In a recent letter to, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, President Trump\u2019s assistant for national security affairs, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called on the executive branch to take action to secure political elections in the U.S., citing unwillingness by Congressional leadership to take action through legislative means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCybersecurity experts have complained for decades about the risks associated with insecure electronic voting machines and the need for paper audit trails. Their warnings have largely gone unheeded,\u201d Wyden wrote. \u201cUnfortunately, even with clear evidence that states are not addressing their vulnerable election infrastructures, Congressional leadership has been unwilling to schedule legislative efforts that either provide oversight ore require states to adopt common-sense election cybersecurity measures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Though Wyden said that he plans to introduce legislation requiring states to undertake \u201ccommon sense measures\u201d by conducting risk limiting audits on federal election results, he also acknowledged that Congress would not be able to address these issues without bipartisan support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCongressional leadership conveniently chooses to believe that this is a states\u2019 rights issue, even if it means leaving our national elections vulnerable to cyber attacks,\u201d Wyden wrote. \u201cAs such, the executive branch must shoulder the burden of protecting federal elections from foreign cyberattacks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
States have in the past been resistant to federal involvement in election processes, and were initially resistant to the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s January 2017 designation of election systems as critical infrastructure, though DHS has emphasized that the designation only gives election systems priority when requesting federal cybersecurity aid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wyden\u2019s letter calls on McMaster to take four steps in securing federal elections:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCongressional leadership conveniently chooses to believe that this is a states\u2019 rights issue, even if it means leaving our national elections vulnerable to cyber attacks,\u201d Sen. Ron Wyden wrote to President Trump’s national security adviser.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":37956,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":10,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2869],"class_list":["post-19749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cyber"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"2F7DVIKG2ZAZHEQURA2YZBIA5I","arc_canonical_url":"\/federal-oversight\/congress\/2017\/12\/13\/senator-calls-on-administration-to-act-on-election-cybersecurity-since-congress-wont\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n