially in large-scale systems such as those used in voting. and the software used in elections is really no exception to this. it's difficult to overstate how vulnerable our voting infrastructure is -- that's in use in many states today is. particularly the compromise by a determined and well-funded adversary. for example, in 2007, our teams discovered exploitable vulnerabilities in virtually every voting system component that we examined, including back-end election management software as well as particularly dre voting terminals themselves. at this year's defcon event, we saw that many of the weaknesses

discovered in 2007 and known since then not only are still present in these systems but can be exploited quickly and easily by non-specialists who lack access these vulnerabilities are serious, but ultimately unsurpri unsurprising. the design of dre systems makes them particularly dependent on the task -- these would be under the best of circumstances an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. worse, as we saw in 2016, we largely underestimated the nature of the threat to the extent these systems are intended even to be secure.

they're designed against a traditional adversary who wants to cheat in an election and alter the results. but there's actually an even more serious adversary, a state actor who might seek to disrupt an election, cast doubt on the legitimacy of an outcome and cause a threat to our confidence in the legitimacy of our elected officials. i offer three recommendations. paperless voting machines should be opted out. secondly, statistical risk limiting audits should be used after every election to enable us to detect software failures in the back end systems and recover the true election

results if a problem is found. additional resources and training should be available to help defend systems against adversaries. thank you very much. >> thank you. my name is susan hennessy. i'm a fellow the brookings institution where i served as an attorney for the national security agency though my comments today reflect only my personal views. i'd like to begin by noting how extraordinary it is that a full year after the last presidential election there's still enduring

attention to the issue of election security. this representatives an opportunity to take long overdue steps toward securing elections. it is necessary to carefully define the issues and . information options certainly impact the broader context in which elections occur but they are distinct problems. the election security threat is not limited exclusively the changing vote counts. altering vote tallies is technically possible, however it remains difficult to do so on the scale necessary to predictably change the outcome. the probably actors with both incentives and technical capacity to carry out

sophisticated attacks are foreign governments which would need to avoid forensic detection. unfortunately u.s. adversaries have a far more achievable aim, to undermine the people and their government in the professi processes and selection of their leaders. congressionally driven solutions should account for international and domestic realities. internationally any number of u.s. adversaries including china north korea and iran possess the capabilities and interest to be of genuine concern. domestically a strong tradition

of federalism. despite constitutional authority, any federal overreach will meet resistance. i believe congress should adopt the following broad solutions. first, to direct the development of a national strategy for securing elections aimed at protecting systems, deterring bad actors and bolstering public confidence. second, provide resources to states. third, regulate election technology vendors which currently operate in limited and proprietary markets. fourth, lead the development of international norms against election interference. finally, congress must renew and sustain political commitment to the issue of election security and reestablish norms that have been broken in the way we

discuss election integrity and outcomes. thank you again for the opportunity to address you today. >> thank you. to start off will be the distinguished gentleman from alabama chairman palmer. >> thank you, mr. chairman. dr. blaze, what do you think is the biggest take away from the report? >> i think the biggest take away is both alarming and yet unsurprising. that is that vulnerabilities that we knew in principle were present are in fact exploitable in practice by nonspecialists. >> here's a question that i'm going to direct to you, but some others may want to respond to it. i'm very concerned about foreign influence on our elections, but

we through the last few years we've had hundreds if not thousands of reports of domestic voter fraud, whether it's voter registration, manipulation of ballots at the polling place. is that not also a threat to our elections? >> certainly the potential threats to our election are very broad and include everything from the voter registration process through the reporting of election results. my concern as a computer scientist and my expertise is to focus particularly on the technical vulnerabilities present in the systems as they're designed and built. what really every expert who's looked at these systems has found is that the attack surface of these machines leaves us particularly vulnerable to

foreign adversaries. >> not just foreign interference, but domestic as well. >> absolutely. >> someone with a political agenda could if they had the technical expertise could be as much a threat as a foreign entity? >> particularly someone interested in disrupting an election or casting doubt on the lenlt s len legitimacy. it's very difficult to disprove that tampering has occurred. ultimately that's a critical aspect of being able to have confidence in the result. >> one of the things that particularly concerns me is that you can be disconnected from wifi and still hack a machine because of the potential of

foreign manufactured parts within the machine. can you talk briefly about that? >> the design of dre systems makes their security dependent not just on the software in the systems but the hardware's ability to run that software correctly and protect against malicious software being loaded. an unfortunate property of the design of dre systems is that we've basically given them the hardest possible security task. any flaw in a dre machine's software or hardware can become an avenue of attack that potentially can be exploited. this is a very difficult thing to protect. >> do we need to go to back it up with paper ballots? because your fall back position is always to open the machine and count the ballots by hand.

>> that's right. precinct counted optical scan systems also depend on software but they have the particular safeguard that there is a paper artifact of the voter's true vote that can be used to determine the true election results. paper leless dre systems don't e that property. >> an inconvenience it might seem, for years and years and years we relied on paper ballots. it doesn't seem unreasonable that would be a great safeguard. i want to ask secretary shiedler and cortez about this. in alabama it's a mixture of voting machines. do you have that as well? >> louisiana is what we call a top down system.

we control all our machines. we warehouse our own machines. we do have a tape system of paper behind that that we can audit specifically with three different types of processes. it's never been unproven in a court of law. the only thing i want to add is that i welcome anyone from the academic side to look at any system. but let's put it in contents. the contents is an unfetters access to a machine that's given to them in a laboratory. let's talk about when you discover -- and i'm certain the professor if i give them unfettered access to a machine could figure out how to tinker with that machine or disrupt it. in louisiana, as most states,

the machines are not linked together. each one has a separate cartridge to itself. i guess the implication is that at the point of programming you could do something to that. i guess that's possible. and i wouldn't argue that point with someone much more learned on that subject than i. again in a top down system, that would mean someone in my office on a computer that is cleaned and scrubbed before an election and after would have to have access to that program and equipment in my office. the thing that's never mentioned in any of the hacking of a machine is after you figure out what you're going to do, has anyone yet ever sat down and discussed -- and i want to give you louisiana. in roughly a 36-hour period after we go into the machine, put a metal clamp like you have on your electrical box at your home with a serial number, figure out they're going to get

into 64 warehouses across my state, go into 10,200 machines undetected under camera, no one saw you, unscrew the back of the panel, do what you're going to do, put the panel back on and figure out how to put that metal clamp back on. the point i'm making is that a lot of these things we talk about are certainly possible, but i would suggest to you the amount of people you'd have to put in play to commit this fraud, it would be easier to do a stump speech and basically convince them to vote your way the legal way. there is no such thing as a perfect election. none. but one of the things that everybody has to understand is that all of these conversations

around this all deter voter participation, whether you believe it or not. >> i appreciate your answer, mr. secretary. a couple of things that i hope that we're sensitive to. one is that we don't want the federal government's involvement in this to infringe on the state's authority to conduct elections. the other is that we don't want to just be so focused on foreign interference that we don't give due diligence to addressing the domestic threat as well. i yield back. >> ranking member kelly. >> thank you, mr. chair. i wanted to ask about your agency's efforts dhs to notify 21 states about russian attacks on their state election systems. on october 20th, ranking member cummings and i sent a letter to dhs requesting copies of the notifications that you sent to 21 states that were attacked

before the last elections. i ask that this letter be made part of the official record for today's hearing. >> so ordered. >> in our letter we also ask for other materials including all documents relating to russian government backed attempts to hack state election systems. our letter asks for these documents by october 31st. but we got nothing. earlier this week the republican committee staff kindly agreed to help us make crystal clear to dhs that we wanted these documents before today's hearings so we could ask informed questions. dhs assured us they would respond. instead, dhs sent us an e-mail with a short script that dhs employees read over the phone to state officials. where are the rest of the documents that we requested? >> ma'am, i'm aware of the script that was provided. a lot of those notifications were over the phone.

they were not by e-mail. as to the rest of the documents, if you'll permit me to go back and i kmicommit to you we will e a more full some answer for you. but to the specifics of each document, i would have to go back and check on you. >> okay. i'm counting on you to deliver. the telephone script is only 13 sentences long. it does not refer to any specific state or attack. it's just a generic script that provides no additional information at all. i'm curious about where all the supporting documents that set forth the detail of the attack. the script does not help us do our job. you have not provided us with any information about the tools the attackers used or the tactics or any information on the results of your conversations with these states or the steps you took to follow up. it's been more than a month

since we asked for those documents. the majority of those documents -- can you tell us what the holdup is? >> i'm not aware of any particular holdup. the nature of the conversations we've had over the last frankly year with the states -- and i've had a number of conversations with secretary shedler. my team has regular conversations with commissioner cortez and a range of other state election officials. when you characterize these things as attacks, i think that's perhaps overstating what may have happened in the 21 states. the majority of the activity was simple scanning. scanning happens all the time. it's happening right now to a number of probably your websites. scanning is a regular activity across the web. i would not characterize that as an attack. it's a preparatory step. in terms of the scripts, there are two. one was provided to states that

wanted additional information if they were included in that batch of 21. and in the other script was for those states that were not in that batch of 21. so if that context was no provided i apologize and i'm happy to follow up that you get the information you're looking for. >> i hope we can work together to get these documents as soon as possible hopefully in one week because this hearing is supposed to be about cyber security of vote mag shechines. dhs is holding the very documents that would help our committee understand exactly how a state election system was attacked by the russians. i look forward to your cooperation in working with my chairman. i yield back. >> would you yield to me? >> of course.

>> mr. krebs, was there anything other than scanning done at those 21 locations? >> the vast majority of those 21 states were in fact scanning. there was a very small subset of those groups that there was a compromise on the voter registration side but not within the tallying. and then there was some additional -- a small group also that had some targeting. we actually winnowed it down. when we talk about that scanning, it was not also necessarily an election system that was scanned. that's additional context that we provided to our partners in the state election offices. what we saw in a lot of those cases was frankly drive-bys. driving down the street, you knock on the door, you don't know what's there. you may be looking to get into the neighbor's house looking for a key. that's what we saw, doing a drive-by, seeing what was there,

seeing if the door was locked. in a lot of the cases, there was adequate protections involved. >> you'll be able to provide us with the details of who was in addition to scanning and what the nature of that contact was? >> in terms of the states that were targeted or scanned, that's a difficult conversation because the information is provided to us based on trust. just like all our other relationships with the critical infrastructure community, the fact that we don't have statutory authorities to compel, we are engaging on a trust based relationship here. if i turn around and share information that tom provided to me outside of the scope of that confidential relationship, tom will never share with me again. this is going to come out of this relationship. the entire cyber security mission of the department of homeland security, it is a voluntary mission. that entire mission will be jeopardized if we divulge

confidential information. i am happy to provide conte contextualized information. i will help you have and facilitate that conversation. but today while we're sitting here, i also encourage you to ask my counterparts here from the states. >> mr. duncan, you're now recognized for five minutes. >> thank you so much, mr. chairman. i want to go back into this defcon conference from this past jewel.s tested over 25 machines. every piece of equipment in the voting village was effectively breached in some manner. participants with only limited tools and resources were quite

capable of undermining the confidentiali confidentiality, integrity and availability of these systems. back just a few months ago when they had the world wide cyber attacks, i don't often quote liberal magazines in here. but the editor of the american prospect magazine wrote this. he said in the huffington post, last week's cyber attack to produce the wrong lessons. the immediate take away seems to be that large institutions need much better cyber security systems but there's a much simpler and better solution, vital solutions that can't withstand the catastrophic risk of hacking should just go offline. hackers will always find ways to get into network systems. the fantasy of ever better cyber security is delusional. we could spend half the gdp on network security and someone will still find a way to breach

it. i know that we have addicted almost everyone in this country to the computers and the ipads and so forth. but i believe that cyber security is a multibillion dollar hoax. i'm sure what we're going to do, we're going to spend untold billions trying to come up with these systems that it's a fantasy. i think that the solution should be that we should go to the canadian system. i read several years ago that they had much smaller precincts, used on the average of 500 people per present acinct and te paper ballots. i know that's old fashioned but i think we're headed down the wrong path here. it's a path that i'm sure we're going to go on. i think that i agree with mr.

cutner and also the findings of this report. anybody want to say anything? >> i'll just say louisiana is not one of the 21 states. so you can scratch one off. >> i yield back. >> as we continue this discussion today, i cannot help but think about my own parents. my mother was a maid and my father was a janitor. they didn't have a lot that other people had, but they did have their votes. i cannot remember an election growing up where they did not cast their vote. they believed that it mattered and i would hope that every witness here today and every member of our subcommittees that regardless of if you were a

billionaire or a maid and a januaitor that we would all wor to protect the integrity of our voting system. doctor blaze, i want to go back to the report that we've talked quite a bit about how the systems were breached. could you please talk about the equipment used to breach the systems? was it sophisticated equipment or not and what kind of prior knowledge did the breachers have, if any at all? >> first of all, i like to point out the voting village was not intended to be a formal security assessment. it was an informal opportunity for people from a broader kmint re -- community to get access to actual voting equipment.

we got about five different models of voting machine and electronic poll book made them available. we made available the reports that had been published about these equipments in some cases. and that was it. we opened the doors on friday afternoon and people came in and any tools and equipment that they brought to that, they had to bring in themselves. there was no access to any proprietary information, no computer source code was available. just the equipment and electricity. >> and i know some or many have criticized or questioned the vulnerability of your ability to hack the systems because of the decentralized nature of the machines. do you agree that the decentralized nature of our

elections protects us from disruption or not so much? >> it's a double edged sword. the fact that we have highly hete heteroge heterogeneous systems is an important safeguard. but it cuts both ways. there's only a relatively limited number of different models of voting equipment used in the united states. an adversary, particularly a foreign state actor interested in disrupting our election process, has the luxury of being able to pick the weakest systems and need only find the most poorly administered and the most vulnerable systems to do sufficient damage. while it may make us more secure

against somebody with one stop shopping disrupting a national election, it actually increasing our vulnerability to some disruption happening, perhaps sufficient disruption that we don't have confidence in the outcome. >> we've heard a lot about the need for an audit. what type of audit do you believe would have to be performed on a paperless voting machine to verify the vote counts or verify that the vote counts had not been altered? >> paperless voting machines essentially are voting computers that are completely dependent on the software that was running on them at the time of the election. there is no fully reliable way to audit these kind of systems. we may get lucky and detect some forensic evidence, but ultimately the design of these systems precludes our ability to do a conclusive audit of the voter's true intent.

that's why paperless systems need to be phased out in favor of optical scan ballots that are backed by an artifact of the voter's true intent. >> with that, i yield back. >> mr. mitchell, you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. krebs, could you help me with one thing? on june 21st, secretary johnson appeared before the house committee on intelligence. he said, to my current knowledge, the russian did not through any cyber intuition alter ballots, ballot counts or reporting of election results. has anything changed since that point in time? >> not to my knowledge, no, sir. >> so you've received no information that the election

results, say at the federal level or the states you looked at, were altered in terms of counts or outcomes? >> no, sir. >> do you have any indication that any actor actually attempted to influence the vote counts or ballot activity? >> i believe that's a difference question. >> it is slightly. >> my understanding, the intelligence assessment is that the foreign adversary -- if i can back up, you said june. june of 2016? >> june 21st of 2017. >> former secretary johnson. >> yes. >> since then, any opportunity to influence -- is that your question? >> did you find any indication there's any effort to affect the ballot results since that point in time? >> no, sir. >> let me ask the group as a whole. i think the consensus is that the integrity of our elections is a national infrastructure

issue. anybody disagree about that? it's every bit as important as our roads, our ports, our waterways. we don't invest any federal money or guidelines on that. is anybody opposed to the idea that we go forward with some form of -- we invest to support that program with some kind of guidelines and states can choose whether they want to participate or not? >> i think best practices would be a better word to use. i think the states as a whole -- and i speak in a nonpartisan fashion -- would be adamantly against intrusion of the federal government. >> i agree. >> because it's in the constitution, but certainly best practices -- i think there are a lot of evidence of that with some of the entities that are out there today. we welcome additional ones. >> let me clarify for you, secretary. i wasn't suggests that we impose a system on the states. simply that we have a grant

program -- >> usually grant programs have strings attached. >> it says update your equipment so that it meets certain expectations of security. >> if it's voluntary and we can accept whatever strings come with it and you can turn it down, no problem. >> any feedback on that? >> yes, sir. i think resources for states to either purchase equipment or for those that have already moved to do other things to strengthen the security of elections would be greatly appreciated and something that we certainly support. >> it just occurred to me we do that for highways, ports, but yet we expect magically elections are going to happen with local resources with frankly minimal support. mr. duncan talked about would we not be better off with paper ballots. any feedback to going to a full paper system or some system

that's paper dependent? >> and you're referring to a paper system at a polo casl loc not a paper ballot. >> that is correct. >> would be one that would produce, even though you would vote on an electronic machine, it would price an actual paper ballot and cast ballot only at that point when you put it into a secure box. >> my concern with that is that if you produce a paper result after you put something into the machine, if in fact the machine is tampered with you could in fact end up confirming the tampered information. >> yes, sir. but we do have currently in the machines that i use that we can produce and audit back. even though i don't have a paper ballot of mr. mitchell, i can certainly use that in a court of law and we have been very effective with that.

one thing i want to mention in this whole conversation is the segregation of the vulnerability side of the registration or a poll book versus voting day. no state, no state votes online in cyberspace. how do you attack something in cyberspace that's not in cyberspace? there's one or two exceptions to that. alabama with military voting, alaska in some areas but a minuscule amount of votes. >> i understand and i think dr. blaze's suggestion that an optical scan system allows you to have the original source document that says voter number 02 voted this way so that in fact you don't depend on the system to generate it. are you all aware of what happened in the michigan many terms of the federal election that 60% of the precincts in city of detroit couldn't do a recount because the numbers

didn't match? >> no, sir, i'm not aware. >> there were more voters that voted -- more votes counted than there were voters. and there were 328 listed as voting but the ballots weren't listed in the count. 60% of the precincts weren't auditable. i think something we need to encourage the states to do is have an audit system where we raise these issues. if in fact we need to do a recount, it was not fopossible do within the city and several other jurisdictions. i yield back.

>> the distinguished gentleman from the state of missouri. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank the witnesses for your testimony today. last june the vice chair of the presidential advisory commission on election integrity made an extraordinary request of allstate election directors to transmit to the white house the confidential information and voting history of all americans living in their state. mr. -- dr. blaze, please explain the data security issues with transmitting sensitive voter data over e-mail. >> well, i'm not familiar with

the precise nature of the request. but as you've described it, certainly sending that kind of information over an ordinary, unencrypted e-mail system would be fraught with many security and privacy issues. >> if confidential voter data were revealed due to insecure transmission, could that provide means to infiltrate state election systems? >> yes. that sort of information could potentially be quite valuable to an adversary interested in targeting a particular polling places or individuals or areas. so information about historical voting patterns and about individual registered voters can be quite sensitive. >> i see. i understand your states did not comply with mr. coback's

request. could you explain why? >> that is correct. virginia did not provide any data that was requested from the commission. we had significant concerns related to the sweeping nature of the request. we spent a lot of effort and resources protecting our voters' data. to take that and turn it over to a commission with no sense of what it was going to be utilized for, how it was going to be stored and maintained raised significant concerns for us, so we declined to provide anything whatsoever. >> we likewise refuse that. but i do want to clarify one thing that has been lost in this whole debate and why my colleague did not early on clarify his position. i watched him for four days on national news networks.

to produce that under president obama's administration through the department of justice in a lawsuit from several entities. i refused president obama and i have refused president trump so i am consistent.

>> that brings me to another question for you and mr. cortez. are you aware of any cases of voter impersonation in your state? mr. cortez, you can take it first. >> i'm not aware of any instances of voter impersonation taking place in virginia, no. >> so no pending cases or anything like that. >> not that we're aware of, sir. >> no, sir we would be tn't in louisiana. >> don't you think it's a little difficult to get enough voters to show up, let alone someone showing up and impersonating someone else? >> well, i think the real issue is -- and again we separate the

distinctions in the election system. some states do a better job than others. i know our current president has alluded to 3-5 million voters. he's referring to 3-5 million voters on a registration list. it may be that. it may be more. it may be less. >> you and i know people have same names. >> yes, sir. >> that shouldn't disqualify them. >> no. but identifying information like mother's maiden name, social security number, date of birth so that we can distinguish those issues. >> i thank you all for our engagement and my time is up. >> just a point of clarification, that you did have reports of illegal voting in both your states.

in virginia you had over 1800 illegals that were reported voting, is that correct, commissioner cortez? >> mr. chairman, i asked about voter impersonation. someone else showing up and staying they're someone other than who they are. >> thank you. >> and that's what the photo id laws are all about. >> right. >> i believe you asked about our reports recording illegal voter -- we don't agree with neither the findings of the report or frankly how the analysis was done. there are a lot of problems in there that we've indicated publicly in terms of proving or identifying individuals that are citizens or not on the voter rolls as exceptionally difficult and the processes that we have in place in virginia i think capture and prevent anybody from

voting illegally or improperly. so the report you're referring to i think was very faulty in its analysis and really took information and made sweeping general statements without taking into account the reality despite our best efforts to communicate with the report authors about it. >> thank you. >> in louisiana, it's either hebert or hebert. the chair recognizes the gentleman from california. >> i want to thank the chair and all the people who are testifying in front of us today. and for the secretary, i both agree with you but maybe we have a small difference of opinion. the importance of the integrity of the voting process is obviously supreme for all of us sitting in this room, but raising legitimate concerns about the integrity of that, making sure that we are pursuing best practices in a world that's

changing dramatically i think is what we're all concerned with. in that regard, i'm hearing two sort of versions of things here from the panel. ms. hennessy, i got a quote from michael vickers who said, this attack is really the political equivalent of 9/11, it is deadly serious to the attacks we have seen against the united states and western democracy. we want to make sure in congress that we're doing everything to make sure we're ahead of it and questioning our existing system. so you made a number of suggestions. first off, is there any doubt in your research that these hacks are attributable to russia, these significant hacks? >> certainly the intelligence community assessment of the 2016

election assesses that with high confidence that is supported by a large body of public data and there is no public information that would counter or refute that conclusion. >> keeping in mind that we're talking about in this hearing the title is cyber security of votie ining machines and we've lots of activity going out there that hopefully we'll discuss further in congress vis-a-vis the things we're learning about social media and data collection. but for this purpose, are we ahead of the game in your research? i read where the french and other western democracies are being much more aggressive. from your research, is the united states doing everything we can compared to other international democracies who are aware of the problem? >> i think the short answer is no. there are two categories in which we can think about the u.s. response. what we've been talking today can broadly be categorized as deterrents by denial, setting

security standards that make it difficult or impossible for the adversary to achieve their goals. dr. blaze and others have pretty well arctic laticulated the inefficiencies. there's also a broader concept of deterrence. deterrence through setting international norms, response options. we are also not seeing sufficient buy-in frankly from the top at this point to push those efforts forward in order to get the international community both to agree on the seriousness of what occurred and also to impose measures including those passed by congress to ensure that it doesn't happen again. >> in that sort of vein, your response to ms. kelly seems somewhere in between. we know the uniqueness of the relationship as you have described it between states rights and the ability of them to not feel like we're imposing

on them. however, you've also talked about best practices and you're in a position to be able to acquire those best practices. ms. kelly asked you if you would give us those documents. it seems like you're equivocating. you said in order to have a relationship with the states, it's based on trust. but forgive me for inferring from that there's a lack of trust in giving those documents to congress. in a federal election it strikes me that congress and the federal government has a requirement to make sure that we are pursuing best practices in partnership with the states not overruling them. but if congress asks for documents including minority party, strikes me you should give that to us without comment. >> if i may, i'd like to clarify to the ranking member. the information that i would provide no question best practices. i've got them right here. best practices are just fine to

share. what we're talking about is the trusted information that's shared on the nature of what may have been a scam or a compromise. that's the information. we had no question of the oversight interests of the committee, absolutely no question there. the balance we have is the operational mission of the department in partnership with our state and local partners. >> i take that as we'll receive the documents soon. so thank you. >> yes, sir. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> the saecurity of elections systems are bedrock. they need to know for certain that their votes are counted fairly. my home state of illinois was

one of 21 states that the department of homeland security informed us was targeted by hackers in june of 2016. the nsa reported that personal files for over 90,000 illinois voters were illegally downloaded by russian hackers. mr. krebs, do you have any reason to dispute the nsa's findings that russian affiliated entities were behind the recent election data breaches? >> i'm unfortunately not able to comment on that specific disclosure. i unfortunately would have to defer to the nsa. >> but do you have any reason to believe they're incorrect about that? >> i'm not certain of the nature of the report you're discussing. i unfortunately would have to again defer to the nsa to comment specifically on the details. >> you defer to the nsa because they are expert in this particular matter and they have the intelligence and the ability

to ascertain whether these data breaches occurred ond who w red the source of these data breaches. >> again, i would defer to the nsa. >> sure. and you're correct to defer to them. while the implication of russia's attack on one of our election systems are concerning, what i find even more disturbing is that it was part of a broader international campaign to undermine western democracies such as the 2017 elections in france and germany as well as recent elections in the u.k. and other nato countries. mr. krebs, again i'd like to ask you a follow-up question. can you assure me that dhs is working with our allies in the broader international community, the intelligence community to develop a coordinated response to these incursions? >> i can speak to is the nature of the department of homeland

security -- we reached out to the french cert keeping in mind that my responsibilities are two things, invest sharing and technical support on a voluntary basis. in terms of a broader strategy for pushing back, i'd have to defer to the agency or the white house on that. >> earlier this month, the president said that he took vladimir putin at his word that he did not interfere and russia did not interfere in the 2016 election. quote unquote, he said, every time he sees me he says, i didn't do that, and i believe -- i really believe that when he tells me that, he means it, quote, unquote. mr. krebs, just a few minutes ago you couldn't point to any reason or dispute, you have no

reason to believe that the nsa's conclusions with regard to russian hacking were inaccurate or incorrect. you defer to the nsa's conclusions. are you saying that the president is somehow wrong to take putin at his word as opposed to deferring to the nsa's conclusions on this particular topic? >> i'd like to clarify one thing real quick. i have said all along that i agree with the intelligence community's assessment that the russians attempted to interfere with our elections. >> good. >> what you spoke about earlier was some report attributed to the nsa about a specific state. that is what i deferred to the nsa on. i am unable to comment on that. i am focused on information sharing, technical assistance and support to the state and locals. we are in a support role.

>> let me reclaim some of my time here. you answered the question correctly in my view, which is you agree that the russians did interfere in our 2016 election or you at least agree with the intelligence community, which knows what it's talking about that the russians did interfere in our 2016 election. are you saying that the president is wrong to disagree with that conclusion and instead take the word of vladimir putin that russia did not interfere in our elections? >> no, sir. i said i agree with the assessment of the intelligence community on what happened in 2016. >> do you agree with the president that in his assessment that vladimir putin did not actually interfere in our election? >> sir, i was not privy to the conversation. look, i'm focused on helping the state and local governments for next year. every one of us recognize there's a threat whether it's from russia, china, north korea or iran. >> you're not answering the

question. you don't have to be privy to that conversation to be able to answer the question. do you agree with his assessment that russia did not interfere in our elections? >> sir, again, i'll point back to last year's intelligence assessment. >> i'll take that as a nonanswer. >> the share notes the presence of our colleague, the gentlewoman from hawaii ms. gabbard. i ask she be allowed to fully participate in today's discussion. it's my pleasure to recognize the gentlewoman from the great state of hawaii. >> i thank the chairman for holding this important hearing and for all the witnesses. i apologize for missing the first part of the hearing, but i'm sure a number of these topics have been discussed, but i think they all boil down to the immediate task at hand which is seeing what actions can and

should be taken to make sure that our elections are protected. for our democracy to work, the american people need to have faith and trust that the votes that they cast will actually be counted. this is why making sure that our elections infrastructure is impenetrable is essential. and that's the task before us here in congress and before our elections officials. mr. cortez, i'd love to hear your insights regarding virginia's decision to switch from direct recording electronic voting machines to paper ballots. what were any obstacles that you found in implementing that change and did you see voter confidence rise once that change was made? >> in terms of our switch over to paper, i think the biggest obstacle that we faced was timing and the proximity to the election

we have staid wide elections every year so we always have very little time to implement changes. i think in this particular round of desertification subsequent to the reporting that came out, the biggest challenges we faced were getting equipment to our state i.t. agency for them to test and provide us with their assessment. when it came down to the final decision about what to do with the equipment, our biggest consideration was if we had an issue -- there were some issues reported on election day, would we have the confidence to go out and tell our voters that the results from the machines were accurate and that we could confirm that? i think ultimately we determined in consultation with our wonderful staff at the state i.t. agency that we wouldn't be in a position to do that with the equipment we were using. without that independent verification of the paper ballot, there would be no way for us to do that. i think that ultimately was the

moment where desertification moved forward and we decided to have paper ballots statewide for this past november. our local election officials had less than 60 days before the election, less than two weeks before the start of absentee voting to implement equipment. they did a phenomenal job in working with us and in terms of the voting system vendors to get equipment deployed, get ballots printed, do training and voter education all within that window. they pulled it off successfully. i give a lot of credit to our local election officials across the state for being able to do that. >> ms. hennessy i just came in here. the last part of your previous statement about making sure that -- i think you used the word impossible, making it so

that our elections infrastructure is impossible to hack. noting the report that came out and the fact that it states by the end of dprconference, every electric voting machine was breached in some manner. would the implementation of voting machines across the country with some form of an auditable paper record create that impossibility? >> to clarify, i was referring to impossible to hack as a goal of sort of the deterrence by denial model. i don't know that's achievablch. there's a vast improvement that can be made. certainly we should want to move to a place in which systems are both auditable and also audited. not just to think about how do we ensure that the built-in resiliency model so that in the event there is some form of compromise, some reason to doubt

the outcomes, we actually have a system in place -- >> a becoackup. >> right. and that we periodically take those checks. an auditable system is meaningless if we don't undertake the audit. >> this is such an important point. mr. cortez, your testimony is critical to this in answering that question of how do we ensure the confidence that you can answer your voters saying that the election results are accurate. i'm working on legislation that will essentially ensure that whatever the systems the states choose to gluz their elections, obviously that is the freedom of the states to do that, that there be some form of backup in place, a paper verified backup to ensure exactly that question and that we can all answer with confidence to voters that the election results are as a result of the votes they cast. i thank you all for being here today. thank you, mr. chairman.

>> going to now recognize myself for some time. first off, correct me if happy about that. in dr. blaze and miss hennessey's statements, they have talked about what i would characterize as old-school ballot stuffing, as one threat. but what a nation-state actor or an intelligence service would try to do, discredit an election, is another threat. and mr. schedler, secretary schedler, the first question to you, as the secretary of state from louisiana. it's hard to manipulate the

votes in an election in your state. is that correct? commissioner cortes, would you agree? not for louisiana but virginia. >> yes, mr. chairman. >> and dr. blaze and ms. hennessey, is it still hard to stuff the ballot electronically in many of these states? >> i think it's very difficult. i think the difficulty that we have is that it's very difficult to prove that it hasn't happened. >> sure. sure. it's a trust issue. but when it comes to physically because of the decentralization, because many of the vote tabulation machines are not connected to the internet, are not connected to one another, because of the physical security precautions taken around the physical machines that secretary schedler talked about and many of the best practices that mr. krebs and his organization have promoted, it makes it hard.

but the use case that i am worried about is the credibility of our elections. and not being able to prove something is one of those things. and for our two secretaries of state, would you agree that the undermining of trust in our voting, in our elections, is a bad thing and something we should try to fight against? mr. schedler first. >> microphone please, sir. >> in all due respect, i mean, what has happened -- and i think any secretary of state that would address you in all honesty is, is since the last presidential election and all the rhetoric and all the committee reports and all of the things that are going around this, if you don't think that has had a tremendously negative feeling to voters, we see it. i just got out of an election for the mayor of new orleans,

open seat, that the -- had a 32% voter turnout in orleans parish and we had a state-wide election for state treasurer. when i look at the state-wide overall voter turnout, 12.5%. that's absurd in this country. i am not going to sit here. one of my most frequently asked questions is why, secretary schedler. i could give you a litany of ten or 15 things. one of them i know you all wouldn't want to hear. but for certain, the rhetoric that has gone around from this past election has tremendously deterred voter confidence. and it's a balancing act for a guy like me, and -- well, mr. cortes, because we're up here trying to defend the integrity of a system. >> for sure. >> and yet it's being torn down as i speak. >> right. that's one of the reasons to have this hearing. >> yes, sir. i am respectful of that. >> to get smart folks in a dispassionate way talking about

the realities and then how can we identify certain things that we can do together in a way to ensure that that trust is there so that we get more than 12%. now, i would also say that a -- i was at a panel in south by southwest with a bunch of youtube stars, and i didn't know any of them, but when you added all their fans together, it was almost a billion. the woman who does digital -- digital stuff with the rock said if a movie performs poorly at a -- at the box office, do you blame moviegoers or do you blame the movie? and i think in this case a lot of times we want to blame -- we want to blame voters when we're not providing the voters something for them to come out and purchase by pulling a lever. so that is an aside.

mr. cortes, was there any funny business in your elections in virginia a couple of weeks ago? >> mr. chairman, i think we had a -- >> that's a technical term, too, by the way, funny business. >> i believe we had a very successful election in virginia a couple of weeks ago. we actually -- i am sorry to hear that you all had a lower turnout in your statewide. we had record turnout in our statewide race for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general as well as the house of delegates. it was a very successful -- we did not receive any complaints related to voting equipment, which was a first in the time that i have been there. we had a very successful day across the commonwealth, very few issues. you always get the occasional place where they have delivered equipment to the wrong place and they may open a couple of minutes late, but we had no major systemic issues that took place. >> touche. to virginia. mr. krebs, some specific

questions. how many cyber hygiene services over the internet for internet-facing systems can your organization do in a calendar year? i realize that's a difficult -- you can ballpark it for us. >> that's tough because, frankly, engineering-wise it's -- i don't want to say infinity, but it's, frankly, it's very, very scaleable. >> so you are not concerned about the over 10,000 voting jurisdictions requesting that particular service that you feel like you will be able to meet the need -- >> no, sir. i think the challenge would be intake. signing up the legal agreement side. figuring out the ip ranges and deploying. >> how many risk and vulnerability assessments can you do in a calendar year? >> that is a different question. risk a vulnerability assessments are time and manpower limited. in terms of the number on a

given year, it would be -- let me put it this way. to do one risk and vulnerability assessment it takes two weeks. a week on site and a week report drafting. what we are doing in the meantime -- >> you have about 130 people who are able to do this function? >> i would get back to you on the specific numbers on the teams, but we are manpower limited there. the reason for that, and you just made my job a little bit harder with the mgt act. but this all comes out of the same pile of assessments as federal i.t., the high value assets. so if we're going to do modernization activities, congratulations, but that's going to make my job a little bit tougher. that's also the critical infrastructure community. all in one loop. what that designation did for the election sub sector is allowed me to reprioritize. i am now able to put requests up at the top of the list. we completed an rva last week. i reviewed the product this week earlier and it's an impressive

document. i'd like to do more. we're going to continue to preoratize upon requests. these are voluntary products but keeping in mind that a number of states have their own resources or private sector resources. we are not looking to serve for every single state, but we are looking to re-prioritize to address. >> the next question is for secretary schedler, commissioner cortes and mr. krebs and maybe secretary schedler, you take the first swing at this. and this is probably better -- this question -- i am asking you of this as your former hat at nass. and what role exactly does nist and the hava standards board play? and maybe mr. krebs, if you're more appropriate to answer that question, i'll leave it up to you all.

>> it certainly assists us in certification issues and some of the outlier issues that we have, but i think it's more the collective whole of nass, whether it be with the election commission, nist or any of us. we collaboratively all work together, we share information through our executive director ms. reynolds here in washington. i think it's a good thing. i wouldn't want to necessarily disband that. but i think it's more looking at it as a collective whole, and our new partners in homeland security. i alluded that we were very much against critical infrastructure. we are in it. we are in a cooperative spirit, we are trying to get our security clearances done at this time and we're going to continue that. >> secretary, am i hearing dhs is not trying to take over? >> i don't think so. not yet. i'll give you a call. >> how is -- please do. please do. how -- are folks comfortable with the security clearance

process? >> yes. >> i know we are trying to get every secretary of state and i believe two additional folks -- >> yes. >> -- and your indication is that folks are happy with that process and how it's going. >> yes. we are. that's the first good step that we can share some information. >> commissioner cortes, do you have any information to disagree with that? >> mr. chairman, i think, from our perspective in virginia, having had a statewide election, we had an opportunity to work very closely with dhs throughout the year, preparation for that, and really figuring out how to leverage the federal resource offerings along with what our state i.t. agency provides as well as our -- the virginia national guard. and so we have worked very collaboratively with them. i think the creation of the coordinating council, i think will be exceptionally helpful going forward. when it comes to eac and nist, eac's role in this has been -- hasn't been as highlighted as i think it should be. i think they've been critical in

opening up the dialogue between dhs and the elections community as well as facilitating a lot of the meetings and interactions that have taken place. so they have been exceptionally helpful there. when it comes to nist, i think for us and i think going forward, you know, what we need to look at is the nist cybersecurity framework is something that our state i.t. standards are premised on and that we utilize for our voting equipment security and electronic poll book security. those standards being there are very helpful to us and provides a level of expertise and things to look for and test against that we would not, you know, with our state resources, be able to recreate on our own. so everybody has been exceptionally helpful. >> that is very helpful feedback. mr. krebs, kudos to you for your leadership in that process. and maybe to anybody at this panel, why does eac have $300 million in unspent funds?

anybody have any -- none of you all sit at eac? would anybody like to offer -- >> they must have some of the hava dollars that we need. >> that's what we are trying to get at, is there an opportunity there to reprogram some of those funds to help some of the municipalities that need to upgrade some of their systems. >> yes, sir. that was a tongue-in-cheek comment. i am on their advisory commission. i truly don't know. >> can you hit the button? >> yes, sir. i do not know what that balance is. i mean, i just -- certainly something to look at. i think we've got to look at any and all avenues of funding because we do need assistance in the state. i can assure you. just like federal government, states are in budgetary issues. i know certainly louisiana is and at this critical point of trying to replace equipment because of some of the subject matter we're talking about here,

we are scrambling to find a way to do that. i am getting ready to go out on rfp. >> mr. krebs, comments? >> i think what we're talking about now and i wish matt masterton, chairman of the eac was here. i met with him yesterday. i think he's in iowa right now doing some training. eac has been a critical partner. when dhs got into this game last year, it was before my time, it was a brave new world. didn't have relationships. eac was critical in bridging the gap and developing relationships with louisiana, virginia and the rest of the states. what i -- nist is also a partner. i think dr. blaze would agree that nist is probably reputationally unmatched in terms of cybersecurity, cryptography excellence. they are a critical partner in standards development going forward. then on the information sharing piece, one last thing. i want to touch on the classified and the clearances piece.

clearances, as has been pointed out, clearances in the sharing of classified information is important. we are, in the meantime, focusing on that declassification effort. it is critically important that we speed up that process to get it out. tear lines, all that good stuff. in the meantime, when something truly sensitive comes in and someone doesn't have the clearance but needs to see a piece of information. i have the capability to authorize one day read-ins. we have a suite of tools and services and capabilities to make sure the partners have the information they need. >> that's why dhs is the belly button for information sharing with municipalities and the private sector because i believe you're the only organization that can truly achieve need to share versus need to know and continuing down that line of support. dr. blaze, when it comes to the kinds of systems, the actual vote tabulation machines and you have talked a lot about the scan, you know, version, are --

are -- one of the concerns i have about some of the legislation that's being discussed is talking specifically about a type of machine versus an outcome. and is it fair to say that, based on your research and your activity, that you are saying there needs to be an artifact that can be checked in the case that a system is -- is suspected of compromise? >> that's correct. the two important properties are, first, that there be a paper artifact of the voter. optical scan is an example. a system that does that. that's probably the state of the art technology right now. the second property is that we have a mechanism for detecting compromise of the software that tabulates votes. and that's the risk limiting audit feature. put together those achieve or

approach what we call strong software independence, which means that, even if the software is compromised we still can learn the true outcome of the election. >> ms. hennessey, do you have anything to add to that or disagree with? >> i would agree with everything dr. blaze said. >> thank you. my last question, chairman palmer and ranking member kelly, thank you for the indulgence, is slightly outside of the bounds of the hearing topic today. but as we talk about the importance of protecting our voting systems and trying to fight this effort to erode trust in our national institutions, disinformation is the tool that hostile intelligence services are going to continue to use against us. and i would just welcome and

really, secretary schedler and commissioner cortes, what is the role of states in helping to combat disinformation specifically when it comes around election time? and dr. blaze, ms. hennessey, i would welcome your thoughts on this. and then, mr. krebs, i am going to give you 30 seconds in which to say whatever you want to say. secretary schedler. >> i mean, it's the old fashioned way. you get out there and you communicate with people, you get on the air waves, radio, tv and in the newspaper and you combat some of this. because i will be honest with you. i had an individual just this morning that called me or, excuse me, texted me from the previous election. and he was convinced that our machines were connected to the school internet system, because i guess it was plugged into a plug. i don't know. but i mean, it's those types of things, and in the every real day of secretary of state or election official across the

country that we combat. it's just part of the job. i will tell you it has become on steroids in the last 24 months. >> as a member of congress, i would say i understand those concerns. >> yes, sir. >> thank you, sir. >> yeah. >> commissioner cortes. >> mr. chairman, i think it's really about being open and transparent in the process and having, you know, processes in place and working as election officials to make sure voter are comfortable with the process and getting out there and combatting any misinformation about how the process works. i think our focus on transparency and doing things like post-election audits, having equipment that has some sort of verifiable backup, these are all things we can do to provide voters assurance that they can actually see and observe and not just tell them everything is okay. we are, i think, at a stage with our elections processes where people need to be able to understand what steps we are

taking and how we are doing, you know, to make sure that things are okay, to make sure that their voting experience is a good one and that their votes are counted accurately. >> good copy. dr. blaze. >> i think the most important thing from a technology perspective is that the voting technology allow us to refute those who say that the election was tampered with. unfortunately, many of the systems in use today, even if they haven't been tampered with, don't -- aren't designed in a way that allows us to do that. i look forward to seeing a shift toward technologies that are more robust and that allow us to do meaningful recounts. >> ms. hennessey. >> to bolster credible institutions now. and so to not -- to sort of resist any temptations of partisanship so that there are those enduring, credible voices. the closer we get to the actual election date the higher the risk of politicization infecting

that process becomes, which increases the importance of setting neutral standards now, both for the types of information that will be shared and also for response options. >> thank you. final words, mr. krebs? >> yes, sir. i think my four co-panelists said it quite well. a key tenet of countering information operations is shining a light on the activity. what we have ahead of us and we were just talking about it before the hearing today, we have coordination work we need to do in response playing, develop a playbook. if something pops up on social media, twitter, whatever it is, we get the call, we can work to refute the information and push it out through a clear, trusted channel to the american people so they can retain confidence in our election systems. >> i want to thank all of you all for helping to shine a light on the activities that our states and the federal government is doing to ensure that the american people can have the trust in their elections. that's what makes this country great is when we are faced with

adversity we all do pull together. and i appreciate you all appearing before us today and the flexibility in your travel schedules. the hearing record will remain open for two weeks for any member to submit a written opening statement or questions for the record. if there is no further business, without objection, the subcommittees stand adjourned. [ gavel ]

the senate is working on the gop tax reform bill with

amendment debate and votes. and the final passage vote expected later. watch live on c-span2. sunday, live on in depth, professors cornel west and robert george will be our guests. >> any time i get a chance to be in dialogue with professor george, we go back now 13 years. we revel in each other's humanity. we share a fundamental commitment to the mind and the world of ideas. we had a chance to teach and lecture around the country. when i see him, i don't see him first and foremost as a conservative thinker, catholic philosopher, one of the major political figures of our day. i see him as my brother. i see him as my friend. and someone who has a right to be wrong. [ laughter ] >> if you're going to work together in conversation, even

debate, to get at the truth, the people involved in the conversation first have to recognize that they are fallible, frail, fallen human beings. they have to recognize that they could be wrong. each one has to recognize, even about my most cherished believes, i could be wrong. and if in fact one has that attitude and understanding, not in a merely notional way, but in a deeply appropriated way, then one will begin to develop a virtue that is indispensable for truth seeking. >> among the books mr. west has written are "race matters" and "brother west." mr. george's books include "making men moral" and "conscience and its enemies." during our live three-hour conversation, we'll take your calls, tweets, and facebook questions. watch in depth with cornel west and robert george live sunday

from noon to 3:00 p.m. eastern on book tv on c-span2. earlier this week, the senate banking committee held a confirmation hearing for federal reserve chair nominee jerome powell. mr. powell answered questions on his overall monetary philosophy and the fed's forthcoming meeting. and the committee will come to order for the hearing. this morning, we will consider the nomination of the honorable jerome or jay powell to be chairman of the board of governors of the federal reserve system. governor powell, welcome, and congratulations on your nomination. i see friends and family behind you. and i welcome them here today as well. governor powell has had an accomplished career in financial services.