Securing America's Federal Elections Act
Floor Speech
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Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 460, I call up the bill (H.R. 2722) to protect elections for public office by providing financial support and enhanced security for the infrastructure used to carry out such elections, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
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Ms. LOFGREN. 2722.
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Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 2722. The SAFE Act is critical legislation to invest in and upgrade the machinery of American democracy. It will help us combat the national emergency facing our country. It will improve the resilience of election infrastructure used in Federal elections.
Aging equipment, under-resourced jurisdictions, and interference by foreign entities or non-state actors leaves the system vulnerable to exploitation that can undermine confidence in election outcomes. Ineffective and vulnerable equipment can also discourage participation in Federal elections.
It comes to the floor after the Committee on House Administration held three hearings in the first 6 months of this year that addressed the integrity of our elections. In February the committee held the ``For the People: Our American Democracy'' hearing, where the integrity of our democracy--including critical steps to improve the security and reliability of our election infrastructure--was addressed.
On May 8 the committee held an election security hearing where we heard testimony about the urgent need to upgrade our election infrastructure and the lack of ongoing investment in the wake of new threats.
And on May 21 the committee held an oversight hearing of the Election Assistance Commission, an agency that plays a central role in supporting election administration in this country.
I will remind this House that earlier this year, the Director of National Intelligence published a report stating that our adversaries and strategic competitors ``probably already are looking to the 2020 U.S. elections as an opportunity to advance their interests.
``They may also use cyber means to `directly manipulate or disrupt elections systems--such as by tampering with voter registration or disrupting the vote tallying process--either to alter data or to call into question our voting process.'''
Last year he said that ``the warning lights are blinking red''. . . .
Special Counsel Robert Mueller noted in Volume One of his report that the Russian military ``targeted individuals and entities involved in the administration of the elections. Victims included U.S. State and local entities, such as State boards of elections, secretaries of State, and county governments, as well as individuals who worked for those entities. The GRU also targeted private technology firms responsible for manufacturing and administering election-related software and hardware, such as voter registration software and electronic polling stations.''
In April, FBI Director Christopher Wray called Russia's interference efforts a ``significant counterintelligence threat,'' and said that the 2018 midterms were a ``dress rehearsal for the big show'' of the 2020 Presidential elections.
Early voters in Georgia in 2018 saw machines deleting votes and switching them to other candidates. The machines where voters saw this occur were purchased in 2002. During early voting in Texas in 2018 some electronic voting machines deleted votes and switched them between candidates. The machines were used in 78 of 254 Texas counties.
In June of 2016 the Russian GRU compromised the computer network of the Illinois State Board of Elections by exploiting a vulnerability in their website. They gained access to a database with information on millions of Illinois voters and extracted data on thousands before the activity was detected.
H.R. 2722 responds to this emergency that we find ourselves in as a nation. We ought to be doing everything we can to bolster the security and integrity of our elections from interference and hacking.
The bill's section 102 requires that States transition to voting systems that use individual, durable, voter-verified paper ballots, which means a paper ballot marked by the voter by hand or through the use of a non-tabulating ballot marking device or system. Voter-verified paper ballots are the best way to ensure that a voter's ballot accurately reflects their choices and is counted as cast. Paper can be audited. In the last Presidential election, approximately 20 percent of registered voters cast their ballot on voting machines that do not have any kind of paper backup.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concluded that paperless systems ``should be removed from service as soon as possible.''
In at least 40 States, elections are carried out using machines that are at least a decade old. And like any technology, they are susceptible to increasing failure with age. One witness at our election security hearing, Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, explained that some State officials have ``had to turn to eBay to find critical components like dot-matrix printer ribbons, decades old storage devices, and analog modems.'' Aging systems also frequently rely on unsupported software like Windows XP and 2000, which may not receive regular security patches and are thus more vulnerable to the latest methods of cyberattack.
This bill addresses many other cybersecurity best practices besides paper-based systems.
The bill in section 111 authorizes a $600 million Election Assistance Commission grant program to assist States in securing election infrastructure. States may use the money to replace their aging equipment with voter-verified paper ballot voting systems, but also ongoing maintenance of election infrastructure, enhanced cybersecurity and operations of IT infrastructure, and enhanced cybersecurity of voter registration systems.
Originally, the bill, as introduced, would have authorized $1 billion for this initial round of surge funding; however, during the Committee on House Administration's markup, the committee approved an amendment in the nature of a substitute that authorized $600 million instead. Combined with the $380 million that Congress appropriated last year in election security grants, this funding reaches the $1 billion that experts have said is necessary to implement these necessary protections.
The bill also provides in section 111 $175 million in biennial maintenance funding. Cybersecurity threats will not dissipate, they will only evolve. State election officials have told us repeatedly they need more funding and a sustainable source of funding.
Section 103 of the SAFE Act fosters innovation for voters living with disabilities. It provides grant funding for the study, development, and testing of accessible paper ballot voting, verification, and casting mechanisms. It expressly requires States to ensure that individuals with disabilities and others are given an equivalent opportunity to vote, including with privacy and independence, in a manner that produces voter-verified paper ballots as for other voters.
The bill fosters accountability for election technology vendors. It would create a qualified election infrastructure vendor designation where the Election Assistance Commission, in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security, would craft criteria that vendors would follow to receive the qualified designation. This would include reporting any known or suspected cybersecurity incidents involving election infrastructure to both the EAC and DHS, as well as affected election agencies.
The bill in sections 201 and 203 also includes open-source provisions, requiring use of software and hardware for which information is disclosed by manufacturers. This will allow cybersecurity experts and the public to vet the security of election systems regardless of the technology used.
As amended in the committee, the bill in section 121 requires States to adopt risk-limiting audits. Risk-limiting audits are the gold standard of post-election audits. They involve hand counting a certain number of ballots using advanced statistical methods to determine with a high degree of confidence that the reported election outcome is accurate. The SAFE Act requires States to implement risk-limiting audits because they go hand in hand with paper ballots. We need audits to ensure that ballot marking devices or optical scanners were not hacked and that the reported results are accurate.
Second, as amended in committee, the bill in section 201 includes specific cybersecurity standards to apply to optical scanner voting systems and another set of standards to apply to ballot marking devices. These will apply equally to current and future technology. For example, H.R. 2722 prohibits the use of wireless communications devices and internet connectivity in voting systems upon which ballots are marked by voters or that otherwise mark and tabulate ballots.
Madam Speaker, H.R. 2722 is an essential step forward in shoring up our election infrastructure and investing in secure elections. I ask the House to pass this legislation and bolster the trust and confidence in our system that all Americans expect and deserve.
Every American--no matter what their choice in politics--should know that their vote will be counted as cast.
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Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Davis), a member of the House Administration Committee.
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Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin), a member of the House Administration Committee.
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Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Mrs. McBath), a new Member of Congress.
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Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Casten).
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Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Virginia (Ms. Wexton).
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Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), my colleague from the House Judiciary Committee and Homeland Security Committee.
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Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Speaker, may I inquire how much time remains on each side.
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Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Sarbanes).
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Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the Speaker of the House.
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Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Butterfield), a valued member of the House Administration Committee.
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Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Speaker, we have no additional speakers, so if the gentleman would like to yield back, I will close.
Mr. RODNEY DAVIS of Illinois. Madam Speaker, how much time do I have left?
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Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I think it is important to address a few of the issues that have been raised in the course of this debate.
First, we are moving forward with the SAFE Act because of a sense of urgency that we have about the 2020 election. That sense of urgency was fueled by the Director of National Intelligence, and it was fueled by the Director of the FBI who told us that red lights, warning lights were flashing and that the 2016 election was just a prelude to what the Russians were going to do in the 2020 election. We feel a sense of urgency.
As has been mentioned by others, H.R. 1 included provisions about ballot security. But I introduced this bill, the SAFE Act, on May 14 because it was specifically addressing election security, and, also, we made some additional enhancements to H.R. 1 relative to cybersecurity and the like.
We drafted the bill with the assistance of the Parliamentarian so that it was entirely within the jurisdiction of the House Administration Committee, with one exception. There was a line on page 11 of the committee mark that authorized a study by the NSF. The Science, Space, and Technology Committee waived jurisdiction on markup because it was just a study, and that was very clear.
This bill has proceeded in the regular order. It has been noticed according to our rules. And it brings us here today to test whether we are going to meet the challenge that faces us in ballot security: whether we are going to allow the Russians to attack our country by trying to steal our election next year or not.
Mention has been made about the need for bipartisanship. I work often on a bipartisan basis with Members of the other party. I will say that we have tried in vain to have the Republican Members buy into the need to require best practices for next year's election, and we couldn't reach agreement.
We decided that it is our responsibility to move forward, and that is why we are here today.
Just a mention on unfunded mandates, we are authorizing about $1 billion. $380 million was appropriated last year, and as the Speaker mentioned, we are appropriating this year an additional $600 million for ballot security.
This bill authorizes the $600 million that we are appropriating, and we think it is important that that money flow to the States to harden our systems so the election cannot be stolen by our enemies. It is ironic that some on the other side of the aisle have complained about unfunded mandates at the same time they tried to impose a 25 percent match requirement on States for receiving these funds that they need to get to harden our system.
Just a comment on DREs, DREs are not as unsafe as pure electronic voting, but they are not best practices.
Much has been mentioned about the State of Georgia. It is worth noting that the Georgia legislature ignored the advice they got from computer scientists that what they were doing did not meet best practices for ballot security.
A study published by Georgia Tech indicated that most voters did not actually look at the receipt when it was printed. They also point out that even though printed ballots, when voters do look at them, include the names of candidates, votes will be encoded in barcodes that humans can't authenticate and that are subject to hacking.
``There's nothing speculative about these vulnerabilities,'' said a Georgia Tech computer professor and former chief technology officer for Hewlett-Packard. ``If exploited, it would affect the result of the election. It's not a secure system.''
We need to fix these things not because it is partisan but because we need to protect America.
The idea that we would allow this just to be decided at a local level is wrongheaded. If the Russians launched missiles at the counties of the United States, we wouldn't say, well, that is just a local issue. We would say, no, that is an attack on the United States of America.
We need to harden our systems and protect our country.
Madam Speaker, I strongly urge the adoption of this measure.
I would like to read from a letter that we received just yesterday from the NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice. In their last paragraph, the Catholics say:
In a secular democracy, elections are the closest thing we have to a sacrament. We know that nefarious foreign and domestic actors continue to meddle in our democratic systems, and we have been put on notice that previous efforts were only trial runs, presumably for our next election in 2020. The NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice considers our elections to be sacrosanct and that Congress must pass the SAFE Act to protect them.
This bill is supported by a broad sector of civil rights groups, including the NAACP and Common Cause. It deserves all of our support.
I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 2722 to ensure the security of our Nation's election infrastructure.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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