National: Some cash-strapped states turn to election security funds to fight COVID-19 | Matthew Vann/ABC

With the country in crisis mode responding to the coronavirus, several states are now turning to their election security funds from the massive stimulus package signed by President Trump amid plans to cover unanticipated costs stemming from the virus. ABC News has confirmed that several states— including the political battleground states of Pennsylvania and Ohio as well as Rhode Island, Connecticut, Tennessee, and Alabama—are either now using or intend to use election security funds, including coronavirus stimulus money designated to protect the 2020 elections from malicious cyber activity, to fight their own statewide battles against COVID-19. “We are assessing all election security and administration needs and will allocate accordingly,” said Wanda Murren, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Secretary of State. The National Association of Secretaries of State issued guidance to states on how best to prepare for the elections amid concerns about the virus, but says decisions about how to spend election security money in a time of national crisis is up to each state.

National: New election security funds won’t come easy for hard-hit states | Paul M. Krawzak/Roll Call

Cash-strapped states, which Congress just pumped $150 billion into, will nonetheless have to pony up in order to access new election security grants in the massive new coronavirus aid package signed by President Donald Trump last week. The $2.3 trillion aid bill contains $400 million to “prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus, domestically or internationally, for the 2020 Federal election cycle.” The Election Assistance Commission, an independent, bipartisan commission established in 2002, will administer the grants. But consistent with past practice, and EAC guidelines, the money comes with strings attached: States need to put up matching funds equal to 20 percent of their federal aid. Previous election security grants required a state match, most recently the 20 percent state match required for $425 million provided in regular fiscal 2020 appropriations last December. But some election security experts were taken aback that the matching funds requirement wasn’t waived in the latest round of aid, and House Democrats are already planning to include a fix in the “phase four” COVID-19 bill they are prepping.

National: Democrats press Trump, GOP for funding for mail-in ballots | Maggie Miller/The Hill

Democrats and voting rights groups on Thursday pressed President Trump and Republicans to support more funding for elections this year, saying it was crucial to include money ensuring people could cast ballots as part of the next coronavirus stimulus package. Lawmakers and voting advocacy groups took part in what amounted to a sustained campaign calling for the country to ensure people could cast votes either in person or by mail despite the coronavirus crisis. Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) argued on one press call Thursday that at least $1.6 billion more was needed to guarantee Americans could vote in November. “This next month is critical for our democracy, I can’t think of another time when we faced something quite like this in terms of our limitations,” Klobuchar told reporters. “I think we can do this, I really do, we simply must make sure that people have the right to vote.”

National: Pelosi wants ‘vote by mail’ provisions in next U.S. coronavirus bill | Susan Cornwell/Reuters

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday she wants to virus-proof the November election by including funding to boost voting by mail in the next pandemic response plan being put together by Democrats in the House of Representatives. Pelosi said at least $2 billion, and ideally $4 billion, was needed to enable voting by mail, to give citizens a safe way to vote during the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 4,300 people across the United States. She noted Democrats got just $400 million for that purpose in the $2.3 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill President Donald Trump signed into law on Friday. “Vote by mail is so important to … our democracy so that people have access to voting and not be deterred, especially at this time, by the admonition to stay home,” Pelosi told reporters. Trump told Fox News on Monday that voting by mail would hurt the Republican Party. Pelosi rejected that argument.

National: 15 States Have Postponed Their Primaries Because of Coronavirus. Here’s a List. | Nick Corasaniti and Stephanie Saul/The New York Times

As the coronavirus pandemic upends the presidential campaign, states across the country are postponing primary elections and expanding vote by mail options, citing the difficulty of holding elections during the outbreak. Fifteen states and one territory — Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Wyoming and Puerto Rico — have either pushed back their presidential primaries or switched to voting by mail with extended deadlines. Six of those states have moved their primaries to June 2, which has unexpectedly become a major date on the Democratic primary calendar. It is among the last dates available before the June 9 deadline set by the Democratic National Committee for states to hold their nominating contests. In New York, officials delayed the presidential primary even further, to June 23. Wisconsin is holding firm to the April 7 date for its primary, but the governor wants to send every voter an absentee ballot. Tom Perez, the D.N.C. chairman, has urged states with upcoming contests to expand their use of voting by mail, no-excuse absentee voting, curbside ballot drop-offs and early voting.

National: Democrats Push for Voting by Mail Amid Coronavirus Pandemic | Lindsay Wise and Natalie Andrews/Wall Street Journal

Democrats are pushing for billions of dollars in federal funds to pay for expanded voting by mail this November, as presidential and congressional election deadlines approach and concerns heighten for the health of workers and voters at traditional polling places. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said Wednesday that she wants money for voting by mail to be included in the next stimulus package designed to combat the novel coronavirus, which the House might consider by the end of April. Dozens of states have issued stay-at-home orders, and while a number of health experts expect Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, to peak in the next several months, it is still expected to be a threat in the fall. “Vote by mail is so important to our democracy so that people have access to voting and not be deterred, especially by the admonition to stay home,” said Mrs. Pelosi. The $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill passed by Congress last week included $400 million for state and local election officials to address complications created by the virus. It didn’t mandate specific reforms or requirements for how that money can be spent. The Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, estimates it will cost at least $2 billion for states to implement voting by mail and take other steps to ensure “free and fair” elections can go ahead.

National: Election chaos: Coronavirus fear of voting could keep people from the polls | Pete Williams/NBC

State officials nationwide are scrambling to adjust to stay-at-home and social distancing orders as they plan the 2020 voting calendar, and many experts warn that the pandemic threatens to be highly disruptive to this year’s elections. “There’s a real possibility that people will be afraid to vote on Election Day and won’t have alternatives,” said Trevor Potter, a former chairman of the Federal Elections Commission who now heads the Campaign Legal Center in Washington. “That’s just unacceptable for the world’s leading democracy.” Fourteen states and Puerto Rico have already postponed their primary elections or caucuses for choosing presidential candidates. Voting rights advocates in Ohio sued challenging the Legislature’s plan to delay the March 17 primary by extending absentee voting through April 28. The challengers argue that it is likely to overwhelm the system for handling absentee votes. They also said the plan cuts off voter registration too early. In Wisconsin, several groups have sued to postpone the state’s primary on Tuesday or at least to make it easier for voters to register and vote by mail, arguing that the virus and the state’s current requirements essentially disenfranchise thousands of voters. But U.S. District Judge William Conley suggested at a hearing Wednesday that he did not believe he had the authority to postpone the voting.

National: Coronavirus response is officially a new front in the election security fight | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

The brief detente in partisan bickering over how to ensure people are safe to vote – and their votes are safe – amid the coronavirus pandemic just burst into open warfare. President Trump suggested on Fox and Friends that one reason he opposed a $4 billion infusion of election money Democrats sought for the coronavirus stimulus was that it might have led to more Democratic victories. Democrats wanted the money to go toward expanding secure vote by mail or early voting options to reduce the risk of people getting infected, should the pandemic still pose risks by November. “They had things, levels of voting that if you ever agree to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” he said, seeming to suggest that higher turnout would help Democrats. House Administration Committee Chair Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) shot back, calling that “a monstrous example of putting party ahead of America” and accusing the president of forcing citizens to vote in unsafe ways. The stimulus bill ultimately included $400 million for election security related to the pandemic but no rules for how states must spend it. “Every American, regardless of party affiliation, should condemn the president’s apparent belief that it’s a good thing for American voters to risk their lives when safer voting alternatives are possible,” she said.

National: Pelosi, state Democrats push for more funds for mail-in voting | Maggie Miller/The Hill

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and more than 50 state Democratic officials advocated strongly on Tuesday for Congress to give states more funding to support mail-in and absentee voting efforts as part of the next coronavirus stimulus bill.  “In terms of the elections, I think that we’ll probably be moving to vote by mail,” Pelosi said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday. “That’s why we wanted to have more resources in this third bill that just was signed by the president to get those resources to the states to facilitate the reality of life that we are going to have to have more vote by mail.” The coronavirus stimulus package signed into law by President Trump last week included $400 million to allow states to adapt the upcoming primary and general elections during the coronavirus crisis. That amount was far lower than the $4 billion proposed by Pelosi as part of the House version of the stimulus bill, which also would have required states to send absentee ballots to every registered voter and expand early voting. The final coronavirus stimulus package did not include any requirements for how states must use the $400 million. Pelosi said on Monday that she was disappointed the stimulus did not include funding for the U.S. Postal Service to send ballots to Americans, and said she hoped public opinion would help to push Republicans to support more funding for elections in the next coronavirus stimulus bill.

National: 16 States Restrict Access to Voting by Mail – How That Could Change 2020 Presidential Election During the Coronavirus Pandemic | Ashley Stockler/Newsweek

As the coronavirus pandemic heightens concerns about participation in November’s general election, advocates are calling on officials in the over one dozen states where voting by mail is heavily restricted to expand access to absentee ballots. According to research compiled by the National Vote at Home Institute, 16 states limit the distribution of absentee ballots—which can be mailed or otherwise delivered to the voter’s home—to residents who present a lawful excuse for avoiding in-person voting, such as planned travel or a disability. Of those states, five—West Virginia, Alabama, Indiana, Delaware and Massachusetts—have already waived these limitations for voters in upcoming primary and statewide elections because of public health concerns over the virus’ spread. The abilities of these and other states to expand vote-by-mail options come November are alternately limited by political will, state law or the state constitution.

National: Cyber Warfare Doesn’t Take a Break During Coronavirus Season; US Health Agencies Are Fending off DDoS Attacks and Disinformation Campaigns in the Midst of a Pandemic | Scott Ikeda/CPO Magazine

Unfettered by social distancing measures or economic concerns, cyber threat actors are taking full advantage of opportunities created by the coronavirus pandemic. United States health agencies are being tested by distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and social media disinformation campaigns as they scramble to respond to an unprecedented viral outbreak, and these attacks are thought to be backed by a hostile foreign government. A large-scale DDoS attack was directed at the U.S. Health and Human Services Department sometime around March 15. A spokesperson for the National Security Council stated that the attack did not do any substantial damage and that the networks are being “continuously monitored” to mitigate any future attempts. The DDoS attack involved millions of requests on the health agency’s servers over a period of several hours. A Health and Human Services spokesperson indicated that the government does not know who was behind the attack, but suspects a foreign government. The DDoS attack did not involve any network compromise, nor did it significantly slow down operations. The spokesperson indicated that the agency has put unspecified “extra protections” in place going forward.

National: How Russia’s Troll Farm Is Changing Tactics Before the Fall Election | Davey Alba/The New York Times

Ahead of November’s election, American intelligence officials and others are on high alert for mischief from Russia’s Internet Research Agency. Remember it? The Kremlin-backed group was identified by American authorities as having interfered in the 2016 election. At the time, Russians working for the group stole the identities of American citizens and spread incendiary messages on Facebook and other social media platforms to stoke discord on race, religion and other issues that were aimed at influencing voters. To avoid detection, the group has since evolved its tactics. Here are five ways its methods have shifted.

National: Trump says election proposals in coronavirus stimulus bill would hurt Republican chances | Maggie Miller/The Hill

President Trump said Monday that the vote-by-mail proposal in the original Democrat-backed House version of the coronavirus stimulus bill would have ensured that no Republicans were ever elected again. “The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you ever agreed to, you would never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.” “They had things in there about election days and what you do and all sorts of drawbacks. They had things that were just totally crazy.” Trump was referring to provisions that would have given $4 billion to states to boost mail-in and absentee ballots. Specific proposals included requiring states to send absentee ballots to every registered voter, requiring online and same-day voter registration, and expanding early voting by 15 days. House Administration Committee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who spearheaded the addition of the election funds and policies to the House version of the stimulus package, pushed back strongly against Trump’s comments on Monday, describing them as “morally bankrupt.” “The President says that if we make it easier to vote, Republicans will lose elections,” Lofgren said in a statement. “He is apparently willing to expose voters to the deadly COVID-19 for purely partisan political advantage.” She emphasized that “this is morally bankrupt and a monstrous example of putting party ahead of America. Every American, regardless of party affiliation, should condemn the President’s apparent belief that it’s a good thing for American voters to risk their lives when safer voting alternatives are possible.” Ellen Kurz, the founder and CEO of iVote, a political action committee, told The Hill that Trump’s “sentiments bring into stark relief why Republican officials across the country have taken every opportunity to keep people from voting.” 

National: Trump: If it’s easy for people to vote, Republicans will never win again | Emily Singer/The American Independent

Donald Trump on Monday offered insight into why Republican lawmakers opposed a Democratic proposal in the coronavirus relief package that would’ve allowed states to shift their 2020 elections to all-mail ballots. “If you look at before and after, the things they had in [the bill] were crazy,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” on Monday morning. “They had things, levels of voting that if you ever agreed to it you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” Democrats have been pushing for a shift to absentee ballots in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure that states could still hold elections even if the virus is still raging in November. Already, a number of states that do not allow for no-excuse absentee voting — that is, allowing voters to vote by mail for any reason — have had to postpone their primary contests, as requiring voters to show up at polling sites, and possibly wait in crowded lines for hours, could further spread the virus. “Without federal action, Americans might have to choose between casting a ballot and protecting their health. That’s wrong, and we must take swift action to address the problem,” Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Ron Wyden of Oregon — who introduced a bill to shift states to all-mail elections — wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. “The best way to ensure that this virus doesn’t keep people from the ballot box is to bring the ballot box to them. We must allow every American the ability to vote by mail.”

National: Trump says Republicans would ‘never’ be elected again if it was easier to vote | Sam Levine/The Guardian

Donald Trump admitted on Monday that making it easier to vote in America would hurt the Republican party. The president made the comments as he dismissed a Democratic-led push for reforms such as vote-by-mail, same-day registration and early voting as states seek to safely run elections amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Democrats had proposed the measures as part of the coronavirus stimulus. They ultimately were not included in the $2.2tn final package, which included only $400m to states to help them run elections. “The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Trump said during an appearance on Fox & Friends. “They had things in there about election days and what you do and all sorts of clawbacks. They had things that were just totally crazy and had nothing to do with workers that lost their jobs and companies that we have to save.” Democrats often accuse Republicans of deliberately making it hard to vote in order to keep minorities, immigrants, young people and other groups from the polls. And Republicans often say they oppose voting reforms because of concerns of voter fraud – which is extremely rare – or concerns over having the federal government run elections. But Trump’s remarks reveal how at least some Republicans have long understood voting barriers to be a necessary part of their political self-preservation. “I don’t want everybody to vote,” Paul Weyrich, an influential conservative activist, said in 1980. “As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

National: HackerOne cuts ties with mobile voting firm Voatz after it clashed with researchers | Sean Lyngaas/CyberScoop

HackerOne, a company that pairs ethical hackers with organizations to fix software flaws, has kicked mobile voting vendor Voatz off its platform, citing the vendor’s hostile interactions with security researchers. It’s the first time in its eight-year existence that HackerOne, which works with companies from AT&T to Uber, has expelled an organization from its bug-bounty-hosting platform, a HackerOne spokesperson said. The decision comes after Voatz assailed the motives of MIT researchers who found flaws in the company’s voting app. “After evaluating Voatz’s pattern of interactions with the research community, we decided to terminate the program on the HackerOne platform,” a HackerOne spokesperson told CyberScoop. “We partner with organizations that prioritize acting in good faith towards the security researcher community and providing adequate access to researchers for testing.” It is the latest security-related setback for Voatz, which is trying to make inroads in a market dominated by traditional voting machine manufacturers. In the last two years, a smattering of U.S. counties have used the Voatz smartphone app in elections to try to improve turnout.

National: The Postal Service, in trouble before covid-19, is fighting for its life | Joe Davidson/The Washington Post

The $2 trillion congressional coronavirus assistance package would provide badly needed relief for millions of Americans and businesses but little for one organization already in desperate financial health. The U.S. Postal Service has been in money trouble for years. Now, covid-19, the disease the virus causes, is forcing the quasi-governmental agency into a fight for its life. “What we’ve seen in the pandemic is the collapse of mail,” Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), chairman of the government operations subcommittee that oversees the Postal Service, said by phone. “While people are shipping packages, mail volume has collapsed.” Unless Congress acts quickly, the decline in mail because of covid-19 could soon close the constitutionally mandated mail service, according to Connolly and Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), chairwoman of the full Committee on Oversight and Reform. They called the situation “a national emergency” as they proposed postal relief measures. “As a direct result of the coronavirus crisis, it has become clear that the Postal Service will not survive the summer without immediate assistance from Congress and the White House,” Maloney and Connolly wrote in a letter Tuesday to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “Postal Service officials warn that, without immediate intervention, the precipitous drop off in mail use across the country due to the coronavirus pandemic could shutter the Postal Service’s doors as early as June.”

National: Stimulus package provides United States Postal System no funding, postal service could shutter by June 2020 amid coronavirus | Nicole Goodkind/Fortune

Fifty years ago, a postal worker strike halted mail delivery. The eight-day strike, carried out by 150,000 letter carriers across 30 cities, prompted then-President Richard Nixon to declare an emergency and send in the National Guard to deliver mail. “The United States Postal System is a vital element of our entire communications system. The poor depend heavily upon it for medical services and also for government assistance,” Nixon said in an address to the nation. “Veterans depend on it for their compensation checks. The elderly depend on it for their Social Security checks.” Today, the Postal Service is just as essential: It delivers about 1 million lifesaving medications each year and serves as the only delivery link to Americans living in rural areas. Working with other delivery services like UPS, the agency supports $1.7 trillion in sales and 7.3 million private sector workers year, and this year will prove essential to delivering the 2020 Census to citizens as well as any vote-by-mail initiatives. The USPS is the federal government’s most favorably viewed agency, with an approval rating of 90%. Yet once again, the USPS is in crisis mode.

National: Coronavirus cripples voter registration efforts. Millions could be denied. | Alex Seitz-Wald/NBC

Presidential elections are typically prime time for bringing new people into the political process, but the coronavirus pandemic is making voter registration more difficult than ever, prompting concerns that many young Americans and other nonvoters might miss their chance to get onto the rolls before November. “This is the moment when we historically see people take action to register to vote,” said Kristen Clarke, the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “The public health crisis has brought all of that activity virtually to a grinding halt.” Voter registration happens year-round, but the months leading up to a presidential election are crucial as interest in politics spikes and funding for registration efforts flows in. In the runup to the 2016 presidential election, Americans filed more than 77.5 million voter registration applications, according to the Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency that helps states administer elections, and total registration topped 200 million.

National: How Will We Vote? Outbreak Revives Debate on Mail-In Ballots | Nicholas Riccardi and Rachel La Corte/Associated Press

As the coronavirus pandemic knocks primary election after primary election off schedule, Democrats argue the outbreak shows the country needs to move toward one of their longtime goals — widespread voting by mail — to protect the November election. But Democrats’ hopes for using the crisis to expand voting by mail face firm Republican opposition, as well as significant logistical challenges. In some states, it would amount to a major revamp of their voting system just eight months before an election. Vote-by-mail boosters already lost the first round of the fight. Democrats tried and failed to insert a broad mandate expanding voting by mail in the stimulus bill, a proposal that could cost as much as $2 billion. Instead, the bill included $400 million to help states adjust elections however they see fit before November. But Democrats in Washington say they will keep pressing the issue, pointing to the increasing number of states that are shifting to mail-in voting for primaries as evidence that the time is right. A poll from the Pew Research Center released Monday found that about two-thirds of Americans would be uncomfortable voting at polling places during the outbreak. “Practically every single Tuesday, we see another state reacting to their inability to run their election in the middle of this incredible health care pandemic,” said Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the first state to vote entirely through the mail. He called expanded mail voting “not even a close call.” Former Vice President Joe Biden, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, joined the push Sunday. “We should be looking to all-mail ballots across the board,” Biden said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We should be beginning to plan that in each of our states.”

National: Voting security guidelines get Election Assistance Commission attention | Tim Starks/Politico

New federal voting system guidelines prohibiting internet and wireless connectivity received significant attention on Friday when members of an Election Assistance Commission advisory group explained the broad suite of new guidelines to EAC commissioners and the public during a virtual meeting. If approved, version 2.0 of the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines will require voting machines and ballot scanners to be air-gapped from networked devices, such as e-poll books that access voter registration databases. The new VVSG would also require physical connections instead of Wi-Fi or Bluetooth for peripherals such as keyboards and audio headsets. The internet and wireless bans “are logical and make sense and definitely could be [accomplished by] election officials,” said Orange County, Calif., elections supervisor Neal Kelley, a member of the EAC’s Technical Guidelines Development Committee. Asked by EAC Commissioner Donald Palmer whether the bans were feasible, Kelley said Orange County and other jurisdictions already use air gaps. The requirements should not “be onerous in any way,” he said. The NIST staffers who wrote the VVSG provisions “had many discussions surrounding this issue,” said Mary Brady, the head of NIST’s voting system program. Staffers talked to vendors about “what they thought might be workable,” she told Palmer. They also reassured election officials that simple workarounds existed for their most common networking use cases.

National: Coronavirus upends US election cycle as officials scramble to protect voters | Joan E Greve/The Guardian

When Spelman College announced this month it was suspending in-person classes and closing residence halls in response to coronavirus, Ashee Groce, a junior, had a question: how would she vote? Groce, who serves as president of Young Democrats of America at Spelman, had registered herself and a number of fellow students in the Atlanta area. But they had now lost their housing and would have to return home before Georgia’s presidential primary. On a press call for the not-for-profit Rock the Vote, Groce said she was grateful Georgia was one of the states that have delayed their primaries, giving her more time to figure out how to cast a ballot, but those decisions have sparked their own set of concerns. As the coronavirus outbreak spreads across America, it is wreaking havoc in an election year as Democrats pick a champion to try to oust Donald Trump from the White House. But at least 15 Democratic primaries have now been delayed because of coronavirus, essentially freezing the Democratic nominating contest – currently dominated by the former vice-president Joe Biden. While state officials scramble to find safe ways for voters to cast their ballots, voting rights advocates warn that lawmakers will have to do considerable work to ensure the pandemic does not derail the presidential election.

National: Experts are warning coronavirus puts integrity the election at risk. Here’s what could happen come November. | Marshall Cohen and Kelly Mena/CNN

As states scramble to delay their spring primaries, election professionals and voting experts are anxiously looking ahead to November and warning that the coronavirus pandemic is already threatening the safety and integrity of the next presidential election. These experts are raising the alarm that the virus poses unprecedented challenges to the 2020 election, and that time is running out to prevent a disaster at the polls. President Donald Trump will square off against likely Democratic nominee Joe Biden in what is shaping up to be a tight race, where small tweaks to voting rules could tip the scales or trigger a constitutional crisis. The Trump administration is planning for a pandemic with multiple waves of illness that are expected to stretch into next year, according to an internal government report obtained by CNN. That means sweeping changes will be necessary in all 50 states to pull off the first pandemic-plagued presidential election in American history, according to interviews with more than a dozen state officials, former federal officials, voting rights activists and legal scholars.

National: How to Get Ahead of Election 2020 Security Threats | Tom Guarente/StateTech Magazine

With the first waves of 2020 election primaries behind us, state officials continue to face the question of whether their election systems are prepared for looming cybersecurity threats. Foreign threat actors have shown again and again their interest in undermining one of the most sacred rights Americans hold: the vote. In Florida, it’s been reported, Russian interference in voter roll systems had the potential to alter results during the 2016 midterm elections. In Illinois, media reports show,  there’s evidence that hackers working for Russian military intelligence installed malware on the network of a voter registration technology vendor that year. In fact, all 50 states’ election systems were targeted by Russia in 2016, according to a July 2019 report from the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Security experts have seen a number of potential threats to the 2020 elections, namely a significant increase in ransomware attacks, continued disinformation campaigns and more aggressive nation-state attacks within regions outside the United States.

National: How Elections Got So Vulnerable—and What We Can Do Now | Alejandro de la Garza/Time

America’s democracy is at risk from more than Russian Twitter trolls. Our voting systems, the information technology that undergirds our elections, are dangerously outdated and vulnerable to attack. And for Finnish data security expert Harri Hursti, the best defense we have might be counting paper ballots. We don’t have to count every vote by hand, he says — just enough to prove with a reasonable standard of certainty that the electronic results are valid. And for Hursti, who founded a string of companies before becoming involved in the area of election security, such a low-tech solution might be our best chance to protect the core mechanisms of our democracy. Hursti is the subject of the new HBO documentary Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Elections, directed by Simon Ardizzone, Russell Michaels and Sarah Teale. The film, which premiered March 26, follows Hursti as he exposes the vulnerabilities of America’s election systems. Watching the doc and learning the extent of those weaknesses won’t necessarily help you sleep at night, but for activists and ethical hackers, the first step in fixing a system is showing that it was broken to begin with. Hursti spoke with TIME in advance of the film’s release, taking a deep look at the realities of American election security, psychological warfare and the information landscape in the age of coronavirus. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

National: Nationwide voting by mail will be a massive undertaking say those who’ve done it | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

It will take a massive effort of time and resources to increase voting by mail across the nation if the coronavirus pandemic is still jeopardizing in-person voting in November. And the $400 million appropriated by Congress is nowhere near enough to make it feasible. That’s the warning from election officials in states that vote almost entirely by mail, who say it took years of careful planning for them to make the transition. “It’s going to be a herculean effort, but failure is not an option,” Washington state Secretary of State Kim Wyman, whose state is among five that vote that way, told me. By contrast, there are 13 states that don’t currently even offer all their voters the option of casting ballots by mail, according to a tally released yesterday by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. The warnings underscore the unprecedented challenge facing officials who are beginning to contemplate a complete overhaul of their election operations during just seven months and in the midst of a global health crisis. The shift to better secure elections against hacking after Russian interference in 2016, by contrast, took place over more than three years and still produced mixed results.

National: Unease at the Polls Over Election Integrity | George Leopold/EE Times

The polling place in the gym at Buzz Aldrin Elementary School in northern Virginia was humming like a well-oiled machine on Super Tuesday morning, March 3. Poll workers were efficiently checking in voters, briskly directing them to cardboard cubicles where citizens filled out paper ballots tallied by electronic vote scanners. I handed my drivers’ license to a poll worker who placed it in a holder while pulling up the county database on a tablet device to confirm my eligibility to vote in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. “State your name and address,” she instructed. I was handed a ballot, directed to a tabletop voting “booth”, filled in the circle next to my choice, placed my ballot in the scanner that verified my vote had been duly recorded. Another poll worker handed me a be-flagged “I Voted” sticker and I was on my way. Exercising the franchise took all of ten minutes. Nothing to it. That is, if you live in the genteel suburbs of Washington, DC. Elsewhere, casting a vote can be an ordeal. Accurate votes counts are becoming more problematic. In many areas, touchscreen voting machines based on electronic pen technologies like “ballot marking devices” remain vulnerable. Recent legislation ostensibly designed to secure the 2020 presidential elections lack safeguards such as encryption, election security experts note.

National: The Coronavirus Could Change How We Vote, In 2020 And Beyond | Lee Drutman/FiveThirtyEight

The 2020 election will likely be different thanks to the new coronavirus. In fact, COVID-19 has already left its mark on the Democratic nomination race, with many states postponing their primaries. So it’s likely that in the coming months, states will begin to move toward allowing more voters to mail in their ballots, or at least cast votes early to spread people out. It’s entirely possible that Election Day 2020 will be more like Election Month (or perhaps months, depending on how long it takes to count the ballots). That means between now and November, states and election administrators are going to have to make lots of decisions about how they conduct elections. How they manage this may affect who votes and whose vote is counted, how campaigns operate, and perhaps even the level of uncertainty in the polls. In short, the mechanisms of the voting process may turn out to be as important this year as what the candidates say. We’re not starting from scratch, however. In 2016, roughly two in five voters cast their ballots early or by mail, which marked a record share of ballots cast by methods other than in person on Election Day.

National: Facebook, Google and Twitter Struggle to Handle November’s Election | Kevin Roose, Sheera Frenkel and Nicole Perlroth/The New York Times

The day after the New Hampshire primary last month, Facebook’s security team removed a network of fake accounts that originated in Iran, which had posted divisive partisan messages about the U.S. election inside private Facebook groups. Hours later, the social network learned the campaign of Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor, had sidestepped its political ad process by directly paying Instagram meme accounts to post in support of his presidential bid. That same day, a pro-Trump group called the Committee to Defend the President, which had previously run misleading Facebook ads, was found to be promoting a photo that falsely claimed to show Bernie Sanders supporters holding signs with divisive slogans such as “Illegal Aliens Deserve the Same as Our Veterans.” Facebook, Twitter, Google and other big tech companies have spent the past three years working to avoid a repeat of 2016, when their platforms were overrun by Russian trolls and used to amplify America’s partisan divide. The internet giants have since collectively spent billions of dollars hiring staff, fortifying their systems and developing new policies to prevent election meddling. But as the events of just one day — Feb. 12 — at Facebook showed, although the companies are better equipped to deal with the types of interference they faced in 2016, they are struggling to handle the new challenges of 2020.

National: Pandemic pushes states to vote-by-mail, bringing new challenges | Gopal Ratnam/Roll Call

States and local election jurisdictions across the country are preparing for a surge in voting by mail this November stemming from people’s reluctance to gather in crowds or even venture out if the coronavirus pandemic persists through late fall. The switch to mail-in ballots is likely to heighten security challenges both on cyber and physical fronts. While many western states including Oregon, Washington, Colorado and parts of California already rely heavily on vote-by-mail, states east of the Mississippi are likely to see an increase in absentee voter requests and for vote-by-mail, and are preparing for that, Ben Hovland, chairman of the Election Assistance Commission, told CQ Roll Call in an interview. In conference calls with state officials, Hovland said he has heard them discuss changes in processes and procedures to prepare for a surge in vote-by-mail and the risks that could stem from the shift. “It adds to an already difficult job that state election officials face,” Hovland said. “People need to be aware of potential new risk vectors in as far as some jurisdictions are talking about creating an online portal for voters to request mail-in ballots.”