The center for American Progress looked at the levels of progress states have made since 2016 to protect their systems from foreign interference. This runs one hour 25 minutes. Good afternoon everyone. I am president of the center for American Progress and i am thrilled to have you all here for one of the most important discussions we are going to have this year which is on voting integrity. On which we all rely for democracy. The topic of todays address is about the trust we have in our Voting System which is central and fundamental to everything we rely on for government. Our system of free and Fair Elections is under assault from hostile nations. I know that sounds extreme but it is true. Statementspelling from leaders on both sides of the aisle that russia attempted to interfere with our 2016 elections, President Trump continues to dismiss such evidence as fake news. This disturbing reality underscores that now more than ever before protecting americas Election Security is a matter of National Security. Our states stand on the front lines. The 2018 midterms are only nine months away. Wants to safeguard our democracy from foreign thecks, we must understand steps every state must take to strengthen their election infrastructure. Release a is proud to copperheads of report that details the current state of Election Security in all 50 states along with the district of columbia. Our report covers seven categories of best practices including paper ballots, minimum Cyber Security standards for Voter Registration systems and postelection audits. It concludes that while many states have taken significant strides, every state remains vulnerable. No state received an a grade b 11 states earned a. 7 states received a d or f we have a lot of work to do to protect democracy. Our report acknowledges the hard work of state and local restraints inpite funding personnel and technology. We hope this report will fuel the conversation around a vital best vital importance of Election Security and stir lawmakers to provide local leaders with the resources they need. Fact,er this Simple Congress could supply the funding needed to modernize americas outdated voting machines, conduct detailed threat assessments and enact security audits for roughly half the cost of a single b2 bomber. I hope leaders from both parties will embrace the urgency of making great investments in our election infrastructure. States need help now. You can download the full irsion from cap swept a and wanted to say a special shout out to the people to knowledge the authors of this report, working on this for many months. Danielle route, liz kennedy, jerry personal, for their outstanding work you did we are thrilled to welcome a distinguished lineup of guests to amplify and discuss these findings. Im thrilled that i will be sitting down with jeh johnson, former secretary of security. And why this issue should be at the forefront of all of our conversations around democracy. [applause] klobuchar thanks to center for American Progress but not only taking up this issue but a lot of cutting edge issues including what we will be dealing with when i get back to the hill, which is dreamers and the hope that we can stop it hundred thousand people from being deported, pretty good goal. Have just for the work you done on elections. Its good to see secretary johnson. I begin my day at the barack obama and Michelle Obama portrait unveiling. I did not really want to leave. Really an amazing thing and you should check out the portrait and they did a beautiful job. I see secretary johnson, who i enjoyed working with and admired. I read an interview from last week where on this topic he said 2016 was a wakeup call and that the feds and the states need to do something for our democracy is attacked again. Him for sayingnk and 15 seconds what it will take a u. S. Senator to 15 minutes. We are known as the Good Government state. We are very proud of our election laws. On your cap survey thatneera referenced. Minnesota is kind of humble we like to be above average. Part of that is we have always and good election laws have been cutting edge in a lot of ways. We have the highest voter turnout in the country in 2016. 81 of registered voters turned out. Voting. Ve in hope and why i did this bill with senator langford is to make sure that we understand this is not a democratic or republican issue. This is about america. Inn we learn what happened 2016, that is unamerican. Unamerican to have this russian interference which is a nice term for criminal activity, in our elections, since we know the right to free and Fair Elections is the very heart of our freedoms in america. , i wantyou leave today you to remember that simple concept of marco rubio himself it hit one candidate in the next time you will hit the other one. Think of this in that lens. 266. That is the number of days left before the 2018 election. 256 days to go. A little more than nine months and we cannot ensure americans that our elections ushered care. Are secure. It is on us. 2016. W what happened in intelligence reports made clear that russia used covert cyberattacks, harmful propaganda to try to play in our elections and they did. Six month later on june 21, the department of Homeland Security confirmed russia launched cyberattacks against at least 21 state elections. We learned that the russians angeted officials and american Voting Software company and Voting Systems in illinois were hacked and information on thousands of voters were exposed to the russians. Our National Security officials have sounded the alarm and they are saying this is just the beginning. Its not just former Obama Administration officials that are saying this. Russialerson said that is already trying to influence the u. S. Midterm elections. Cia director mike pompeo said he has every expectation that russia will target the u. S. Midterm elections. George w. Bush said the russian government has made a project of turning americans against each other and that gets to the device of this of so many of the post you saw on social media. Former director of National IntelligenceJames Clapper said i believe russia is now emboldened to continue such activities in the future book here and around the world and to do so even more intensely. I could go on but i think we understand. That current Security Officials feel this is going to happen. Just 36 days from now, illinois, the state the russians successfully hacked into in 2016 , will hold a primary for the midterm elections. Why havent we acted . I dont believe theres an excuse. Theres problems in congress, people at opposite corners of the boxing ring, but in fact there does not seem to be the will and the will has to come from the peoples of the people are the ones that vote in the elections. Here are six solutions. Almost all of them have bipartisan support. States need support to protect their election systems. We have secretary or election official heads here from. Irginia there are systems that are at least 10 years old. The russians know this. 10 years ago we were using flip phones. There are some senators and still do that. Now we have smartphones that we update regularly to keep pace with the emerging technology. So we need to be as sophisticated as the perpetrators and foreign pow ers trying to break into our systems. That is what is pointed out in the report that was just issued by the center for American Progress. That is also why senator line for it and i along with senator Kamala Harris and Lindsey Graham introduced this bill, the secure elections act that will help bring these resources. It calls for 386 million for Election Security. Neera used the figure with the bomber. This amount of money is just 3 of the cost of one single aircraft carrier. That themakes clear federal Homeland Security and officials can share secure information with state Election Officials. That was thrown up in the face of state Election Officials when y were not able to access we found out we were in minnesota we had no idea we were. It treats the process and allows that to happen. The final thing is that it creates requirements for best practices for auditing. You have a number of states that dont even have a backup paper ballots so you have no way to check if there is a hack. Theres no reason it could not be done in the omnibus thats coming up in the next few weeks. We need reliable backup measures in place when something goes wrong. Each state administers its own elections. Our decentralized election p process is a strength and weakness. It is harder to hack into them, however it also makes it so you might have one that is weak because it does not have enough money to protect it. We saw this in 2016, Russian Hackers attempted to breach the systems of many states but were only successful in one. There are also a weakness in different state has procedures for voting and many do not have reliable post election auditing procedures in place. As you know this means youre are not able to check when something goes wrong. I think theres less than a dozen states or Something Like that that dont have the backup paper ballots. We have to make sure our elections are free from foreign influence campaigns. Russia did not just try to hack into our election system, they also launched an extended information war designed to divide our country and destroy americans confidence in our political system. These are the fake ads, the paid ads that weve found some were paid for in rubles, some were not paid for. I remember at the hearing we had in judiciary the dramatic moment where we had the picture of an africanamerican woman who was a text and the text was saying you can vote for Hillary Clinton by simply texting this number and he did not have to go to the polls. That is criminal but those ads were showing up on peoples social media feeds. One example of this i use at home, because sometimes these political at some partisan to people. I heard this firsthand at the Munich Security Conference with senator mccain and we were in a room with norwegian Prime Minister and she told the story angry russia was getting at norway over the last few years because theyve been putting funding into their military at a higher pace. Russia started running fake news stories on russian tv about norway and one of the things that kept emphasizing was that norways economy had completely tanked and that they had no agriculture and did not have fruits or vegetables to give to the primele and minister of norway told us the story that all of these wellmeaning russians who watch this on tv who at friends and relatives in norway came over to visit them with bags and bags of cucumbers and apples and fruit because they believed the story, that there were no fruits and vegetables in norway. Thats example that is an example of how convincing those acts can be. You can imagine how convincing they are in a political context. In the last election in 2016, 1. 4 billion was spent on social media and they expect that to maybe triple, to go into the range of 4 billion. We have no idea. It is a place where the wild west governs. There are no requirements for disclaimers and no requirements for disclosures. That is why i introduced, and was so pleased senator mccain cosponsored it, the honest ads act. It takes the rules that are in , for radio, and tv and puts them in place for social media ads. We know this wont solve everything because this is about paid ads. Theres absolutely no excuse that we would not have the same rules apply when all this money. S migrating to social media the way this would work now is people can put up campaign ads and some of the social media safer candidate ads we require a disclaimer and we require that you keep it on file. They are not doing it for issue ads. Under federal law issues of National Legislative importance are the things you see on tv all the time about any issue for congress. Whether it energy, civil liberties, those ads you see the tv station the newspaper or the radio look at the ad make sure theres a disclaimer and disclose them for people to see. We dont do that on social media and one of the funniest answers i got at a hearing is when one of the executives social Media Company said they could not do it because they could not figure out what those ads were. In deep riveron falls minnesota can figure it out. They can figure out what our ads of National Legislative importance. This is not just about foreign powers. Its about our democracy. All the dirty ads are going to migrate to social media and flip up on your page. Theres not going to be any tracking of them. We have to change this as well. You will have this Unlimited Money and you will have propaganda coming in. As someone who runs for office and who ran with very little money i like to joke when i what ifor money first ran for office or did not know how to raise money because my Previous Office you could only take 100 for county attorney in minnesota in the off years and 500 in the Election Year from any person. So suddenly im running for u. S. Senate with no money myself and that is why i feel so passionate about trying to even the Playing Field for democracy. I did set an alltime Senate Record back then. I gave up trying to call nationally and i called everyone i knew in my life and i raised 17,000 from ex boyfriends. That is a true story. As has been pointed out its not an expanding base. The person that pointed that out was my husband. I really care about this idea of an even Playing Field and when you have a foreign country trying to come in and influence races and for candidates that have no money and are relying on the fact that we have rules in place, if you dont have those rules in place on social media market you dont have a chance. We must send russia a message that this behavior is unacceptable. This means getting those sanctions congress passed, 98 votes out of the senate, that those sanctions should be taken seriously and that the administration should put them in place. That has not happened. I spent last new years eve, the year before last on new years eve 3016 right after donald trump have gotten elected john mccain and Lindsey Graham, in the baltic countries. We were in ukraine on new years eve and there we were with resident with the president. T the front lines i want you to picture me with mccain and graham on new years eve at midnight, which one do you kiss . To see these families where theyve lost 10,000 peoples in ukraine fighting for their own freedom, for them to have america stand with them was everything. Seesis why when russia america standing with these countries it means something. They have tried this before. They have gone into these countries when estonia tried to move a statue from a Public Square into the cemetery, it was of russian soldier. The russians retaliated by shutting off their internet. Or when one of the countries invited members of the Ukrainian Parliament from crimea away ill to their celebration of independence, when they invited them they got hacked into. Members of the parliament in with in lithuania. Thisur country to just let go and not take action when we have been hacked into, when we have had russia tried to influence our election, sends the opposite message and that is why the senate voted 982 for those sanctions. This administration has refused to implement them and it makes no sense to me because when we do that we are empowering russia and announcing to the world that there are no consequences to Foreign Governments to interfere in american elections. Finally, we must understand the full extent of russias role in our 2016 elections. My colleague senator cardin introduced a bill to establish an independent commission. I was original cosponsor of that because i agreed with him. We must examine exactly what went on in order to fix it. That is the same reason we must ,llow these investigations whether its director muellers investigation or the work that is going on, the more bipartisan work i emphasize that the Senate Intelligence committee. We must allow those to go forward. I envision a more 9 11 commission and we are not quite there yet where we can actually go back through it so we are changes toct policy respond to it. We allow these other investigations to go forward. All of these tools would help to secure our elections. You look at the Cyber Security bill i started out with at the beginning, the one that puts the money into our state election systems. Republican and democratic National Security official support the policy. Republican and Democratic State and local officials secretary of states, the head of the Freedom Caucus is chairing