Election Technology Research Act of 2020

Floor Speech

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Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 4990.

Voting is the bedrock of our representative democracy. The integrity of our election infrastructure is essential to free and fair elections. Votes are cast and counted using a variety of systems, from hand-marked paper ballots to direct-recording electronic machines. There is a whole host of other technology that also supports the process, including electronic pollbooks, voter registration databases, and other components of comprehensive systems.

I support H.R. 4990, the Election Technology Research Act of 2019, because it invests in science to bolster the resilience of election technology, and commend its sponsor, Representative Sherrill, for authoring the bill. This legislation is in keeping with other bills this House has passed in the 116th Congress to protect our democratic institutions, including H.R. 1 (the For the People Act), H.R. 2722 (the SAFE Act), and H.R. 4617 (the SHIELD Act).

Russia attacked our democracy in 2016. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation confirmed that Russian GRU officers ``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 (SBOEs), 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 July 2020, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published an election infrastructure risk assessment. It found that ``compromises to the integrity of state-level voter registration systems, the preparation of election data (e.g., ballot programming), vote aggregation systems, and election websites present particular risk to the ability of jurisdictions to conduct elections.''

Our elections remain under threat from foreign adversaries. In August 2020, the Director of the United States Counterintelligence and Security Center said that foreign states may use the 2020 elections to ``seek to compromise our election infrastructure for a range of possible purposes, such as interfering with the voting process, stealing sensitive data, or calling into question the validity of the election results.''

H.R. 4990 is commonsense, bipartisan legislation that responds to these ongoing threats. It authorizes new research and standards for election infrastructure security. It directs the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to carry out research that will increase the understanding of cyber and other threats to voting systems. It will lead to the development of technology, processes, and policies for more secure and accessible elections. This includes the cybersecurity of different components of voting systems, end-to-end verifiable systems, voter privacy and data protection, election auditing, interoperability of system technologies, and ballot tracking.

Importantly, the bill also amends the Help America Vote Act to expand the definition of voting systems to include electronic pollbooks, voter registration databases, systems for carrying out post-election auditing, and related technology. This will lead to improved guidance to election administrators for these systems by the Election Assistance Commission and its partners, which include NIST.

I am pleased to support H.R. 4990 and urge its passage.

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