House panel takes on election security

The House Homeland Security Committee is hosting this Congress’s first hearing on election security tomorrow, featuring DHS’s top cyber official Christopher Krebs and the Election Assistance Commission’s Thomas Hicks.

Following the officials will be a panel of other election security experts, including California Secretary of State Alex Padilla (D) and Alabama’s Secretary of State John Merrill (R), who’s there at the invitation of the panel’s ranking member Mike Rogers (R-Ala.).

“Election security should not be a partisan issue, but Congress has done far too little to prevent foreign election meddling after Russia interfered in the 2016 election,” Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in a statement. “Leading on this issue for the past two years, Democrats have promised the American people that securing our voting systems and democratic institutions would continue to be a priority this Congress. Holding oversight hearings on potential legislation is making good on this promise.”

One of the witnesses testifying, Jake Braun, is a former DHS official and the head of the University of Chicago’s Cyber Policy Initiative.

Braun told The Hill that he hopes the hearing will serve as an opportunity for election officials to work alongside ethical hackers to expose the flaws in election security.

“My main point is the need to look at this as a national security problem, not as an election administration one,” he said in an interview ahead of tomorrow’s hearing.