A federal agency has told rural counties and small towns how to safeguard their elections, but not all can afford the fixes
The federal agency that protects U.S. elections has told rural counties and small towns how to protect their computers and vote-counting sites, but some communities say they can't afford to make the fixes.
The federal agency charged with safeguarding the nation’s elections has provided recommendations to rural counties and small towns on how to protect their computers and the sites where they count votes, but some of those communities say they don’t have the money to make the fixes ahead of November’s election.
Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which oversees federal election security efforts, said that after the 2022 midterms her agency heard from rural areas that they needed extra help with election security. She said that CISA, formed in 2018, is committed to providing it.
“States to this point in time, they have pretty good resources and capabilities to deal with the full range of threats,” Easterly said. “But at the local level, townships, municipalities, counties, that’s where we have a challenge for resources. So that’s where we’ve been focused.”
But NBC News spoke to 17 election officials from smaller jurisdictions in eight states who said they worry communities like theirs aren’t getting the money they need from their counties, states or Washington, D.C., to make badly needed security upgrades.
The officials were not worried about vote outcomes being manipulated, but about physical threats to election offices and election workers. Several clerks told NBC News that their jobs have drastically changed in recent years because of rising threats posed by people who believe disinformation online that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and have shown up where votes are being counted, often intimidating election workers.
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