Voting Village - The U.S. Election Assistance Commission
Hovland, Benjamin
Remarks from Benjamin Hovland, Chairman of the US Election Assistance Commission
 Good afternoon. My name is Ben Hublin and I'm Chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, or EAC. I appreciate the opportunity to speak at this year's virtual voting village. I wish I was able to be there in person. Last year I certainly enjoyed the experience and saw a real step forward in the dialogue and discourse around making our elections more secure. I'll jump into that more in a minute, but for some background, I wanted to start by talking about the EAC and what we do. The EAC was established by the Help America Vote Act of 2002, or HAVA, which was Congress's response to the Florida 2000 election. The EAC is an independent bipartisan commission charged with ensuring secure, accurate and accessible elections by developing guidance to meet HAVA requirements, adopting voluntary voting system guidelines, or the VBSG, and serving as a national clearinghouse of information on election administration. The EAC also accredits testing laboratories and certifies voting systems, as well as administers the use of HAVA funds. We are a small agency, which you might not know by the attention we get. We certainly try to punch above our weight class as an agency with one of the smallest budgets in the federal government. But as an agency, we are committed to providing helpful and up-to-date information to promote the continuity and integrity of election administration, despite new challenges such as COVID-19 and cyber interference. In FY20, the EAC received a budgetary increase from our all-time low, and as an agency, we focused on investing these precious resources wisely in a way that would help the elections. I'm pleased to be able to tell you today that a number of our new initiatives are already underway and hopefully are already making an impact. As part of our efforts, the EAC launched the Cyber Access and Security Program this April to provide access to security training, best practices, expertise, and other assistance for election officials and their IT staff. An important part of this program has been the addition of staff who have a range of experience in the cybersecurity and elections fields, including years of expertise in software development and security analysis. The program partners with public and private security experts with a goal that election officials will have access to the most up-to-date and best-in-class information available through the EAC's Clearinghouse. One of the Cyber Access and Security Program's first projects was in response to a concern we'd heard from election officials about the volume of cyber expertise and recommendations that were being developed around the election space and how it would be helpful to have an organized repository. The EAC's election security preparedness page is designed to be a one-stop shop for election cybersecurity guidance. It includes resources from federal agencies, nonprofits, academia, and local election officials. These resources include the work of a number of individuals associated with the voting village, so thank you. The page was recently updated with new guidance on security topics that have developed since the 2016 election, and it's been reorganized to make the information easier to find and use. In addition to pulling resources together, we've recognized that many of the great resources that have been produced only realize their full benefit of election officials have a solid foundation to view them from. With that in mind, in June, the EAC announced online cybersecurity training offered at no cost and developed specifically for election officials through a partnership with the Center for Tech and Civic Life, or CTCL. The online training consists of both video and written materials separated into three modules, Cybersecurity 101, 201, and 301. This is self-paced training and it provides foundational knowledge on cybersecurity terminology, best practices in election offices, practical applications, and communication around cyber incidents. We hope this is a resource that can benefit any local election official and their staff. We've been promoting it to local election officials and you can too. This is available to every state and local election official in the country at no cost through May of 2021. So far, nearly 200 state and local election officials who are responsible for running elections for millions of voters and their partners have completed this training. We plan to continue to focus on training efforts going forward, particularly if our funding trend continues. I would also mention that later this month we're launching both a risk management and a crisis management online workshop for state and local election officials. Along those lines, we'll be hosting a joint effort with CISA, an online risk management tool, allowing election officials at the local level to easily measure and mitigate risks to their specific environments. Finally, our cyber access and security team is updating materials currently posted to the EAC website and is working to develop new material related to vulnerability disclosure programs, social engineering mitigation, and other education efforts. Another area our cyber access and security team has been working on is non voting election technology, not the best name, but an area of great importance when it comes to securing our election infrastructure and maintaining public confidence in the electoral process. First and foremost, I think we all recognize that when you look at the cyber risk profile of elections that non voting election technology like poll books, election night reporting, and statewide voter registration databases are all potential targets. This is not a secret. Everyone's been talking about this since 2016 and in fact there have been a number of bills introduced in Congress to try to do something about the fact that we don't have standards or certification program for this type of technology, even though some states do. We know, however, that the nature of these systems don't necessarily lend themselves to a voluntary voting system guidelines style certification program. With that mind, the EAC has partnered with the Center for Internet Security or CIS and a number of states to pilot a technology verification program, focused on non voting election technology, including, as I mentioned earlier, electronic poll books, election night reporting websites, and electronic ballot delivery systems. This program is called the rapid architecture based election technology verification or rabbit the it relies on a risk based approach that allows rapid verification of manufacturers security claims. The rabbit the pilot program supports agile software development with a verification process that anticipates and supports rapid product changes. The goals of the pilot program include incentivizing high quality modern design of it systems, updated and smaller more manageable cycles that reduce costs of verification and re verification with more reliable and consistent outcomes for the purchasers of these systems. I'm not excited about the prospects of this pilot, but no matter what I'm confident that we'll learn more about how to think about these technologies and can apply those lessons moving forward. We're committed to expanding the EAC's clearinghouse function to include information and best practices around non voting election technology. Speaking of voting technology, certainly there's nothing more central to the AC's mission than the voluntary voting system guidelines. The VBSG are the benchmark for voting system usability and security across the country. Unfortunately, the standard that is primarily used was written over a decade ago, and therefore preceded many of the more recent technical innovations that we see in other areas of our lives. The update process for the VBSG is is very public and very technical. We received over 1600 unique public comments on the draft principles and guidelines we heard from industry stakeholders voting advocates and members of the public. I'm hopeful that the VBSG 2.0 is on track to be approved by the end of the year. In order to meet that deadline, the AC is working on several parallel paths addressing the VBSG 2.0 technical requirements, test assertions, the testing and certification program manual, and the voting system test laboratory program manual. So we've got our work cut out for us, but again, we're pushing through on this and we're working on all of these areas right now to try to get it done by the end of the year. You know, speaking of the end of the year, as we look at the 2020 election, you know, certainly it's important to look back at the 2016 election and where we've come. As I look at the elections community, it certainly come together and made tremendous progress since 2016. And the first voting village at DEF CON in 2017, the EAC regularly collaborates with partners at the federal, state and local levels. Earlier you heard from some of those federal partners at NSA, SISA and FBI. We also work with the National Association of Secretaries of State, National Association of State Election Directors, and local election official organizations to help reach the nearly 9,000 local election officials across the country. Today, election officials are better educated about cyber and physical threats to their systems and have access to resources to better help defend those systems. Manufacturers of voting equipment are also changing their behavior. They are reporting and sharing threat intelligence, opening up to researchers via bug bounty programs, and working with the EAC to issue critical software patches much more quickly. And so certainly, you know, it's hard to think about elections right now without thinking about the upcoming 2020 election. And the impact of COVID-19, certainly that's why this voting village has been done virtually. And COVID-19 is presenting unprecedented challenges around our country. And of course, election and the election administration community is facing real challenges in determining how to best conduct elections in this environment. At the EAC, we've pivoted substantially to focus our attention on how we can support state and local election officials as they learn from their primaries and make tough decisions about the general election. Between the CARES Act, election money, and the earlier Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020, EAC has distributed about $825 million to the states this year to assist with federal elections. And we know this funding will be crucial because of the additional expenses related to running elections during the pandemic. For most jurisdictions, that means running the largest mail or absentee ballot election they've ever run, but also having safe in-person options as well, which means social distancing in the polling places and personal protective equipment being available. And so in ways to address that, we have, since April, we've held public hearings. We've also hosted a number of Zoom videos or web chats where we've brought together experts from the elections field to discuss these best practices and lessons learned on relevant topics to running an election right now during the pandemic. We've heard about challenges and lessons learned from ramping up vote by mail and heard very practical examples and success stories, as well as pitfalls and how to avoid them. Because each state runs elections somewhat differently, each response to this pandemic has been somewhat different. The changes to the election process, you know, we know that creates an environment that could be taken advantage of for misinformation or disinformation. So certainly that is an area of concern, an area that we can need to continue to work on. As you know, we've seen the dates of primaries change. You've seen processes and procedures change. You know, there will be different polling places, because some are not available, maybe they were in somewhere like a senior center that's no longer available. And so efforts like the National Association of Secretaries of States, Trusted Info 2020 effort will be even more crucial. And it is to the degree that that folks from the voting village and other communities can help promote state and local election officials is that trusted source, pushing out that information that we know is accurate and helping to combat disinformation is going to be crucial this election here. And speaking of ways for the voting village to help out, you know, we know there's plenty of work to do and more work that needs to be done. Election officials, like I mentioned earlier, absolutely, you know, working around the clock to adapt to the COVID environment, certainly can use assistance, as I mentioned before, on misinformation and disinformation. But also, you know, researchers, one way to help is to responsibly engage with election officials and manufacturers. The Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, recently published a guide to vulnerability reporting for Americans election administrators. It walks election officials through the steps of establishing a vulnerability disclosure program so that researchers don't end up having their bug reports ignored or having their activities reported to the FBI as hacking attempts. Another way to help this year is to serve as a poll worker and reaching out to your local election official to see if you can sign up. And that blazes promoted this for some time, and I certainly appreciate his poll worker recruitment efforts. But this year, poll workers are needed more than ever. It's never an easy thing to recruit poll workers, but we've seen a significant dropout with COVID-19. Obviously, in a pandemic, it's a personal decision about serving as a poll worker. But if you're able and willing, that is desperately needed. In fact, the EAC is announcing that September 1, we're going to push National Poll Worker Recruitment Day this year to try to help election officials around the country get enough poll workers. By encouraging more people to become poll workers in their communities, National Poll Worker Recruitment Day aims to address the critical shortage of poll workers, strengthen our democracy, inspire greater civic engagement and volunteerism. And help ensure free and fair elections in November and beyond. While the specific duties and compensation vary, depending on location, poll workers are the face of the election during voting. Most jurisdictions task election workers was setting up and preparing the polling location, welcoming voters, verifying voter registrations, and issuing ballots. Poll workers also help ensure voters understand that voting process by demonstrating how to use voting equipment and explaining voting procedures. Poll workers with technical backgrounds are especially important in jurisdictions where newer voting equipment will be used for the first time. And voters may need a little extra assurance to become comfortable with the new technology. I hope to see you in person at next year's voting village. In the meantime, if there are ways the EAC can help or recommendations you have for us, please reach out. Let's keep the conversation going. And again, one last time, if you can do it, please consider serving as a poll worker. Thank you.
 Good afternoon. My name is Ben Hublin and I'm Chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, or EAC.  I appreciate the opportunity to speak at this year's virtual voting village.  I wish I was able to be there in person. Last year I certainly enjoyed the experience and saw a real step forward in the dialogue and discourse around making our elections more secure.  I'll jump into that more in a minute, but for some background, I wanted to start by talking about the EAC and what we do.  The EAC was established by the Help America Vote Act of 2002, or HAVA, which was Congress's response to the Florida 2000 election.  The EAC is an independent bipartisan commission charged with ensuring secure, accurate and accessible elections by developing guidance to meet HAVA requirements, adopting voluntary voting system guidelines, or the VBSG, and serving as a national clearinghouse of information on election administration.  The EAC also accredits testing laboratories and certifies voting systems, as well as administers the use of HAVA funds.  We are a small agency, which you might not know by the attention we get. We certainly try to punch above our weight class as an agency with one of the smallest budgets in the federal government.  But as an agency, we are committed to providing helpful and up-to-date information to promote the continuity and integrity of election administration, despite new challenges such as COVID-19 and cyber interference.  In FY20, the EAC received a budgetary increase from our all-time low, and as an agency, we focused on investing these precious resources wisely in a way that would help the elections.  I'm pleased to be able to tell you today that a number of our new initiatives are already underway and hopefully are already making an impact.  As part of our efforts, the EAC launched the Cyber Access and Security Program this April to provide access to security training, best practices, expertise, and other assistance for election officials and their IT staff.  An important part of this program has been the addition of staff who have a range of experience in the cybersecurity and elections fields, including years of expertise in software development and security analysis.  The program partners with public and private security experts with a goal that election officials will have access to the most up-to-date and best-in-class information available through the EAC's Clearinghouse.  One of the Cyber Access and Security Program's first projects was in response to a concern we'd heard from election officials about the volume of cyber expertise and recommendations that were being developed around the election space and how it would be helpful to have an organized repository.  The EAC's election security preparedness page is designed to be a one-stop shop for election cybersecurity guidance. It includes resources from federal agencies, nonprofits, academia, and local election officials.  These resources include the work of a number of individuals associated with the voting village, so thank you.  The page was recently updated with new guidance on security topics that have developed since the 2016 election, and it's been reorganized to make the information easier to find and use.  In addition to pulling resources together, we've recognized that many of the great resources that have been produced only realize their full benefit of election officials have a solid foundation to view them from.  With that in mind, in June, the EAC announced online cybersecurity training offered at no cost and developed specifically for election officials through a partnership with the Center for Tech and Civic Life, or CTCL.  The online training consists of both video and written materials separated into three modules, Cybersecurity 101, 201, and 301.  This is self-paced training and it provides foundational knowledge on cybersecurity terminology, best practices in election offices, practical applications, and communication around cyber incidents.  We hope this is a resource that can benefit any local election official and their staff. We've been promoting it to local election officials and you can too.  This is available to every state and local election official in the country at no cost through May of 2021.  So far, nearly 200 state and local election officials who are responsible for running elections for millions of voters and their partners have completed this training.  We plan to continue to focus on training efforts going forward, particularly if our funding trend continues.  I would also mention that later this month we're launching both a risk management and a crisis management online workshop for state and local election officials.  Along those lines, we'll be hosting a joint effort with CISA, an online risk management tool, allowing election officials at the local level to easily measure and mitigate risks to their specific environments.  Finally, our cyber access and security team is updating materials currently posted to the EAC website and is working to develop new material related to vulnerability disclosure programs, social engineering mitigation, and other education efforts.  Another area our cyber access and security team has been working on is non voting election technology, not the best name, but an area of great importance when it comes to securing our election infrastructure and maintaining public confidence in the electoral process.  First and foremost, I think we all recognize that when you look at the cyber risk profile of elections that non voting election technology like poll books, election night reporting, and statewide voter registration databases are all potential targets.  This is not a secret. Everyone's been talking about this since 2016 and in fact there have been a number of bills introduced in Congress to try to do something about the fact that we don't have standards or certification program for this type of technology, even though some states do.  We know, however, that the nature of these systems don't necessarily lend themselves to a voluntary voting system guidelines style certification program. With that mind, the EAC has partnered with the Center for Internet Security or CIS and a number of states to pilot a technology verification program,  focused on non voting election technology, including, as I mentioned earlier, electronic poll books, election night reporting websites, and electronic ballot delivery systems.  This program is called the rapid architecture based election technology verification or rabbit the it relies on a risk based approach that allows rapid verification of manufacturers security claims.  The rabbit the pilot program supports agile software development with a verification process that anticipates and supports rapid product changes.  The goals of the pilot program include incentivizing high quality modern design of it systems, updated and smaller more manageable cycles that reduce costs of verification and re verification with more reliable and consistent outcomes for the purchasers of these systems.  I'm not excited about the prospects of this pilot, but no matter what I'm confident that we'll learn more about how to think about these technologies and can apply those lessons moving forward.  We're committed to expanding the EAC's clearinghouse function to include information and best practices around non voting election technology.  Speaking of voting technology, certainly there's nothing more central to the AC's mission than the voluntary voting system guidelines.  The VBSG are the benchmark for voting system usability and security across the country.  Unfortunately, the standard that is primarily used was written over a decade ago, and therefore preceded many of the more recent technical innovations that we see in other areas of our lives.  The update process for the VBSG is is very public and very technical.  We received over 1600 unique public comments on the draft principles and guidelines we heard from industry stakeholders voting advocates and members of the public.  I'm hopeful that the VBSG 2.0 is on track to be approved by the end of the year. In order to meet that deadline, the AC is working on several parallel paths addressing the VBSG 2.0 technical requirements, test assertions, the testing and certification program manual, and the voting system test laboratory program manual.  So we've got our work cut out for us, but again, we're pushing through on this and we're working on all of these areas right now to try to get it done by the end of the year.  You know, speaking of the end of the year, as we look at the 2020 election, you know, certainly it's important to look back at the 2016 election and where we've come.  As I look at the elections community, it certainly come together and made tremendous progress since 2016.  And the first voting village at DEF CON in 2017, the EAC regularly collaborates with partners at the federal, state and local levels.  Earlier you heard from some of those federal partners at NSA, SISA and FBI.  We also work with the National Association of Secretaries of State, National Association of State Election Directors, and local election official organizations to help reach the nearly 9,000 local election officials across the country.  Today, election officials are better educated about cyber and physical threats to their systems and have access to resources to better help defend those systems.  Manufacturers of voting equipment are also changing their behavior.  They are reporting and sharing threat intelligence, opening up to researchers via bug bounty programs, and working with the EAC to issue critical software patches much more quickly.  And so certainly, you know, it's hard to think about elections right now without thinking about the upcoming 2020 election.  And the impact of COVID-19, certainly that's why this voting village has been done virtually.  And COVID-19 is presenting unprecedented challenges around our country.  And of course, election and the election administration community is facing real challenges in determining how to best conduct elections in this environment.  At the EAC, we've pivoted substantially to focus our attention on how we can support state and local election officials as they learn from their primaries and make tough decisions about the general election.  Between the CARES Act, election money, and the earlier Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020, EAC has distributed about $825 million to the states this year to assist with federal elections.  And we know this funding will be crucial because of the additional expenses related to running elections during the pandemic.  For most jurisdictions, that means running the largest mail or absentee ballot election they've ever run, but also having safe in-person options as well, which means social distancing in the polling places and personal protective equipment being available.  And so in ways to address that, we have, since April, we've held public hearings.  We've also hosted a number of Zoom videos or web chats where we've brought together experts from the elections field to discuss these best practices and lessons learned on  relevant topics to running an election right now during the pandemic. We've heard about challenges and lessons learned from ramping up vote by mail and heard very practical examples and success stories, as well as pitfalls and how to avoid them.  Because each state runs elections somewhat differently, each response to this pandemic has been somewhat different.  The changes to the election process, you know, we know that creates an environment that could be taken advantage of for misinformation or disinformation.  So certainly that is an area of concern, an area that we can need to continue to work on.  As you know, we've seen the dates of primaries change. You've seen processes and procedures change.  You know, there will be different polling places, because some are not available, maybe they were in somewhere like a senior center that's no longer available.  And so efforts like the National Association of Secretaries of States, Trusted Info 2020 effort will be even more crucial.  And it is to the degree that that folks from the voting village and other communities can help promote state and local election officials is that trusted source, pushing out that information that we know is accurate and helping to combat disinformation is going to be crucial this election here.  And speaking of ways for the voting village to help out, you know, we know there's plenty of work to do and more work that needs to be done.  Election officials, like I mentioned earlier, absolutely, you know, working around the clock to adapt to the COVID environment, certainly can use assistance, as I mentioned before, on misinformation and disinformation.  But also, you know, researchers, one way to help is to responsibly engage with election officials and manufacturers.  The Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, recently published a guide to vulnerability reporting for Americans election administrators.  It walks election officials through the steps of establishing a vulnerability disclosure program so that researchers don't end up having their bug reports ignored or having their activities reported to the FBI as hacking attempts.  Another way to help this year is to serve as a poll worker and reaching out to your local election official to see if you can sign up.  And that blazes promoted this for some time, and I certainly appreciate his poll worker recruitment efforts. But this year, poll workers are needed more than ever.  It's never an easy thing to recruit poll workers, but we've seen a significant dropout with COVID-19. Obviously, in a pandemic, it's a personal decision about serving as a poll worker.  But if you're able and willing, that is desperately needed.  In fact, the EAC is announcing that September 1, we're going to push National Poll Worker Recruitment Day this year to try to help election officials around the country get enough poll workers.  By encouraging more people to become poll workers in their communities, National Poll Worker Recruitment Day aims to address the critical shortage of poll workers, strengthen our democracy, inspire greater civic engagement and volunteerism.  And help ensure free and fair elections in November and beyond.  While the specific duties and compensation vary, depending on location, poll workers are the face of the election during voting.  Most jurisdictions task election workers was setting up and preparing the polling location, welcoming voters, verifying voter registrations, and issuing ballots.  Poll workers also help ensure voters understand that voting process by demonstrating how to use voting equipment and explaining voting procedures.  Poll workers with technical backgrounds are especially important in jurisdictions where newer voting equipment will be used for the first time.  And voters may need a little extra assurance to become comfortable with the new technology.  I hope to see you in person at next year's voting village. In the meantime, if there are ways the EAC can help or recommendations you have for us, please reach out.  Let's keep the conversation going. And again, one last time, if you can do it, please consider serving as a poll worker. Thank you.
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Good afternoon. My name is Ben Hublin and I'm Chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, or EAC. I appreciate the opportunity to speak at this year's virtual voting village. I wish I was able to be there in person. Last year I certainly enjoyed the experience and saw a real step forward in the dialogue and discourse around making our elections more secure. I'll jump into that more in a minute, but for some background, I wanted to start by talking about the EAC and what we do. The EAC was established by the Help America Vote Act of 2002, or HAVA, which was Congress's response to the Florida 2000 election. The EAC is an independent bipartisan commission charged with ensuring secure, accurate and accessible elections by developing guidance to meet HAVA requirements, adopting voluntary voting system guidelines, or the VBSG, and serving as a national clearinghouse of information on election administration. The EAC also accredits testing laboratories and certifies voting systems, as well as administers the use of HAVA funds. We are a small agency, which you might not know by the attention we get. We certainly try to punch above our weight class as an agency with one of the smallest budgets in the federal government. But as an agency, we are committed to providing helpful and up-to-date information to promote the continuity and integrity of election administration, despite new challenges such as COVID-19 and cyber interference. In FY20, the EAC received a budgetary increase from our all-time low, and as an agency, we focused on investing these precious resources wisely in a way that would help the elections. I'm pleased to be able to tell you today that a number of our new initiatives are already underway and hopefully are already making an impact. As part of our efforts, the EAC launched the Cyber Access and Security Program this April to provide access to security training, best practices, expertise, and other assistance for election officials and their IT staff. An important part of this program has been the addition of staff who have a range of experience in the cybersecurity and elections fields, including years of expertise in software development and security analysis. The program partners with public and private security experts with a goal that election officials will have access to the most up-to-date and best-in-class information available through the EAC's Clearinghouse. One of the Cyber Access and Security Program's first projects was in response to a concern we'd heard from election officials about the volume of cyber expertise and recommendations that were being developed around the election space and how it would be helpful to have an organized repository. The EAC's election security preparedness page is designed to be a one-stop shop for election cybersecurity guidance. It includes resources from federal agencies, nonprofits, academia, and local election officials. These resources include the work of a number of individuals associated with the voting village, so thank you. The page was recently updated with new guidance on security topics that have developed since the 2016 election, and it's been reorganized to make the information easier to find and use. In addition to pulling resources together, we've recognized that many of the great resources that have been produced only realize their full benefit of election officials have a solid foundation to view them from. With that in mind, in June, the EAC announced online cybersecurity training offered at no cost and developed specifically for election officials through a partnership with the Center for Tech and Civic Life, or CTCL. The online training consists of both video and written materials separated into three modules, Cybersecurity 101, 201, and 301. This is self-paced training and it provides foundational knowledge on cybersecurity terminology, best practices in election offices, practical applications, and communication around cyber incidents. We hope this is a resource that can benefit any local election official and their staff. We've been promoting it to local election officials and you can too. This is available to every state and local election official in the country at no cost through May of 2021. So far, nearly 200 state and local election officials who are responsible for running elections for millions of voters and their partners have completed this training. We plan to continue to focus on training efforts going forward, particularly if our funding trend continues. I would also mention that later this month we're launching both a risk management and a crisis management online workshop for state and local election officials. Along those lines, we'll be hosting a joint effort with CISA, an online risk management tool, allowing election officials at the local level to easily measure and mitigate risks to their specific environments. Finally, our cyber access and security team is updating materials currently posted to the EAC website and is working to develop new material related to vulnerability disclosure programs, social engineering mitigation, and other education efforts. Another area our cyber access and security team has been working on is non voting election technology, not the best name, but an area of great importance when it comes to securing our election infrastructure and maintaining public confidence in the electoral process. First and foremost, I think we all recognize that when you look at the cyber risk profile of elections that non voting election technology like poll books, election night reporting, and statewide voter registration databases are all potential targets. This is not a secret. Everyone's been talking about this since 2016 and in fact there have been a number of bills introduced in Congress to try to do something about the fact that we don't have standards or certification program for this type of technology, even though some states do. We know, however, that the nature of these systems don't necessarily lend themselves to a voluntary voting system guidelines style certification program. With that mind, the EAC has partnered with the Center for Internet Security or CIS and a number of states to pilot a technology verification program, focused on non voting election technology, including, as I mentioned earlier, electronic poll books, election night reporting websites, and electronic ballot delivery systems. This program is called the rapid architecture based election technology verification or rabbit the it relies on a risk based approach that allows rapid verification of manufacturers security claims. The rabbit the pilot program supports agile software development with a verification process that anticipates and supports rapid product changes. The goals of the pilot program include incentivizing high quality modern design of it systems, updated and smaller more manageable cycles that reduce costs of verification and re verification with more reliable and consistent outcomes for the purchasers of these systems. I'm not excited about the prospects of this pilot, but no matter what I'm confident that we'll learn more about how to think about these technologies and can apply those lessons moving forward. We're committed to expanding the EAC's clearinghouse function to include information and best practices around non voting election technology. Speaking of voting technology, certainly there's nothing more central to the AC's mission than the voluntary voting system guidelines. The VBSG are the benchmark for voting system usability and security across the country. Unfortunately, the standard that is primarily used was written over a decade ago, and therefore preceded many of the more recent technical innovations that we see in other areas of our lives. The update process for the VBSG is is very public and very technical. We received over 1600 unique public comments on the draft principles and guidelines we heard from industry stakeholders voting advocates and members of the public. I'm hopeful that the VBSG 2.0 is on track to be approved by the end of the year. In order to meet that deadline, the AC is working on several parallel paths addressing the VBSG 2.0 technical requirements, test assertions, the testing and certification program manual, and the voting system test laboratory program manual. So we've got our work cut out for us, but again, we're pushing through on this and we're working on all of these areas right now to try to get it done by the end of the year. You know, speaking of the end of the year, as we look at the 2020 election, you know, certainly it's important to look back at the 2016 election and where we've come. As I look at the elections community, it certainly come together and made tremendous progress since 2016. And the first voting village at DEF CON in 2017, the EAC regularly collaborates with partners at the federal, state and local levels. Earlier you heard from some of those federal partners at NSA, SISA and FBI. We also work with the National Association of Secretaries of State, National Association of State Election Directors, and local election official organizations to help reach the nearly 9,000 local election officials across the country. Today, election officials are better educated about cyber and physical threats to their systems and have access to resources to better help defend those systems. Manufacturers of voting equipment are also changing their behavior. They are reporting and sharing threat intelligence, opening up to researchers via bug bounty programs, and working with the EAC to issue critical software patches much more quickly. And so certainly, you know, it's hard to think about elections right now without thinking about the upcoming 2020 election. And the impact of COVID-19, certainly that's why this voting village has been done virtually. And COVID-19 is presenting unprecedented challenges around our country. And of course, election and the election administration community is facing real challenges in determining how to best conduct elections in this environment. At the EAC, we've pivoted substantially to focus our attention on how we can support state and local election officials as they learn from their primaries and make tough decisions about the general election. Between the CARES Act, election money, and the earlier Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020, EAC has distributed about $825 million to the states this year to assist with federal elections. And we know this funding will be crucial because of the additional expenses related to running elections during the pandemic. For most jurisdictions, that means running the largest mail or absentee ballot election they've ever run, but also having safe in-person options as well, which means social distancing in the polling places and personal protective equipment being available. And so in ways to address that, we have, since April, we've held public hearings. We've also hosted a number of Zoom videos or web chats where we've brought together experts from the elections field to discuss these best practices and lessons learned on relevant topics to running an election right now during the pandemic. We've heard about challenges and lessons learned from ramping up vote by mail and heard very practical examples and success stories, as well as pitfalls and how to avoid them. Because each state runs elections somewhat differently, each response to this pandemic has been somewhat different. The changes to the election process, you know, we know that creates an environment that could be taken advantage of for misinformation or disinformation. So certainly that is an area of concern, an area that we can need to continue to work on. As you know, we've seen the dates of primaries change. You've seen processes and procedures change. You know, there will be different polling places, because some are not available, maybe they were in somewhere like a senior center that's no longer available. And so efforts like the National Association of Secretaries of States, Trusted Info 2020 effort will be even more crucial. And it is to the degree that that folks from the voting village and other communities can help promote state and local election officials is that trusted source, pushing out that information that we know is accurate and helping to combat disinformation is going to be crucial this election here. And speaking of ways for the voting village to help out, you know, we know there's plenty of work to do and more work that needs to be done. Election officials, like I mentioned earlier, absolutely, you know, working around the clock to adapt to the COVID environment, certainly can use assistance, as I mentioned before, on misinformation and disinformation. But also, you know, researchers, one way to help is to responsibly engage with election officials and manufacturers. The Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, recently published a guide to vulnerability reporting for Americans election administrators. It walks election officials through the steps of establishing a vulnerability disclosure program so that researchers don't end up having their bug reports ignored or having their activities reported to the FBI as hacking attempts. Another way to help this year is to serve as a poll worker and reaching out to your local election official to see if you can sign up. And that blazes promoted this for some time, and I certainly appreciate his poll worker recruitment efforts. But this year, poll workers are needed more than ever. It's never an easy thing to recruit poll workers, but we've seen a significant dropout with COVID-19. Obviously, in a pandemic, it's a personal decision about serving as a poll worker. But if you're able and willing, that is desperately needed. In fact, the EAC is announcing that September 1, we're going to push National Poll Worker Recruitment Day this year to try to help election officials around the country get enough poll workers. By encouraging more people to become poll workers in their communities, National Poll Worker Recruitment Day aims to address the critical shortage of poll workers, strengthen our democracy, inspire greater civic engagement and volunteerism. And help ensure free and fair elections in November and beyond. While the specific duties and compensation vary, depending on location, poll workers are the face of the election during voting. Most jurisdictions task election workers was setting up and preparing the polling location, welcoming voters, verifying voter registrations, and issuing ballots. Poll workers also help ensure voters understand that voting process by demonstrating how to use voting equipment and explaining voting procedures. Poll workers with technical backgrounds are especially important in jurisdictions where newer voting equipment will be used for the first time. And voters may need a little extra assurance to become comfortable with the new technology. I hope to see you in person at next year's voting village. In the meantime, if there are ways the EAC can help or recommendations you have for us, please reach out. Let's keep the conversation going. And again, one last time, if you can do it, please consider serving as a poll worker. Thank you.
Chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance