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Election officials want to be "supportive" of the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS's) efforts to secure voting systems but think they are better positioned than DHS to boost the cyber and physical security of the nation's elections apparatus, Brian Newby, executive director of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), indicated this week.
DHS designated election systems as "critical infrastructure" this year after the U.S. intelligence community concluded that Russian government operatives had used cyber attacks and disinformation to influence the 2016 presidential election (CPR, Jan. 9).
Although the DHS designation allows state and local election officials to voluntarily take advantage of DHS expertise and resources to help secure voting systems, many election officials were skeptical about how helpful DHS would be, and they remain doubtful.
"The Department of Homeland Security certainly has identified elections as critical infrastructure," Mr. Newby said at a meeting of the EAC, an independent...