this is hosted by the center for american progress.

but after good afternoon everyone. i am thrilled to have you all here for the most important discussions we are going to have this year which is on the voting integrity and a system in which we all rely on for our democracy. in fact, the topic of today's address is about the trust we have in the voting system which is central and fundamental to everything that we rely on for the government. government. ouon the system and be in fear election is under assault. it sounds extreme but it is true despite the clear statements

from the leaders on both sides of the aisle that russia attempted to interfere, president trump continues to dismiss such evidence as fake news. this underscores that now more than ever before protecting the security is a matter of national security and the states stand on the front lines. the midterms are over me nine months away and the presidential elections are fast approaching. if we want to safeguard from attacks, we must understand the steps that every state must take to strengthen their infrastructure. that's why today's cap is proud to report the current state of security in all 50 states along with the district of columbia. our report covers several

categories of best practices including paper ballots, minimum cyber security standards for the voter registration systems and post election audits and it concludes while many have taken strides that we acknowledge him every state remains vulnerable. 23 states got a c. and received either a d. or an f.. so, we have a lot of work to do to protect our democracy. the report also recognizes the hard work of state and local officials despite significant constraints in funding personality and technology. we hope this report will fuel the conversation around the vital importance of security and to provide local leaders the resources they need. just consider this one simple

fact. congress can supply the funding needed to modernize and conduct detailed threat assessments. i hope leaders from both parties will embrace the urgenc increasf making greater investments in the infrastructure. states need help right now. you can download a full version of the website, and i want to say a special shout out to the people that have been working on this for many months, danielle, elizabeth kennedy and daniel for their outstanding work. today we are thrilled to welcome a lineup of guests to help amplify and discuss the findings. and as you notice i'm thrilled i will be sitting down with the homeland security j. johnson former secretary at the front of the obama administration effort

to for infiltrating and later my colleague will lead a panel. now i have a great honor of introducing the keynote speaker, senator amy klobuchar. senator klobuchar has led us on so many vital issues she's cosponsored important elections with senator langford and we are happy to have her here to talk about why it's important for congress to act and why this issue should be at the forefront of all of our conversations in the democracy. senator klobuchar?

further dreamers and the hope that we can stop people from being deported is a pretty good goal. and also for the work that you've done it's good to see secretary johnson i began my day with the portrait unveiling. i didn't want to believe honestly. they did a beautiful job and now i see secretary johnson who i enjoyed working with and admired. i read an interview from last week where on the topic he said 2016 is a wake-up call and before the democracy is attacked again. so i want to thank him for 15 seconds and go from there. this comes from my state. we are known as a good

government state and we are proud of our election laws. from minnesota we like to be above average. it's the election day registration and have been cuttinhas beencutting edge in as and we have a lot of voter turnout in the country in 2016, 81% of the registered voters turned out as you could imagine that. but i did with senator lindsey graham is to make sure that it isn't a democratic or republican

issue. this isn't a partisan issue, it is about america. so, when we learn what happened in 2016, that is un-american to have this russian interference which is a minnesota nice term for criminal activity. since we know that the right to free and fair elections is the heart of america is when you leave today remember that simple concept. walker revealed himself with his one-party and candidate and the next time it's going to hit the other one. think of it in the bath blends and then number 266. that is the number of days left before the 2,018th election. a little more than nine months and we still cannot ensure american that they are secure.

it is unacceptable and at this point now it is on us. we know what happened in 2016. intelligence reports made clear that used covert cyber attacks come as the march, harmful propaganda and they did. the department confirms russia launched cyber attacks against at least 21 state elections. we learned of a targeted at the officials into the american voting software company and in e voting systems in illinois in the information on the thousands oof the thousandsof voters thaty exposed. the national security officials sounded the alarm and they are saying that this is just the beginning. it's not just former obama administration officials. last week the secretary said that russia is already trying to influence the u.s. midterm

elections. the cia director said that he has every expectation that russia will target the u.s. midterm elections. former president george bush said they made a project of turning americans against each other and that gets to the divisiveness so many of the posts that you saw on social media. media. former directo director of natil intelligence james clapper said i believe now russia is emboldened to continue subject is in the future both here and around the world and to do so even more intensely. i could go on and on but we all understand again my point that current security officials that are appointed by you an handworr the trump administration. 36 days from now, the states that the russians packed into in

2016 will hold a primary for the midterm election. so why haven't we acted? this people in opposite corners of the boxing ring but in fact there doesn't seem to be the whale and it has to come from the people that voted in the election so here are six solutions and all of them have bipartisan support. first, state steve need supporto protect the systems. we have a secretary of state or official heads here from virginia and colorado and they will tell you this. right now there are more than 40 states that rely on the system that are at least 10-years-old. i'm not telling any secrets here. the russians know this. think about this, ten years ago we were using flip phones. some senators still do, chuck schumer, but now we have

smartphones that we update regularly. we need to protect ourselves and this was in a report issued by the center for american progress. that is why senator langford and i along with terres and lindsey graham introduced this bill the secure elections act that will help bring the resources. in this amount of money it's 3% of the cost of one single aircraft carrier. and also, it makes clear that the federal homeland security officials can share secure information with state election officials and that is what was thrown up in the face of

officials when they were not able to access the data because they were one of the first states that were hacked. so it creates a process and allows that to happen, and then the final thing is that it creates some requirements for best practices for auditing. if you have a number of states that don't have backup paper ballots, you have no way to check if there is a hack. so that is the first thing, passed a bill like this and there's no reason it couldn't be done in the omnibus coming up in a few weeks. second, we need reliable measures in place when something goes wrong, and that is my third point. each state administers its own elections. it is a strength to have multiple states using multiple systems because it is harder to hack in to them. however it also makes it so you might have one that is weak and doesn't have enough to protect

it. we saw this in 2016. they attempted to bridge the system of many states bu that we are only successful in one. many do not have reliable auditing procedures in place. as you know, you are not able to check when something goes wrong. i think there's less than a dozen states were something like that that don't have the backup paper ballots. but that is something we have to fix. ..

third dramatic dramatic moment were free at the picture of the woman who was in an ad with a text and the text was saying you could vote for hillary clinton by simply taxing this number and you didn't have to go to the polls. that's criminal. those were ads were showing up on people's social media feeds. one example of this that i use at home because it's sometimes all these political ads. i heard this first-hand when i was at the munich security conference with senator mccain and we are in the are in a room with a norwegian prime minister. she told the story about how russia was getting angry at norway because they have been putting funding into their military at a higher pace. so russia started running fake news stories on russian tv about our way. one of the things they kept emphasizing was norway's economy had completely changed and that they had no agriculture and they

didn't even have fruits or vegetables to give to their people or the prime minister of norway told us the story that all of these well-meaning russians who would watch this on tv and who had friends or relatives of norway came over to visit them with bags and bags of cucumbers and apples inferred because they believed the story that there were no fruits and vegetables in our way. that's just an example of how convincing these ads can be. you can imagine how convincing they are in a political context. when in fact in the last election in 2016, $1.4 billion was spent on social media and they expect that that's a triple to go into the range of 4 billion, $5 billion. we have no idea but it's a place where the wild west governance. there are no requirements right now for disclaimers and there are no disclaimers for disclosures. that's why i introduced and i was so pleased that senator

mccain company wants -- cosponsored with me the honest ads act. all it does is it takes the rules that are in place for print, for radio and tv and puts them in place for social media ads. we know this won't solve everything because this is about paid ads but there's absolutely no excuse that we would have the same rules applied when all this money is migrating over to social media. the way this would work right now is that people can put up campaign ads and some of the social media sites with candidate ads will require disclaimer and will require that you keep it on file. but they are not doing it for issue ads. under federal law issues of national legislative importance are the things you see on tv all the time about any issue before congress whether it's energy, whether it's civil liberties. those ads that you see, they

require that the tv station or the newspaper and the radio look at the ad make sure to disclaimer and disclose it to people. we don't do that on social media and what of the funniest answers i got at the hearing was one of the executives from a social media company said they couldn't do it because they couldn't figure out what those ads were. unlike really because my radio station in deep river falls minnesota can figure it out. they can figure out what our ads are of international importance. this is not just about foreign powers. this is about a democracy because all the dark money and as will migrate to social media and they will flip up on your page for one second. there's not going to be me tracking unless they change it so it's more fundamental than our topic today on foreign interference. that is why we have to change this as well because otherwise you are going to have unlimited

money going on that side and you will have propaganda coming in. as someone who runs for office who ran with very little money, i always like to joke when i first ran for money for office i did know how to raise money. and in my previous office he could only take $100, this is true, for a county attorney in the off ears for many person. that was the limit so suddenly i'm running for u.s. senate with no money myself and that's why i feel so passionate about trying to even the playing field for our democracy. i did set an all-time senate record back then. i gave up trying to call nationally and i call everyone i knew in my life and i raised $17,000 from ex-boyfriends. that is a true story. [laughter] that is not an expanding base. the president pointed that out to my husband. in any case i really care about this idea of an evening -- even

playing field when you have a foreign country trying to come in and influence races for candidates who have no money and are just relying on the fact that we have rules in place you don't have those rules in place on the social media market you don't have a chance. we must send a message that this behavior is unacceptable and this means getting those sanctions that congress passed, 98 votes out of the senator something like that those sanctions should be taken seriously and it administrations should put them in place. that has not happened. i spent last year and the year before last on new year's eve 2016 right after donald trump had gotten elected with john mccain and lindsey graham and the baltic countries and lithuania latvia and estonia and ukraine on new year's eve and there we were with president poroshenko blizzards coming at us at the dark with all their

troops. first of all i would get a picture me with mccain in the graham on new year's eve at midnight. which one do you kiss? there you are. these families where they have lost 10,000 people in ukraine fighting for their own freedom and for them to have america stands with them with everything everything. so that is why when russia sees america's standing in these countries to mean something because they have tried this before. they have gone into these countries when estonia tried them remove a statue from the public square to a cemetery of a russian soldier the russians retaliated by shutting off their internet or when one of the countries invited members of the ukrainian parliament from crimea who were in exile to their 25th celebration of independence. when they invited them they got hacked. those are things that are happening right now. for our country to just let this

go and not take action when we have been hacked into when we have had russia try to influence our elections is the opposite message and that's why the senate voted 98-2 for those sanctions. this administration has refused to implement them and it makes no sense to me because when we do that we are empowering russia and announcing to the world that there are no consequences for foreign governments to interfere in american elections. finally we must understand the full extent of our control in our 2016 election. that's why my colleague senator cardin introduced a bill to establish an independent commission and i was the original co-sponsor that because i agreed and that is that we must examine exactly what went on in order to fix fix it fix it is the very same reason we must allow the investigation, whether it is director mueller's

investigation or whether it's the work going on in the bipartisan work i emphasized in the senate intelligence committee we must allow those to go forward. in the end i envision a more 9/11 commission and we are not quite there yet where we can actually go back through it so we are able to an act just as we did after 9/11 policy changes to respond to it. at the same time we allow these other investigations to go forward. all of these tools would help to secure our election. you look at the cybersecurity bill that i started out with this weekend and the one that puts the money into our state election system republican and democratic former national security officials support the policy. republican and democratic state and local officials secretaries report it. the head of the freedom caucus disc carrying the bill in the house mark meadows because they are so concerned that there's

going to be a hack that they support the idea of our state election system. they are so afraid it's going to happen they are afraid it will federalize the election after it happens. you take your support where you can get it. that is what is happening. it's time to put politics aside and come together to secure the future of our elections so whether you are a four-star general, fourth-grade teacher or computer engineer at foursquare this is an issue that unites us. i will end with the quote from joseph stalin. there's a reason for this. that is probably jarring the audience. in 1923 just as stalin than general secretary of the soviet communist was asked about a vote and a central committee of his party. stalin was unconcerned about the vote. after all he explained, he said

who voted was completely unimportant. what was extraordinarily important in his words was who would count the vote and howl. so it is now 95 years later and so many times we are back at square one because that same idea and it doesn't really matter who votes, they have tried to influence that but would really matters is who counts the vote in what the votes are. that's the exact philosophy we are saying and the exact actions we are seeing from russia again. they are trying to control not only who votes but who counts the votes and how. that is america's election infrastructure. we all know russia is not our only threat and other countries are going to be completely emboldened to do this as well. so to anyone who would block the bill, the bipartisan bill i just discussed at the worst happens

in 2018 it is on you and it's not just russia. you will have to explain why we ignore doing something when we have all this money that's going into security and military defense and we put none of that into the cybersecurity defense would receive the new weapons that these countries are using it is on the people that are blocking that. remember the 2018 election is the number 266 days away. this is a pivotal moment and how does the saying go? hack me once, shame on you, hack me twice shame on us. we know what they did and we know they will do it again. we have a solution and we must act so it's time to set our differences aside and get it done. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you so much senator klobuchar for that incredibly powerful message and your outstanding leadership.

now it's a great privilege welcoming our next guest former secretary of the u.s. department of homeland security jeh johnson. during his remarkable tenure and the obama administration secretary johnson served as the primary architect for nations counterterrorism missions. as as dhs secretary of veteran nations ever to defend the 2016 election from russian interference and since leaving office he continues to serve as an outspoken voice for the critical importance of strengthening our election securities and how critical it is for democracy. former defense secretary robert gates is called secretary johnson a man of great integrity and common sense. he has also called on the finest lawyer he ever worked with in government. we are absolutely thrilled that he is here to share his insights about what happened in the past and more importantly what we can do as a teacher.

please give a warm round of applause to secretary jeh johnson. [applause] >> thank you so much again for being here and i want to thank senator klobuchar for her remarks on a whole variety of ways on the defense of our democracy but just to zone in on the work of our reporter lets get your thoughts. in their recent reporting has shown how hard you worked in the last year in the obama administration to protect our election system from foreign interference. i would love to have you share with us the points you like the public to know about that effort and why you took it in why you thought it was so low. >> first neera thank you for having me here. nice to be back at the center for american progress with some

of your friends. i came here when i was in office once just for a roundtable discussion and it was a great session. i have one story i want to tell before i answer questions about the u.s. senate. for senator klobuchar's benefit i was a college intern 40 years ago and for a great man my senator daniel patrick moynihan. [applause] so one day when i was working i thought the senate was in recess and i was working in the mail room in the basement that day jeans and a t-shirt and i went up to the senator's office to deliver the mail in the dirksen senate office building. senators driver and i were walking out and he said to me i have an idea. let's take a ride on the

senator's only elevator. we can't do that. we can do that. they are not around it's okay. it's fine. but i really don't think we should be doing this. we are standing at the elevator and i can point out to you the exact same elevator because i will never forget the moment. he pushes the button and i'm standing in front of the double doors. the doors open and there is senator barry goldwater staring me in the face like this. i have a big afro-sideburns down to hear t-shirt and jeans. this is 1978. without batting an eye he said hello senator. [laughter] any way i want to compliment the center for american progress on this report.

as far as i know it is one-of-a-kind. i have been talking it up with my various tv appearances. nbc this morning and jake tapper did not ask me about this. as far as i can see it as an object if sober example of where we are on election cybersecurity. to get to the answer to your question in 2016 we saw and emerging intelligence picture of russian government attempts to infiltrate our democracy and the picture was pretty clear by late summer of 2016. the issue then became what to do about it. first and foremost and many of us in the administration including the president had to tell the american public what we saw.

during the election season. though there was no dawa we had to do that the analogy i used in the situation room if i am in the issue of a public stock and i see a powerful manipulator trying to manipulate the price of my sought -- stock i had a duty to tell the public but this was not something you just wake up one morning and put in a tweet. because the national security apparatus of our government was being asked to inject itself into an ongoing political campaign and might be perceived as taking sides. we might herself be perceived as putting our am on the scale for the election outcome and you had some saying the election was going to be. there are a lot of careful considerations. many say why don't you do it sooner or why didn't the president do it like every

difficult national security decisions somebody says why did he do it and somebody says why didn't you do it this way and white dog you do it sooner. we did issue a statement in october of 2016 which i thought was going to be full banner above the fold news as foreign superpower intervening in our democracy. didn't get the attention frankly that it should have because the same day we had the release of e-mails. we had a hurricane in florida and we had "access hollywood" in your call the question was how can he survive? he's finally crashed and burned in a statement was literally low the fold in the post in the times that day. wasn't until december after the

election that the mainstream press came back and said hey the russians interfered in our election. but the effort really proceeded on two tracks. there was the hacking of the e-mails including the dnc e-mails but also ended my judgment equally if not more troublesome this the scanning appropriate we saw around voter registration database and what dhs says it was now in 21 states. nbc did a report the other week in the big headline was they actually infiltrated and gained access to voter registration data and a handful of states. after that is not new news. i said in a public statement october 1, 2016 that russia gained access to several voter registration databases and that

for the reasons reflected in this report is the direct threat to our democracy because, and this was my fear and 2016 a voter could show up, i'm sorry your name is not here and you are not registered to vote simply by altering a few letters in the name or deleting a list or something and when it comes to our national election given the electoral college and given our policies where the vote for president really only comes down to five or six swing states the election outcome for president, if you can target key precincts in key states and influence the outcome there the national outcome of a presidential election the writers of "house

of cards" get that out last season. >> i'm going to definitely get into specifics around the russian attempts but i wanted to ask you a broader question just so we focus on how it won't happen again. when you look at other centuries over the last year, france, germany, where they faced similar efforts or similar disinformation efforts the information and the way the media responded is very different. do you think going forward, one of the reasons might be because you are much more used to russian efforts to undermine democracy writ large. i guess i would ask you what is

your comment that going forward american institutions not just political institutions like congress but media institutions and others equipped to address and prominently displayed in the public what's going on, identify if it happens, if we have information in the state where russia is hacking again media will address that in the state and nationally. do you think we are in a better place or, i mean i can imagine your frustration in november november 2016 thinking is the world upside down and i had similar feelings. you think we are in a world where the world is writing itself? >> i am concerned about media attention on this issue because

with all due respect to my friends in journalism and the media there is an attention deficit in the media tends to gravitate towards the story of the day. the latest white house staffer fired versus the longer-term. >> there's a long list or so you know. >> are troublesome underlying issues that threaten our democracy and you know there are a number of news organizations that have interviewed me about this topic sometimes the interview gets back burner to buy issue of the day. on the hill i'm glad to see that senator klobuchar and others are focused on this issue but very often it takes a backseat to the story or the scandal or the bombshell of the day for the week. that's what happened in october of 2016 when we wanted to give

the american public the information to arm them with full knowledge of what the russian government was doing. amy is right to say that 266 days until the midterm and 36 days before the first primary. i will add to that less than two years before the presidential primaries began, less than two years. get out of your mind for years or even three years. less than two years the presidential primaries again. so we should not to wait for an actual attack to finally make this an ongoing consistent front burner above the fold item. >> can you tell us more about what one into your important decision to designate critical infrastructure that is an important designation and if the

affected had? >> gas. but there is a little bit of history to this. in the summer of 2016 when we were looking for ways to harden the cybersecurity around the election systems somebody on my staff said you know you are are the secretary of homeland security. you have the authority to designate election infrastructure is critical infrastructure and that means we give that sector a priority in terms of the existence. i said really, i do? how many agency start to go through before i can do that. so i raised this idea with all the secretaries of state, state election officials on a conference call i had in 2016. to my surprise and disappointment the sentiment at

least of those who spoke up was neutral to negative. they deemed it to be a federal takeover binding operational in directives and they didn't want the fed to take over the election process. those that express their point of view. so i put it aside actually. i put it aside because i concluded it was more important to bring the horses to water and not drive them away by not making this designation is that they would regard as an attempt attempted takeover more important to get them to come and. i was actually a good news story. in the run-up to the election we have 33 states in something like 36 counties. i can't room for whether colorado was one of them that sought our cybersecurity assistance. what identified a number of vulnerabilities in the run-up to

the election. so that was the good news. i came back to the designation in january of 2017. frankly it's something we should have done years before. there are 16, there were 16 critical infrastructure sectors, utilities. why not the centerpiece of our democracy? redesignated election infrastructure in the subset or of the arctic designated government infrastructure sector sector. in my opinion that was a no-brainer. i had one more conference call with election officials and i heard the same objections but did it anyway because it was just something that i thought had to be done. that means that dhs gives state election officials of priorities in the cybersecurity assistance that they provide. they give protection of the

international cyber norms that nationstates will not attack the critical infrastructure of another nation. it provides for certain level of confidentiality in communication with state election officials. those are the chief advantages and outs for the current congress and current administration to build on that. >> this story raises a fundamental question which is one that has permeated all of these discussions at one level or another which is are you surprised by the level of partisanship that exists? i will date myself to say that there was a uniform view that democrats and republicans despite soviet attempts to undermine american democracy or anything else.

in this election was so surprising i think was not only did you have a major candidate who is inviting russian hacking at some levels but also tended to permeate and how state and local officials erred dealing with this even in the discussion of the nunes memo where you have part -- partisanship and polarization around the intelligence process. i guess to step back how difficult was it or how much partisanship as you are trying to make this decision about any previous era when it's a uniform bipartisan if not uniform consensus? >> a little bit of good news. the 33 states they came to us did not trend blue or red. it was a pretty random

cross-section of the country and in terms of your report as far as i can see you passed out a number of c's and d's so the degree to which they are interested and committed to this issue does not depend on their policy. i am disappointed that not enough people on both sides of the aisle regard this as a direct threat to our democracy because it is. if a foreign power seeks to tip the scale of our election outcomes as the country that's a very serious problem and nationstates all the hand --

behave the same way which is you have to make the behavior cost prohibitive and it is concerning that the administration is not acting on an fully implementing the sanctions that congress passed because you have to make the behavior -- and i will tell you this for my own security perspective, you can prevent all cyber attack for the nation. like trying to catch raindrops. you are on defense. your goalie in hockey and you cannot prevent attacks but we can do is making a cost prohibitive so they recognize it's not worth the cost to do this again. i'm afraid the united states government has yet to do this. the russian government has been given very little disincentive at this point. >> just really offer up app

point there is a big question about how we are moving for. here is secretary tillerson saying russians are going to continue. they say so far faced no consequences for acting. how worried are you to pick it get a sense of how worried you are about the 2018 election and how important engaging our state election officials on an ongoing basis is to create that level of accountability. even this report out few states have taken action upon learning of their grades. there is accountability and that and pennsylvania have taken additional steps with paper ballots. i will give this into questions. one, what is your sense that the

sanctions haven't been implemented by the trump administration and number two what advice would you leave all of us on how we can . . . >> three things. in answer to the first part of your question about 2018 nothing would surprise me at this point. nothing would surprise me in terms of the full extent which a nation-state, foreign government can and will go. >> so far it's been a pretty good day for them. >> number two i think it's incumbent upon the american voting population to hold accountable their state election officials for the integrity of their elections.

then i think number three, it's important and this is a different aspect of the problem here that the american voting public and the american public, the concerned american view with a certain level of skepticism. i think it's time that the american voting public undertake a qualitative review of the so-called -- and as americans we begin to adopt our own filters. the information we choose to accept as true. when i grew up cronkite, brinkley and national newspapers newspapers. if something had been in the course of the day i believe that

walter cronkite would tell me at 6:30 on the news. there is such an plethora of ways in which people particularly young people now get information that they accept as true through less-than-perfect filters and i think it's time that we all book with a more skeptical eye at the information that is pushed at us that we chose to believe. far too many people, and i think all of us have her sponsor validity to this. far too many people have great skepticism of what their government is doing and are suspicious of government power. far too many people when certain politicians and i'm not mentioning any names accepts what he said about the fbi or the department of justice.

so in these efforts that include efforts by russian platforms to inject themselves into the information marketplace around her politics we need to be more more -- of what we are hearing and seeing. >> it's a perfect illustration of this example. marshall has done great work on how russian bots are amplifying certain messages. of the last couple of weeks the russian bots which are simply amplifying releasing the memo. #put pressure on republicans and the media around things and that partisan memo that devin nunes wrote. as a moment to walk through all

of this we are in 2018. russian bots are amplifying a message to undermine the federal investigation we live in that world where the fbi is the agency right now investigating what russia's role was in the campaign. you don't seem to have a hair on fire moment that the russians are basically trying to undermine an investigation. >> how many established media organizations have you heard say exactly what you just said? it's a pretty simple proposition and that's an alarm. that's a fire alarm going off. that should be a code red in my view. what was your question?

>> i will just say, inventing. >> so am i. >> we can all play a role in trying to make that is clear to people as possible but i think the world we are in there such a level of partisanship. are there other institutions that could play that role? obviously the it's the media's role but are there things that we had to do ourselves to communicate directly with people to become active counters of social media. >> i will start at the top. i think the responsibility and the obligation of our president to sound the alarm and call out the direct attack on her democracy from beyond our borders and who here has heard

them do that? in the face of an ongoing campaign to affect our democracy. it's happening right now so you know our president is the most watched and listened to person in the country if not the planet planet. if he does not undertake this obligation who will? >> thank you. thank you for being here but i want to say a hard help thank you for all that you have done over the years to protect our democracy and to protect the country. thank you so much secretary johnson. [applause] thea i am so pleased to be moderating this election security panel with three outstanding guests. two of our panelists have been

at the forefront of the institute of best practices in their state to help protect elections infrastructure and our third panelist is a noted national security expert who understands the important interplay between federal and state policy making. first let me introduce judge choate the current elections director from colorado. colorado was one of the highest scoring states in our ports. colorado most notably conducts its elections by mail with paper ballots. mr. choate is responsible for implementing cutting-edge risk limiting audits which are essential to ascertaining the accuracy of election results so welcome mr. choate. next we are joined by mr. cortez. he served as the first commissioner of elections for virginia under former governor

terry mcauliffe. mr. cortez pulled off a bit of a miracle last year when he oversaw virginia's transition away from voting machines to statewide paper ballot voting systems just in time for virginia's 2017 elections. welcome and friendly are joined by jamil jaffer. mr. jeffers up under the national security institute at the anthony scalia's school of law at george mason university in virginia where he is also a professor. mr. jaffer also recently served under justice nail course which. prior to his current position he's held senior roles on the senate foreign relations committee the house intelligence committee and the george w. bush administration so welcome to each of you. therefore i start questioning and hopefully we will have time for audience q&a i just want to share with you all our thanks at

the center for american progress to all of our coalition allies and partners. many of you are here in the room room. all of you have been working diligently and i think as you heard from senator klobuchar and secretary johnson, this is not a challenge that we are going to overcome by one person or one organization. this is going to be a collective effort and i want to call out verified voting and common cause for your incredible work so please welcome our panel. [applause] eduardo i'm going to start with you. the election miracle. you showed the nation how the state could quickly upgrade to paper based voting systems like virginia did last year just weeks before the election. can you tell our audience about the experience and first of all

why is it so important to upgrade your system and a little bit about the experiences you help share with without lesson learned with their audience. >> think you for having me today. ultimately the decision in virginia came down to one of confidence in the process and as i told the state board elections and our local election officials as we head into the decision about the certifying equipment we had an interim election day. the question was would we be able to get up there with confidence in front of the camera and tell her voters we had confidence and resolve in the tally of what the votes were. we have reached a point where we couldn't do that. there was no way to verify if something went wrong to verify their receipt of those results. as an election administrator and as somebody who is seeing the

face of the virginia elections at the time it was not something i would be comfortable doing so he moved forward to certifying the equipment. it was very difficult for local government to transition in such a timeframe klobuch >> it was very difficult for our local governments to transition in such a short time frame. we worked a lot not just with our local governments, but with the local vendors that were out interest to figure out how to transition them, how to get new equipment in place. we're already in the start of a fiscal year so working with vendors to figure out financing options for new equipment. working out all sorts of things related to delivery of the equipment. thankfully we already had paper-based systems that were is certified in the state for use in the state so it was picking from one of those options. unfortunately in virginia the cost to local governments to pick up the tab. governor mccull lov tried a

couple years ago to get state funding to transition equipment for everybody in the state and the legislature decided it was a local responsibility and that the local governments would have to pick up the tab for that. but for us, one of confidence in the process being able to tell our voters, hey, regardless of what the outcome is, we're confident in this, this is how voters voted, these are the way that people voted. and if there is a question we have ballots question go back to and verify. and we had quite a number of recounts after november which really would not have been possible if we were still ugds those touchscreen machines. >> well that's interesting. you saw the benefit from the sort of increased confidence in the citizens themselves that you could go back to them and tell them we implemented this and there's a direct result? >> yeah. we had a lot of close elections. the legislative level in november in virginia and a lot of them came down to recounts. we would not have been able to give people that assurance of

what the outcome was if we had been still been using dres. we had an immediate kind of election scenario where having transitioned over to paper had benefits right away. >> ted, colorado is helping to lead the nation in election security preparedness, particularly by being the first state in the nation to require risk-limiting audits. can you tell our audience a bit about the state's decision to require those audits and the success of carrying them out in 2017? as you start talking about colorado specific, if you'd also address why more states now are looking into carrying out those risk-limiting audits and are there any lessons that can be applied from colorado to the other states as other states are looking that the practice? >> sure. so thanks for inviting us, we really appreciate it. colorado takes a lot of pride in its elections so it's great to be celebrated. so auditing your election outcomes is a really important

first step in guaranteeing that you've carried out a good election. there are various ways do audits. you can just do an audit of a particular race or a particular piece of equipment. you can do a random aud di audif an entire election. or you can do a risk-limiting audit and that requires an assessment of an outcome of particular races based on how many votes were cast in that race and how close the margin was. so you're picking out particular ballots to determine whether or not those ballots were counted correctly. so you're looking back at a cast vote record. the thing about a risk-limiting audit is it requires newer equipment. it requires for sophisticated tally and scanning. so you can't really do -- many states really couldn't do a risk-limiting audit right now because they don't have that level of equipment.

so really we need to be able to have better equipment. so states need to upgrade their equipment, perhaps the federal government could fully fund hava, just suggesting that might be a good idea, and that might give states the opportunity to upgrade their equipment so they can do risk-limiting audits. >> and in using risk-limiting audits, what does the public feel about them? does it instill confidence? do they see there's a benefit to do so with either spending the additional money? >> intellectually it makes a lot of sense. you have a close race in which a lot of your voters voted. well, that's a race where you should be looking at more ballots. if you have a race where the margin is pretty wide and you didn't have a lot of voters, that's a race where you don't have to look at as many ballots. so the concept of a risk-limiting audit really makes sense to people. and for that reason, i think the

confidence that people have in the way that you're aud digitind checking on the results of your election sort of taps into that natural i stinct that yo natural instinct that your voters have. it also makes a lot of sense from an election's administrator position because here we are, we want to make sure that our equipment actually did a good job of analyzing or assessing how a particular voter voted. and we can do that more sort of in a more straightforward way and a more -- in a way that better assesses how a particular outcome was determined based on how close or how many votes were cast. so the risk-limiting audit really does sort of tap in to that overall assessment of how an election was conducted. >> jamil, we've discussed a lot

about state and local interplay and the federal government and the states in some ways, notwithstanding what secretary johnson said, the states are on the front lines of protecting our nationing from foreign actors who want to do us farm through our elections. as someone who has deep national security and cybersecurity experience, what is your view of the role that states play in election security and the support they need from the federal government? >> well, winnie, i think that's a great question and i think it's important that we recognize and we acknowledge what secretary johnson and neera told us, which is to say that we are in the throws and in the midst of an ongoing cyber campaign by a nation state actor, russia, to undermine our on confidence in not only our electoral system but our very institution of governance. this is a tremendous problem and it's one we as a nation have to take seriously, both

localalities that run these elections day to day and states that run them and the government that benefit from these elections, the ballots cast at the state and local levels in elections. and so all of us have a role to play in that process. i think secretary johnson's right that we as american citizens individually have responsibility to vet the news that we get. but when it comes to question of the electoral outcomes and the role of the federal government, i think it's critical that the federal government provide the funding and resources necessary to help states do their jobs. they're on the front lines every day dealing with these proks bl and that say national security problem that we cannot make light of. there is this tension between states who think that it's critical that the government stay out of their elections and i think that's probably right too, that states get to run their own locations, localities get to run their own elections. so i'm skeptical of an overemphasis on federal standards or requirements. at the same time, i do think there's an important role for the federal government to play in providing funding, resources,

information, capabilities, knowledge, best practices and the like. and we've talked about this. we've talked about this since 2001 when hava was enacted after that. and let's be frank about it, the federal government has not done its job and states have had a hard time as a result implementing the things they need to. that was at a time when we just had challenges internally about how we counted votes. now we're at the point where we're actually under attack by a foreign nation state and we still can't skooem seem eem to together and that's embarrassing. >> let me ask both of you as you're members and judd you're on the executive committee of government coordinating council for election infrastructure, which is comprised of the dhs, election assistance commission, and then national association of secretaries of state and state and local election officials from around the country. so just to pick up on jamil's point, you can tell us about your experience working with federal entities on the issue of

election security? what's worked well? what hasn't? where are there rooms for improvement from your perspective sitting at the state level? you know, and you can address the challenges i think jamil led to with the state interplay? >> i'm happy to do that. the secretaries, secretary johnson who you just heard from, designated critical infrastructure on january 7th of 2017. we began meeting with the department of homeland security and the deac, the elections assistance commission very shortly thereafter and developed a game plan, created a sector plan, put together a sector so created the government coordinating council. and now we're receiving services. so actually i can tell you and everybody who's concerned about the u.s. election system that the department of homeland security and the government of coordinating council and the

states that are receiving those services are making extraordinary progress in securing our elections. many states were already there, were doing a great job before, already sort of saw this as a part of their mission and an essential element of conducting affair -- free and fair election. but even we, so colorado was in that position, but even colorado has received really important services through our relationship with dhs. and, like i say, the governmental coordinating council is working very closely with the department of homeland security. so much so that i meet with -- i have a weekly phone call with bob kalas sky who's the department undersecretary that runs the election section. i speak to chris krebs who's his

boss on occasion and very important people in the department of homeland security. they clearly are taking this incredibly seriously. and because of that, we're getting very important services very quickly. so even the full on-site two-week sthaextss thassessment doff your entire system, now any state that wants to have one of them done can have them done before the middle of april. that's well in advance of many of the primaries that are going to happen in this cycle and certainly in advance of the general election. so we're really pleased with the services we're receiving from homeland security and from the eac who's done an amazing job partnering as well. >> i think in virginia we had a very similar experience to colorado, which is the ability to work with department of homeland security and eac was just phenomenal. last year we're one of the few states to have a statewide

election going on last year. and so they actually -- we got a lot of direct attention from dhs and the staff dhs. we had them come down for in-person assessments to richmond. we actually had people on the ground on election day cybersecurity folks from dhs kind of with our cyber folks for election days and the lead up to. and so i think the services they provide, you know, to me, it's been a, you know, we had a big focus on cybersecurity during the mccullough administration, big focus on cybersecurity and we were doing a lot of things. i think where dhs has come in is, you know, where it's been important, is like judd said, even if you're already doing a lot of things around, figuring out how to secure your systems, where to make improvements, having this expertise to come in and review what you're doing and take a look at and say, hey,

here are some potential vulnerabilities you may have in your system, here are ways to address them, i think that's a huge help to election officials. you know, it can be an overwhelming thing to see, you know, take a look -- a very close and intensive look at your system and go, oh my god, there might be all these potential ways for people to get into or impact our systems. and so where do we start? where are we going to get the most bang for our buck? what can we do to, you know, in the time frame that we have to have the most impact? i think that's where dhs and eac have been super helpful in coming in and helping. we all have limited resources. it could be great if we had some additional federal resources and states and locals got those additional federal resources to help. but having that expertise come in and tell you, hey, here's some potential vulnerabilities but you can focus on this, it

will have a much bigger impact than if you focus on these other ten things. i think that sort of feedback and advice, we never had a moment where we tried to contact or have a question for department of homeland security and couldn't get a response, couldn't get a very quick response from them. so i think overall they have -- despite all the kind of high-level rhetoric that's been going on, the kind of push and pull about state control and federal intervention, the department has taken it very seriously and has been working very well i think with election officials. >> i think that speaks to something that senator klobuchar said bipartisan cosponsors with the bill and that secretary johnson talked about. how important, jamil, is bipartisanship in addressing the issue of election security? >> i think it's critical, winnie. we've seen an explosion in partisanship over in the last year, since the last election. and it's troubling and it's on issues that go right at the

heart of our own democracy. when we're constantly at war with one another over these questions about disclosures and elections and voting, that makes it impossible for us to see the real threat that's out there which is this foreign nation that's targeted our democracy. and so, you know, while i'm not a poly anna about it and don't think that we're not going to continue some level partisanship, i would hope on this one issue which is at the heart of our democracy that we're able to find a common ground and a path forward. this san administration that for whatever other things you might think about it does have some very capable cyber people involved. tom bosser at the white house, kirsten nilsson all have long expertise in this area. so you get the folks that get the cybersecurity who worked there for a long time and are prepared to work in a cooperative manner with the states and now it's a matter of getting the states and federal government to find a cooperative middle ground here. it will take and i'm not a big

believer in excessive federal spending, you but it will take some federal dollars buoyed by state dollars, and the reality is in virginia there was an effort to get state funding and that didn't happen. we need to work through that also. this needs to be a partnership between the federal and state governments. but i'm hopeful there's opportunity here. i worry that we're too late for 2018 and that's what concerns me. a lot of what we talked about here, paper ballots, auditing, these are all very sensible, obvious measures that need to be implemented. but we're really coming up on the deadline. and they did a great job getting virginia ve very quickly to that point. i'm worried that other states aren't there yet and won't get there by 2018 and that's a concern. >> that's going to be my sort of final question here looking at 2018. i mean, how prepared do you think the state and federal governments or responding to another potential election attack or to the one that we don't even see is happening right now? i mean, how prepared are we? then i want to turn it over to the audience.

>> so if you think about sort of chunk elections into pieces. so we have a whole bunch of election systems that operate in a given election. the -- where you mark your ballot, so in colorado we have ballot marking tools and other states they might have dres. where you mark your ballot, those are not connected to the internet. the only realistic way in which you could influence a vote at the point in which the vote is made is to be in -- to be present, to be right there. and to, in many cases, break open the system, like literally get out a screwdriver and start playing with particular chips inside of the equipment. so for the most part, that particular part of our election system is protected because of the nature, the way that we've set it up. the next level then is your voter registration system. that is connected to the

internet. and so that's where we're putting a lot of our focus because that's where somebody that's sitting in their basement in russia can actually try to influence, try to get access into our systems. and so that's where dhs and eac and the states are working together to really try to protect those systems, so harden those systems. and we're making extraordinary progress on that. we were already in very good shape and just to sort of correct one misnomer that's out there, we're aware that one state was hacked to the point where voter registrations were accessible. there was another state which was kind of close, and then there were the other 19 states which were scanned. scanned does not mean hacked, it means that they were basically knocking on the door and then they went away. so, and in that one case no files, actually changed. so we really can walk away from

2016 feeling pretty good about where -- what happened, because there weren't really any penetrations into particular systems that changed outcomes or changed files. but, the other part of the system that we really need to address or be conscious of is election night reporting. so this is the reporting of the results, because if you report results which are, you know, wildly incorrect and then you have to go back and defend those results, no, no, those were wrong, here's the real ones. so that's -- you have potential problem there. and again you're working with vendors on a lot of this. so if we can secure our voter registration systems and then these external systems which have a lot do with the confidence that people have in elections, those two elements are really important. people can feel pretty secure, though, that the votes that they cast are properly read, are accessed properly by the state,

and are cataloged so that the outcome is accurate. i mean, question feel pretty good about that at this point. >> how do you feel about 2018? >> i think states and local election officials are in pretty good shape overall. i would echo some of judd's comments about the kind of overall state of prepared -- you know, readiness of administering a well-run election in november. i do think that voter registration systems are kind of the biggest point or the biggest potential point of failure in the process at this point and that's where i think a lot of states have been putting in substantial resources. i think there are, you know, there are states getting ready to and have been either transitioning to new registration systems and as part of that process are, you know, looking at security issues at the beginning of the process of procuring a new system or for those that aren't getting new equipment or new systems in

place have been spending a lot of resources figuring out how to address any potential vulnerabilities. so i do think that's a big one. that's where a lot of resources are going. i think in terms of equipment i actually, you know, from a -- from the standpoint of, you know, the actual impact on the election, i think that the equipment, especially the older equipment, the touchscreen equipment, i think where we had concerns in virginia and where i think a lot of the concern around that equipment is that, you know, we came to our decision a lot in part based on the fact that we -- there's no way to tell on some of that older system if there's been any tampering with the equipment, if there's been anything that has happened to the equipment to impact how it -- how it functions. and so, you know, not having a way to validate on the back end, if there's a question, i think for me, creates, you know, from

a confidence standpoint creates a very big concern. so i do think that those states that are using, you know, paperless equipment, that does need to be a priority. but i do think the registration systems across the board are important. i think the last thing i'd point to is we've talked a lot about, you know, the interplay between the stay governments and the federal government. our local election officials and, you know, everything starts at the local level, that's really where a lot of this is going on. i think there's such a huge disparity in terms of resources at our local election offices. i mean, and judd i'm sure has the same issue in colorado. but in virginia we have locals that are, you know, 3,000 voters and that's what they support. they have maybe a part-time i.t. person that comes in once a month to give them some support. and then have you fairfax county which is bigger than some states

in terms of its operations. it has, you know, a lot of cybersecurity resources built in. and so i think that gap, that resource gap at the local level i think is going to become more prevalent. and what i'm -- my concern when we talk about cybersecurity and these resources, the same thing with equipment where we don't end up where smaller localities and those with less resources having a voting experience and a level of concern that's different from localities and things with more resources. so i think need to, when we talk about our resources and focus, we need to take into account our local governments and figure out how we can strengthen there. cyber readiness and their preparedness. because they, you know rernd up being unfortunate -- end up being, it happened through a local election office. so having that focus and making sure that we're looking at resources for our local election

official is going to be critical. >> thank you. i'm going to turn it over to the audience. i think we have time for a question or two. there's a microphone here if you stand up and identify yourself and ask the question again. we've just got about five more minutes. people have questions for our panel. right over here on the aisle. fantastic. >> edgardo, do we know that all the people who were assigned the wrong precincts, wrong legislative districts in virginia, do we know that that was not a result of a hack? and if so, how do we know that? >> so there was a -- for those that aren't aware, there was some issues in november around individual voters being misassigned. i think we know that that was not from an outside intrusion in a number of different ways, and i think this goes to kind of the

security of the voter registration smg registration systems. first of all, the log-in processes that we have in place in virginia and that a lot of states have in place in terms of figuring out when the system's been accessed, when those records have been changed, when all of that happened, we have all of that and so we know this was things that happened a very long time ago and most of those instances. and then just kind of our ongoing work with dhs and the state i.t. agency in terms of looking at our, you know, looking at virginia's current access to their system. and we have, you know, virginia's one of the states where the voter registration system is actually behind the state firewall and so has all sorts of protections that -- that are in place for all of the state i.t. infrastructure. it's not just election specific. so we have a couple levels of protection there. so it's not related in the any

way to this -- to this issue, but it, you know, it speaks to kind of the human factor in all of this too in making sure that we shore up -- shore up that side of it. >> i'm just going to ask whether jamil or judd have a final word as we close out here. >> so just to dove tail on what edgardo was saying, our system and i suspect most if not all systems have audit logs. so we can audit literally every change that's made to a particular person's record. so that's another way in which we can protect sort of we can backtrack, we can walk back somebody's entire record and know what happened, when it happened, and why. we often have like scanned documents which show what happened with a particular change. so i know that the person was a republican until they changed on, you know, october 17th, 2012, and then four weeks later they switched to independent and then they switched back to republican another six weeks

after that because i have each one of those documents and i can see them all. so that's what a good vr system does. and that's what colorado has, that's probably what virginia has, and that's what all the states need to have if they don't have it right now, because that's sort of the central focus of what the russians were after and that's where our main point of vul nernerability is is our r registration system. so if we could put money into voter registration, that would be money well spent. >> even though we have concerns about our lectoral system and concerns about the influence of foreign governments, i think the easiest solution to all these problems is for people to actually register to vote and get out to vote. today we're at historic lows on voter registration numbers and voter turnout numbers. if you're concerned about these issues, the funding streams, you're concerned about states being able to gather and protect the vote, the best solution to that is to vote. >> in a beautiful c 3 kind of way, i'm going to encourage

everyone to do that. let me just close where i began by thanking my center for american congress colleagues. by thank our alwlies work in this space every single day. by thanking each and every one of you for being here and jamil and judd and edgardo for all of your continued work and insights. thank you all very much. [ applause ] this weekend, the c-span

cities tour takes to you lynchburg, virginia, located along the james river. it's home to both liberty university and thomas jefferson's retreat, popular forrest. with the help of our comcast cable partners we'll explore the rich litter rare life and history. on saturday at 5:00 p.m. eastern on book tv we'll visit the ann spencer house to hear about how this poet brought the harlem renaissance to lynchburg. >> ann spencer was a poet, an american poet mostly associated with the harlem renaissance period. how she becomes part of the harlem renaissance is how harlem comes to lynchburg. unfortunately, there is a whole group of people who are associated with that period of time like ann spencer that people don't know about. then on sunday at 2:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv an interview with liberty

university president jerry fall welle junior about the origins of the university, it's impact on lynchburg and the role evangelicals play on politics. >> in spite of trump's background, they're really pleasantly surprised with how he's come around on issues that are important to evangelicals and how he's really been the best president for those issues. and really for, i think, i think he's going to end up being one of the greatest presidents we've ever had. then a conversation with lanch johnson who's grandfather dr. whirlwind johnson hosted a tennis camp in lynchburg for young african-american athletes. >> that created this cavalcade of interest in my grandfather and his ability, i mean, phenomenal physician but somehow he managed to be a student of the tennis game and transformed that learning into a program that would for decades