From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: Election Security

Description: We're discussing DHS's efforts to ensuring the security of
this year's elections.

Related GAO Work: GAO-20-267: Election Security: DHS Plans Are Urgently
Needed to Address Identified Challenges Before the 2020 Elections

Released: February 2020

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[Vijay D'Souza:] We really think it's important for DHS to finalize its
operational strategic plans to make sure it's doing things as
efficiently and as effectively as possible. 

[Matt Oldham:] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news
and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. I'm Matt
Oldham. Primary and caucus season is underway as we head toward the
national election in November. People are voting, and they're concerned
about the security of our elections. And with me, to talk about a GAO
report looking at how the Department of Homeland Security is handling
election security, is Vijay D'Souza, an Information Technology and Cyber
Security director. Thanks for joining me, Vijay. 

[Vijay D'Souza:] Thanks. It's great to be here. 

[Matt Oldham:] So, what are the threats to our elections? 

[Vijay D'Souza:] Well, the threats to our elections are similar to the
threats to any other part of our critical infrastructure. You can divide
the threats into three areas. You can look at threats to physical
infrastructure such as polling places, cyber infrastructure such as the
computers that are used for elections or voter registration, and threats
to the human portion of infrastructure so for example the workers that
tabulate votes. For all of these threats, there is both unintentional
threats and intentional threats. So an example of an unintentional
threat might be if a large number of election workers came down with the
flu or something like that on election day. If something like that
happened, there might be delays in counting votes. There might be long
lines at polling stations. There could be an increased likelihood of
mistakes or something like that. An intentional threat might be one that
we've all heard of which is, you know, potential nation-state
interference in our election infrastructure. 

[Matt Oldham:] And so what has DHS been doing? 

[Vijay D'Souza:] Well, it's important to recognize that elections are
not run by DHS and not run by the federal government. In the U.S.,
elections are run by state and local entities, in fact over 10,000 of
them as stated in our report. So each of these organizations does things
slightly differently. DHS provides, on a voluntary basis, a number of
different services to these jurisdictions. Some of these include
education awareness. For example, DHS has an online training that
election workers can do related to cyber security and other threats.
They've also done two nationwide exercises where they brought people
together from all the states and many localities to kind of talk through
different scenarios. They also do a variety of on-site work. So they can
come on site to a state or local government and assess their cyber
security and physical security. And they also have some ways to do that
remotely without actually coming to visit. 

[Matt Oldham:] And has there been any feedback from the states and local
jurisdictions about DHS's assessments? 

[Vijay D'Souza:] For our report, we talked to eight states and three
local jurisdictions. And they had pretty positive things to say about
what DHS has been doing. When the election sector was originally
designated as critical infrastructure, there was some concern from state
and local entities about the federal government sort of overreaching.
But, in general, what we heard is that the state and local entities have
been able to build a pretty positive working relationship with DHS. DHS
has been out there at various conferences and forums, and offering
services, and trying to share information and overall trying to take
some good steps in the right direction. 

[Matt Oldham:] So it sounds like while states and local jurisdictions
are ultimately responsible for how they run their elections, DHS does
offer some services including assessments and exercises to those areas.
And it sounds like that collaboration is going fairly well. Does this
report offer any recommendations for DHS going forward? 

[Vijay D'Souza:] Yeah. Definitely. While we were pleased to hear about
the positive feedback from the state and local entities, DHS has
identified some areas where it recognized it needs to improve. It did
two reviews, and it wants to incorporate those in an overall strategic
plan and operational plan for the 2020 election cycle which, as you
mentioned, is actually underway. Now the issue is neither the strategic
plan or the operational plan have been finalized. And without a final
plan, it's harder for DHS to coordinate and make sure all of its
employees are working on the same playbook and doing things the same
way. So our recommendation at DHS was to finalize both of these plans as
soon as possible. 

[Matt Oldham:] Vijay, last question. What's the bottom line of this
report? 

[Vijay D'Souza:] So the bottom line is I think people should know that
there are a lot of positive efforts underway to keep our elections
secure. A lot of good things are happening. That being said, we really
think it's important for DHS to finalize its operational strategic plans
to make sure it's doing things as efficiently and as effectively as
possible. 

[Matt Oldham:] Vijay D'Souza was talking about DHS efforts for election
security in 2020. Thank you for your time, Vijay. 

[Vijay D'Souza:] Thank you. 

[Matt Oldham:] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To
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