Do the Hard Work to Ensure the Vote is Secure First and Voter Trust Will Follow
I was interested to read about the state of Wisconsin’s Election Commission’s plan to launch a PR campaign aimed at building public confidence in election security. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I am a big believer in government transparency when it comes to one of its most important functions: operating free and fair elections. And when government takes action to protect our elections from nefarious forces such as military-grade cyber-attacks, the public should be kept informed.
But here’s the thing that concerns me after reading about Wisconsin’s PR initiative: the money to fund the PR push is coming from a federal grant intended to bolster the state’s election security. That isn’t really a big deal in itself, but the fact that the federal grant money was never spent to improve election security is very troubling. The $7 million in federal 2018 HAVA Election Security Fund grants, announced in April 2018, was socked away and remains unspent. The interest generated from those funds is being used to fund the PR campaign.
When the funds were originally announced, Meagan Wolfe, the interim administrator of the WEC, said:
“The Commission has been developing a new, comprehensive election security plan for more than a year. These new federal funds will help the Elections Commission put our plan into action and work with local election officials to ensure our systems and our votes are secure.”
But the news from the WEC today indicates the money was not spent to help put their plan into action. It was not spent to help the Elections Commission work with local election officials. It was not spent to ensure their systems and the state’s votes are secure. It was not spent at all.
The way I read the news out of Wisconsin is that the state Elections Commission hopes to convince the public that the upcoming elections are secure despite the fact that they haven’t invested the $7 million in federal grant money that was intended to actually improve election security.
It’s no wonder the Wisconsin Elections Commission believes public trust is potentially a problem. They commissioned a survey last fall that found nearly 70 percent of respondents were worried about one of more perceived threats to election security, such as cyber-attacks, absentee ballots not getting counted and tampering of voting machines.
The concerns of voters are well founded. According to previous reporting by USA Today, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other sources, Wisconsin was among 21 states whose elections systems were targeted by the Russian government in the runup to the 2016 general election. While there are conflicting reports about whether the Russians successfully penetrated Wisconsin's systems, NBC News reported that Wisconsin was among seven states whose systems were compromised in the attack.
In August 2019, the WEC issued a memo to local election clerks regarding the upcoming end of support for Windows 7. This is an issue that effects voting systems across the country, as detailed in the story, “As US counties update their voting machines, many run on outdated software,” published by The Verge. Despite the fact that Microsoft started alerting Windows 7 users about the upcoming end of support starting in January 2019, elections officials were slow to act. In fact, the WEC found that nearly 20 percent of WisVote users were still using Windows 7 as of the date of the memo, which the WEC termed “a serious risk.” Their recommendation: “Purchase a new computer.”
Thankfully, sensing a looming crisis and recognizing the risk the country’s election security, Microsoft has pledged to extend free Windows 7 security updates to voting systems through the 2020 elections.
This is obviously a complicated issue and I suspect that the reporting that’s been done has only scratched the surface about what all the WEC is up to, but it worries me that Wisconsin will soon launch a PR program to make the bold claim that its elections in 2020 will be secure without having taken all the steps necessary to back up that claim.
Public relations can be effective at educating the public and building the trust necessary to encourage a strong voter turnout, which is great. But if states use PR to whitewash their lack of attention to gaping holes in critical elections infrastructure, the public’s trust will be lost. Based on what we know, maybe the public doesn’t have reason to trust.