In an age of growing questions surrounding election integrity, the University of Nebraska-Omaha hosted a news conference on election security that highlighted the work Nebraska, and the country as a whole, is doing to ensure its elections are safe, transparent and secure.
The secretaries of state from Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa and Missouri convened with National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (NCITE) Director Gina Ligon and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly at the conference on Oct. 9.
Earlier this year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ranked Nebraska fifth in the nation in election performance, and election officials in the state have been invited to testify in the U.S. Senate about its commendable election operations, Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen said.
This year, Nebraska implemented voter ID in its main primary election for the first time. Evnen said the state had a smooth and successful rollout of this practice because it learned from the 35 states that came before it in this venture.
Evnen said CISA has helped Nebraska harden the cybersecurity measures in place for its election technology over the past two years. All 93 counties now have their websites scanned for vulnerabilities weekly, have a managed service provider or internal information technology department and have .gov email and websites.
Nebraska has also worked with CISA to host emergency scenario exercises across the state.
Evnen said Nebraska tests every ballot counting machine for accuracy three times before every statewide primary and general election.
After the upcoming election, Nebraska will randomly select 10% of its precincts, at least one in every county, and hand count three of its races. When this happened in 2022, there were discrepancies in only 0.00023% of ballots. Evnen said these discrepancies were often due to people not filling in the bubbles clearly.
“Holding a smooth election doesn't happen by accident,” Evnen said. “There are months of preparation, and Nebraskans owe a debt of gratitude to our election workers and the thousands of poll workers who will be serving their communities on election day.”
Easterly said CISA has not seen specific threats from foreign adversaries to Nebraska. However, those adversaries, including China, Russia and Iran, have given clear indications that they remain a persistent threat in aiming to do two different things – undermining American trust in its democratic institutions and in the security and integrity of its elections and sowing partisan discord.
Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft said he, his fellow speakers and election officials across the country are not there to serve candidates but to serve the people.
“The day after the election, if (Americans) don't believe that that's their governor or their senator or their president, our republic has fallen without a single bullet being fired,” said Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate. “That's not acceptable. So we're going to continue to be vigilant and do what we can on our front.”
Easterly said the machines Americans use to cast their votes are not connected to the internet, so it is nearly impossible for malicious cyber actors to get into those systems. Additionally, election officials have developed multiple in-depth layers of technological, procedural and physical defenses to protect election infrastructure including pre-election logic and accuracy testing, enhanced cybersecurity protections, physical access controls, post-election auditing and more.
Easterly said Americans can rest assured knowing their elections will be safe, secure, free and fair. Since the start of this election cycle, CISA has facilitated more than 1,000 physical security assessments, over 700 cyber security assessments, over 180 tabletop exercises to work through scenarios and 440 training sessions that have reached tens of thousands of election workers.
“I have tremendous confidence in our election officials, having seen all of the work that they have done to improve the security and resilience of election infrastructure,” Easterly said.
Easterly suggests people who do not have confidence in the security or integrity of the election process get involved in that process, such as by becoming a poll worker or election observer.
“Moreover, if you have questions about the information that you're seeing, the people that you need to go to are your state and local election officials,” she said. “It is a complicated process but it is a transparent process.”
