The House Science Committee met Tuesday to discuss efforts to safeguard the November elections from hacking threats, with lawmakers pressing officials on the potential danger and the federal response. Concerns over an election hack have grown after recent breaches to Illinois and Arizona’s online voter registration databases and the Democratic National Committee email hack. “Rightly, we should be concerned about the integrity of our election system,” said Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), who pressed witnesses on whether elections should be treated as critical infrastructure requiring federal support. “Typically, whatever we get involved with doesn’t run as well as if the state is doing it themselves,” he cautioned.
… Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) pressed witnesses on how many concrete examples there are of Russian-based hacking into U.S. elections system. Schedler said he knew of none, and said he discussed the question with Secretary of Homeland Security Johnson.
However, Dan Wallach, a professor of computer science at Rice University, was reluctant to dismiss the threat. “The nature of threat is that they don’t want to see them there, so we can’t assume that if we haven’t see them that they’re absent.”
Full Article: Lawmakers weigh federal role in preventing election hacks | TheHill.