• Home
  • Independent Voter News
  • Quizzes
  • Election Dissection
  • Sections
  • Events
  • Directory
  • About Us
  • Glossary
  • Opinion
  • Campaign Finance
  • Redistricting
  • Civic Ed
  • Voting
  • Fact Check
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Voting>
  3. election security>

Half of election commission still awaiting security clearances

David Hawkings
April 08, 2019

Security clearances are held by only half the current members of the Election Assistance Commission, which advises states on how to guard against foreign hacking and other security threats.

And none of the four commissioners had clearances at the time of the past two elections, including the period when Russians linked to the Kremlin are suspected of an array of cyberattacks against state election operations, the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.


"The delay in issuing security clearances for commission members is part of a massive backlog of application approvals throughout the entire federal government," Politico wrote in describing the situation. "But it's a particularly acute problem for the EAC, one of the key agencies offering guidance to state and local officials about how to protect themselves from security risks."

"The people entrusted with securing our elections need to know what threats they're supposed to address," Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden said, explaining that an EAC commissioner "without a security clearance is like making a baseball player hit without a bat."

An EAC spokesman says the two commissioners without clearances have completed all the necessary work for getting them. Until the situation changes, they have limited access to classified material, potentially restricting their awareness of specific threats and vulnerabilities. The paucity of clearances has also meant the commission has been hampered in one of its central missions: acting as an intermediary between state election offices and federal agencies including the Department of Homeland Security.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Many state and local election officials have security clearances, but DHS concedes there's a backlog on that front as well.

Related Articles Around the Web
  • House panel votes to close Election Assistance Commission ›
  • House GOP Moves to Kill Election Assistance Commission - The ... ›
  • US Election Assistance Commission: Home Page ›
election security
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Imperfection and perseverance

Jeff Clements

We’ve expanded the Supreme Court before. It’s time to do so again.

Anushka Sarkar

The ‘great replacement theory’ is nonsense

Debilyn Molineaux

Caught in a draft

Lawrence Goldstone

Congress shows signs of bipartisanship with retirement benefits bill

Mario H. Lopez

Fair representation: More Black people needed in STEM today

Jennifer Stimpson
latest News

Podcast: Women in and out of politics

Our Staff
26m

Democratic senators seek $20 billion in election funding

Reya Kumar
14h

Podcast: A conversation with former Rep. Carlos Curbelo

Our Staff
19 May

Elections require more consistent federal funding, per report

Reya Kumar
18 May

Podcast: A new understanding of the right

Our Staff
18 May

Supreme Court continues to chip away at campaign finance laws

David Meyers
17 May
Videos

Video: Helping loved ones divided by politics

Our Staff

Video: What happened in Virginia?

Our Staff

Video: Infrastructure past, present, and future

Our Staff

Video: Beyond the headlines SCOTUS 2021 - 2022

Our Staff

Video: Should we even have a debt limit

Our Staff

Video: #ListenFirstFriday Yap Politics

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Did economists move the Democrats to the right?

Our Staff
02 May

Podcast: The future of depolarization

Our Staff
11 February

Podcast: Sore losers are bad for democracy

Our Staff
20 January

Deconstructed Podcast from IVN

Our Staff
08 November 2021
Recommended
Podcast: Women in and out of politics

Podcast: Women in and out of politics

Leadership
Statue of William Henry Seward

Imperfection and perseverance

Civic Ed
​Sen. Amy Klobuchar

Democratic senators seek $20 billion in election funding

Government
Podcast: A conversation with former Rep. Carlos Curbelo

Podcast: A conversation with former Rep. Carlos Curbelo

Leadership
Supreme Court expansion protest

We’ve expanded the Supreme Court before. It’s time to do so again.

Judicial
North Carolina primary election workers

Elections require more consistent federal funding, per report