Issue One’s bipartisan National Council on Election Integrity calls on Congress to invest in cybersecurity

An opinion piece, entitled “Putin wants to hack our elections. Here’s how we stop it,” by Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson (R-KY) and former Congressman Reid Ribble (R-WI), calls on Congress to prioritize election cyber security.

Over recent years, lawmakers from both parties have coalesced around a common agenda for election cybersecurity, sponsoring legislation to boost funding, improve security standards, ensure the use of paper ballots that provide durable records, and mainstream the use of risk-limiting audits to verify vote counts.

While many Democrats have been pushing for paper ballot requirements and election security funding for more than a decade, a growing number of Republicans — including former President Trump — have been vocal in their support for these policies. In December, the leaders of prominent conservative groups — including Americans for Tax Reform, FreedomWorks, R Street Institute, James Madison Institute, and others — sent a letter to Congress calling for more federal funding for election cybersecurity.

The crisis with Russia will hopefully prompt Congress to act…

While Russia’s interest in interfering with U.S. voting is, by this point, “old news,” we can’t lose sight of just how devastating a cyber-attack of an election would be to the civic life of our nation. It’s time that we start investing in defenses commensurate with the seriousness of the risk.

Both authors are members of Issue One’s National Council on Election Integrity.

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