The Trump administration’s cuts to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) will undermine US election integrity, according to expert speakers during a webinar briefing run by advocacy organization Keep Our Republic.
It was reported in March 2024 that around 300 personnel within the agency have had their contracts terminated alongside significant funding cuts for cybersecurity projects.
These cutbacks have reportedly impacted CISA’s efforts to secure critical election infrastructure and cyber and physical attacks, as well as countering influence campaigns by foreign actors.
It was reported in March CISA had terminated $10m worth of funding to the Center for Internet Security (CIS) as part of agency savings.
This included the termination of federal funded activities supporting the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC).
The Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) has also been impacted by cuts. The defunding has been made as some of the activities no longer effectuate CISA’s priorities.
Now, it has been reported that the impact on election CISA’s election security work goes far deeper.
The publication Votebeat reported that it had obtained an email sent by a CISA representative to state election officials on March 3, which confirmed that the Trump administration has suspended or dismantled federal support for election security.
“Sadly, the election security work related work at CISA seems to have stopped. The men and women who are doing this vital work at CISA have been placed on administrative leave,” commented Suzanne Spaulding, currently Senior Advisor at CSIS and former Under Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), speaking during the Keep Our Republic briefing.
She added that efforts to monitor foreign interference efforts appear to have been stopped as part of the cuts.
CISA’s Essential Work in Protecting Elections
Spaulding explained that in her previous role at the DHS, the federal government observed a ramp up in cyber activity targeting election infrastructure during the 2016 Presidential election.
This involved the targeting of all stages of the election process, including voter registration and databases, the building of ballots, tabulation and reporting of results.
“We were also seeing a very robust information operations from our adversaries, primarily Russia,” she noted.
This activity highlighted the need for federal support in securing against such attacks.
As all elections in the US are run by state and local election officials, there was initially resistance to federal assistance in securing the process. Spaulding said that CISA, which was established in 2018 during President Trump’s first term, built trust with those officials that their help would be totally non-partisan, focusing only on safeguarding electoral systems.
A testimony by former CISA Director Jen Easterly in May 2024 highlighted the scale of this work in recent years. This included:
- Assessments of electoral networks and systems
- Physical security assessments
- Tabletop exercises simulating incidents
- Security training for election officials
- Providing classified briefings on nation-state threats
- Hiring of10 dedicated regional election security advisors to help state officials across the country
Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of the Commonwealth, said that CISA’s support has been instrumental in securing elections administered by the state.
He noted that the federal government has unique abilities in this space that cannot be replicated at the local level, given the resources and access to intelligence it has – including with other nation-states.
“No local jurisdiction or state can have the same access to intelligence or information the way that our federal partners can.” he explained.
In one example cited by Schmidt, during the 2024 election cycle, a disinformation video circulated of what purported to be an election candidate tearing up the ballots for one of the candidates.
“CISA was able to quickly identify not only that it was fraudulent, but also the source of it, so that we could share with our counties and with the public so confidence in the election wasn't undermined,” he commented.
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CISA Cuts Set to Undermine Election Security
The Keep Our Republic panellists all outlined their belief that the CISA cutbacks to election security support will make elections less secure.
Former US Ambassador to Lithuania, Deborah A. McCarthy, highlighted the extensive efforts by nation-state actors such as Russia, Iran and China to attack election processes and use disinformation campaigns to try and influence elections in the US and its allies.
It is clear these efforts are not going to stop.
She said the ability of federal government to share such intelligence with relevant local authorities is going to be severely affected.
“These cutbacks that we're seeing in funding for critical support, where only the US government, working with its partners, can pool information, is something that is quite unnerving to say the least,” commented McCarthy.
Schmdit shared similar concerns but expressed hope that as the picture becomes clearer to the new administration, it will ultimately resume federal support for election security.
“There should be no daylight between any American on the need to protect our democratic republic from bad faith efforts to undermine confidence in our system of government,” he noted.
In response to the reports, a CISA spokesperson told Infosecurity that election infrastructure owners and operators have access to the same CISA support as other critical infrastructure entities, including access to cyber and physical security services and incident response.
The spokesperson also emphasized that the cooperative agreement between CISA and CIS is still in place.
“CISA currently has allocated $25m to CIS, which represents just over 70% of the initial planned. The termination of federal funding for specific activities did not preclude CIS from funding the EI-ISAC with other funds. The decision to shutter the EI-ISAC was made by CIS,” they stated.