We can’t afford to defund election security
Not taking election security seriously irreparably harms our democracy.
By Pamela Smith
As voters head to the polls in state and local elections across the country, a quiet but consequential threat is growing—one that transcends party lines and strikes at the heart of our nation’s most fundamental right: the ability to vote in free, fair, and secure elections.
That threat is the weakening of our elections’ cybersecurity. When cyber-attacks are becoming more sophisticated than ever, the federal government is making cuts to the very agencies and programs designed to help state and local election officials defend against them. Chief among these is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
CISA was created in the aftermath of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Since then, the agency has worked with election officials to combat cyber, physical, and other dangers—monitoring threats, testing systems’ vulnerabilities, providing training on best practices, and supporting rapid response to incidents involving elections at every level.
But in February, 130 employees at CISA were fired and over a dozen more were put on leave. That’s only the beginning—the agency plans to cut as many as 1,300 additional employees of about 3,300 in the coming weeks. With these experts removed and installed in their place a teenage hacker, the call is now coming from inside the house.
Perhaps the biggest blow came in March, when CISA ended funding for the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC). The average voter might not be familiar with EI-ISAC, but for election officials nationwide, it has been an invaluable tool. This hub connected officials from around the country and shared the latest information about threats and incidents. As one Florida official put it: “If somebody in New York reports some malicious IP addresses, it gets spread out to us in real time to where all of us can block said IP address. There is nothing else like that.”
This work is critical. Elections are run not by federal agencies but by the states and thousands of localities, many of which are already understaffed and underfunded. EI-ISAC filled a massive gap—especially for small and rural jurisdictions, helping them detect and respond to threats they would never be able to confront alone. These services were also provided for free, another relief for offices with limited resources. Federal funding for EI-ISAC was only $10 million, a drop in the bucket of the total $6.8 trillion federal budget.
The CISA cuts should worry everyone. Election security is national security—something every American has a stake in. These cuts are an invitation to attacks, undermining our democratic process when we should be doubling down.
The threats facing our elections aren’t just hypothetical—they’re real, persistent, and growing only more complex by the day. In the past few years, election offices have faced ransomware attacks, network intrusions, phishing campaigns, and mis- and disinformation efforts—all designed to disrupt operations or shake confidence in election outcomes.
In 2020, a ransomware attack in Hall County, Georgia, took down the voter signature database just weeks before the election. In 2022, Champaign County, Illinois, reported a cyberattack that slowed the voting process on Election Day. Last year, we saw deepfake robocalls in New Hampshire, false videos of ballots being destroyed in Pennsylvania, and bomb threats to polling places in several states that were traced back to Russia.
That’s why defunding election security is so dangerous. It signals a retreat at the very moment when we need to be surging forward. Voters have already participated in special elections in several states, even more will be voting in local races later this year, and the 2026 midterms are right around the corner. We cannot wait until the next crisis to take election security seriously.
On the federal level, that means restoring and expanding funding for EI-ISAC. We at Verified Voting support the National Association of Secretaries of State’s recent letter urging Homeland Security to keep EI-ISAC and other election security programs in place. If that doesn’t happen, public and private partners must look for ways to replace these resources.
On the state level, we should do everything possible to make our elections more secure, accurate, and verifiable. For 20 years, Verified Voting has advocated for paper ballots that voters can verify before casting—and we’re proud to say they are now in use everywhere except Louisiana. States should also strengthen audits for every election so voters can trust that their ballots were counted correctly—no matter which candidate wins.
And on the individual level, we should double-check our registration before every election--early enough to fix any problems—and double-check our ballot before casting it. If you notice an error, it might be the canary in the coal mine, so report it to an election official.
We must act now. We must secure our elections before it's too late. Our democracy only works when our elections work.
Pamela Smith is president and CEO of Verified Voting.
Republicons will stop at nothing to ensure only republicon votes count in the future.
When I noticed the cuts at the federal level to election security, my first thought was something along the lines of "Of course DJT did ... that's consistent with his other cuts to anything that involved oversight". And I would not be surprised if he or his handlers also want to break into the election systems or at least sow distrust by the public.