Opinion: We can’t afford to defund election security | Pamela Smith/The Contrarian
As voters head to the polls in state and local elections across the country, a quiet but consequential threat is growing—one that transcends party lines and strikes at the heart of our nation’s most fundamental right: the ability to vote in free, fair, and secure elections. That threat is the weakening of our elections’ cybersecurity. When cyber-attacks are becoming more sophisticated than ever, the federal government is making cuts to the very agencies and programs designed to help state and local election officials defend against them. Chief among these is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). CISA was created in the aftermath of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Since then, the agency has worked with election officials to combat cyber, physical, and other dangers—monitoring threats, testing systems’ vulnerabilities, providing training on best practices, and supporting rapid response to incidents involving elections at every level. But in February, 130 employees at CISA were fired and over a dozen more were put on leave. That’s only the beginning—the agency plans to cut as many as 1,300 additional employees of about 3,300 in the coming weeks. With these experts removed and installed in their place a teenage hacker, the call is now coming from inside the house. Read Article