[00:00.000 --> 00:03.620]  Good afternoon, Voting Village. My name is Forrest Senti. I'm the Director of Business
[00:03.620 --> 00:05.960]  and Government Affairs at the National Cyber Security Center.
[00:06.000 --> 00:09.440]  And I'm Maddie Gullickson, and I'm the Program Manager for Secure the Vote.
[00:09.460 --> 00:12.800]  We'd like to thank all of you for having us here today. We're excited to have our presentation
[00:12.800 --> 00:17.100]  accepted to the Voting Village. We look forward to future years and our work in elections.
[00:17.440 --> 00:22.020]  So we're with the National Cyber Security Center. We're a 501c3 based out of Colorado Springs,
[00:22.020 --> 00:26.840]  Colorado. We were founded in 2016, and a lot of our big focus has to do with cyber innovation
[00:26.840 --> 00:32.540]  and awareness and solving world cyber problems. We work in areas like space, where we actually
[00:32.540 --> 00:36.980]  have a presentation from one of our fellow colleagues in the Aerospace Village today,
[00:36.980 --> 00:41.900]  as well as areas like smart city technology like ICS and K-12, so being the future of the cyber
[00:41.900 --> 00:46.680]  workforce. Our presentation today is about the electronic ballot return standards and guidelines
[00:46.680 --> 00:51.000]  titled The Future of Voting. I want to start off by talking a little bit about
[00:52.200 --> 00:56.140]  who we are, what the program is, and kind of how we fit into this whole picture.
[00:56.840 --> 01:03.040]  I want to start off by acknowledging that Secure the Vote is a nonpartisan, multi-agency,
[01:03.040 --> 01:09.300]  multi-policy group that kind of goes after a layered challenge. A lot of the different things
[01:09.300 --> 01:15.420]  out there with groups like EAC, CISA, CIS, the Election Security ISAC, even groups like Verify
[01:15.420 --> 01:21.400]  Voting, MIT, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, all tackle different aspects of our election
[01:21.400 --> 01:27.000]  security problem in the U.S. And the combination of all these has led to a brilliant ecosystem in
[01:27.000 --> 01:32.300]  the United States that allows us for us to be able to publish and listen to and advocate for
[01:32.300 --> 01:36.880]  different policy standards, guidelines, whether it be at the federal or state and local levels.
[01:37.600 --> 01:42.340]  And a lot of our focus has primarily been on the ways that we can identify different gaps
[01:42.340 --> 01:47.340]  in critical infrastructure related to elections. So the first gap that we've really identified,
[01:47.340 --> 01:50.960]  that we really want to talk about, the reason why we're here again, is all about this gap
[01:50.960 --> 01:56.820]  where security exists in the conversation of election technology. Security traditionally over
[01:56.820 --> 02:02.740]  this past, you know, four or five years has become an even heightened level of focus in the world of
[02:02.740 --> 02:07.660]  election security. So we're not going to say that we're going to become the new experts, but the
[02:07.660 --> 02:14.040]  biggest thing for us is all about identifying the critical piece of the future of voting technology.
[02:14.080 --> 02:18.300]  And what it means is that we've identified that security, cybersecurity specifically,
[02:18.300 --> 02:22.640]  is a barrier to the future of election technology. And what that looks like is that if people with
[02:22.640 --> 02:27.060]  disabilities, or overseas voters, or even the everyday person who might have an emergency come
[02:27.060 --> 02:32.940]  up and they can't get to their mail-in ballot or in-person voting, that there's more and more calls,
[02:32.940 --> 02:37.000]  especially after the pandemic, that people want to do this. But the biggest thing the community
[02:37.000 --> 02:41.460]  agrees is that security is an issue and is a barrier to the future of where these technologies
[02:41.460 --> 02:47.360]  can go. And that's why we're interested in the conversation today. A little more background on
[02:47.360 --> 02:52.160]  us and how we've kind of learned more about this space and why. Our program was started in the
[02:52.160 --> 02:56.760]  middle of 2018, specifically to work on helping address security issues for overseas voters.
[02:57.080 --> 03:01.220]  Since then, we've participated in reviewing post-election logs and got feedback from jurisdictions
[03:01.720 --> 03:06.340]  and 10 pilots involving the use of mobile and online voting between 2019 and 2020.
[03:06.840 --> 03:11.280]  And like all critics of online and social voting, in every single pilot, we saw the need for
[03:11.280 --> 03:16.620]  enhancing these technologies. We also saw that there was also increased demand. Of the pilots
[03:16.620 --> 03:21.720]  we worked in, there was at least two to one, if in some cases three to one, and more demand for
[03:21.720 --> 03:26.940]  more places to use it. But the number one reason people chose not to is because of security concerns.
[03:27.220 --> 03:31.940]  So the more we try and understand these technologies and find and understand the different
[03:31.940 --> 03:36.740]  things that address the gap between where we are today, where we are tomorrow, consistently between
[03:36.740 --> 03:41.800]  election officials, the security community, and the academic community, we consistently see that
[03:41.800 --> 03:46.280]  not only are these technologies not going away, but the desire for them is growing.
[03:46.540 --> 03:49.760]  And to go back to the beginning, security is still a barrier.
[03:51.920 --> 03:59.020]  And through those pilots, some of the things that we have seen that are part of that core
[03:59.020 --> 04:04.360]  security problem are critical need for end-to-end verification of votes that maintains the secrecy
[04:04.360 --> 04:10.620]  of the ballot, critical need for common standards around voter verification procedures and policies.
[04:10.620 --> 04:16.720]  Again, there's really no federally mandated or even state mandated requirements around these
[04:16.720 --> 04:23.280]  newer technologies. And so there is a need for common standards around voter information privacy
[04:23.280 --> 04:30.500]  procedures as well. And also one of the biggest concerns is that vulnerability of the voters'
[04:30.500 --> 04:39.200]  devices that may have problems on them that could hurt the system and interfere with the vote.
[04:39.200 --> 04:47.460]  And so we really need to have a system in place and standards in place that these newer technologies
[04:47.460 --> 04:54.420]  can be held accountable to. We need pre-election reviews and post-election reviews. We need the
[04:54.420 --> 05:00.040]  same kind of a level of guidelines that are offered through the Voluntary Voting System
[05:00.040 --> 05:08.220]  Guidelines, the EAC. And that's really where we are working with, we have a working group that
[05:08.220 --> 05:14.120]  is looking at these different issues. We continue to look at these issues through the pilots.
[05:14.480 --> 05:21.160]  But ultimately, again, we're really working on these questions because even in 2016, there were
[05:21.160 --> 05:27.620]  about 3 million overseas voters who were eligible to vote, but only 6.9% of them actually submitted
[05:27.840 --> 05:35.720]  a ballot, compared to a 72% rate of domestic voters who were eligible to vote. We're doing
[05:35.720 --> 05:42.840]  this because if disabled voters had had the same access that voters without disabilities had in
[05:42.840 --> 05:48.900]  the 2018 election, we would have seen a rate increase of about 2.35 million additional
[05:48.900 --> 05:56.100]  voters participating in the system. Ultimately, we live in the 21st century, and we shouldn't
[05:56.100 --> 06:00.920]  accept that people living overseas or with disabilities don't vote because they struggle
[06:00.920 --> 06:07.940]  with access to voting centers or because they lack the privacy to do so. And this slide in
[06:07.940 --> 06:13.160]  particular just demonstrates that technology is a part of voting, and it is part of our
[06:13.160 --> 06:21.380]  infrastructure. We have email and fax are already continually used by over 31 states. We have web
[06:21.380 --> 06:28.100]  portals that are allowing people to return a ballot via a web portal. So the technology exists,
[06:28.100 --> 06:33.820]  it's moving in that direction. Again, we just believe that there needs to be a common set
[06:33.820 --> 06:41.000]  of standards and guidelines that can be used to help provide those guardrails as this technology
[06:41.000 --> 06:48.820]  develops. When we look back at our progress in voting, one of the biggest things, and this drives
[06:48.820 --> 06:54.800]  home the point that Forrest was making, is we see that most of our legislation around voting has
[06:54.800 --> 07:00.960]  had to do with undoing policy barriers that have actively kept people from voting.
[07:01.640 --> 07:06.700]  For the 21st century, what is that going to look like? It's going to look like trying to undo the
[07:06.700 --> 07:12.680]  barriers of technology and security as the things that prohibit people from voting.
[07:13.700 --> 07:20.960]  And so as we look to that future, we want to participate with as many people as possible
[07:20.960 --> 07:25.080]  and collaborate with as many people as possible to figure out what does that future state of
[07:25.080 --> 07:29.660]  voting look like? What is the timeline going to look like in the next 10 to 30 years of legislation
[07:29.660 --> 07:34.940]  that we see, of technological advancements that we see? These are some ideas, these are some of
[07:34.940 --> 07:41.400]  the things that we'd love to see happen. And we understand the concern about these types of
[07:41.400 --> 07:49.300]  technologies taking place today, but the point is that it isn't going away. And so how do we work
[07:49.300 --> 07:52.940]  together? How do we come together to figure out how to make these things happen? Because we believe
[07:52.940 --> 07:59.880]  that with the collective genius of the elections community and of the security community, we can
[07:59.880 --> 08:05.960]  make end-to-end voter verification a reality. We can make full-scale citizen audits of these
[08:08.000 --> 08:15.220]  a reality. And so this is what we envision when we see the timeline going forward and what gets
[08:15.220 --> 08:21.100]  us excited about it. With the different organizations that we've worked with,
[08:21.100 --> 08:26.340]  blockchain has been one of the ways that people have been able to... one of the technologies that
[08:26.340 --> 08:31.480]  people have used. Is that the right way? Does it complicate things or does it make it safer?
[08:32.720 --> 08:40.400]  AWS as the secure cloud service, is that the right way? These are the kinds of
[08:40.400 --> 08:44.680]  conversations that we need to be having, not just the binary conversation of it shouldn't or it
[08:44.680 --> 08:49.640]  should. The fact is that it is. And so we have to have that conversation about what this looks
[08:49.640 --> 08:58.540]  like moving forward. And really, that's the full circle of where we wanted to come to the voting
[08:58.540 --> 09:05.260]  village, which is really that we want feedback. We know so many of you have thought through these
[09:05.260 --> 09:12.300]  things and we want to provide that place where you can offer your advice and your feedback on how we
[09:12.300 --> 09:19.580]  can make these things the safest, the most secure, but ultimately the most accessible.
[09:19.660 --> 09:25.560]  Because that's the whole point of this thing in the first place. And to get really sentimental
[09:25.560 --> 09:32.560]  about voting, I mean, it is truly the bedrock of our representative democracy. If we still have
[09:32.560 --> 09:40.000]  significant barriers to voting, that whole piece, the integrity of that institution in itself
[09:40.000 --> 09:48.040]  is undermined. And so we want your feedback. And so if you have thoughts,
[09:48.040 --> 09:54.780]  questions about it even, please email us at securethevote at cyber-center.org.
[09:54.780 --> 10:00.120]  We also will have an RFI that's going to go live this month for solutions to some of these key
[10:00.120 --> 10:07.140]  issues like we talked through that are associated with mobile or online voting. So please email
[10:07.140 --> 10:12.500]  us to receive a notification when that goes live if you've got that next brilliant idea of how you
[10:12.500 --> 10:18.140]  think you can tackle a piece of this. Excellent. Well, a big thanks again to the Voting Village
[10:18.140 --> 10:25.620]  for having us. We want to thank you and just reaffirm that this issue is not just a security
[10:26.340 --> 10:31.120]  community issue. This goes out to all the different election officials, government organizations,
[10:31.120 --> 10:35.340]  nonprofits, and think tanks out there that are all working on this. Whether you're against it
[10:35.340 --> 10:40.500]  or for it is a component of this that we'll be driving into the future. And if it's going
[10:40.500 --> 10:44.400]  to happen, the best thing we can do is make it as secure as possible. So thank you.