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The federal government has halted election security activities and ended funding for the system that alerts state officials of election security threats across state lines, a representative of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency told state election officials last week.
The March 3 email, obtained exclusively by Votebeat, confirmed for secretaries of state and state election directors what they had read in news reports and noticed happening in practice: that President Donald Trump’s administration has suspended or dismantled federal support for election security, at least for now.
The administration stopped funding the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or EI-ISAC, which alerts state officials of active election threats in other states, because it “no longer supports Department priorities,” CISA’s acting chief external affairs officer, Erin Buechel Wieczorek, wrote in the email. CISA is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
CISA has also taken “appropriate actions” against employees who under the Biden administration had helped states monitor false information about elections posted on social media, Wieczorek wrote, adding that those actions were “ongoing.”
The message went to leaders at the National Association of State Election Directors and the National Association of Secretaries of State.
A spokesperson for CISA declined to comment further, or to confirm the number of employees fired. In initial cuts, in line with the administration’s goal of reducing the size of the federal government, about 130 CISA employees were terminated, according to press reports.
Federal-state partnership on election security unravels
The changes at CISA unravel a long-established partnership between the federal government and the states, which have long relied on the agency to help secure their electronic and physical infrastructure.
Election officials say the EI-ISAC, which was established in 2018 during Trump’s first term following an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, will not be easy to replace.
The rest of CISA’s election security activities are on pause, Wieczorek wrote, as the agency conducts a “broader internal assessment” of funding, products, activities and personnel.
Cyberscoop, a cybersecurity news site, said this assessment was complete as of March 7. A CISA spokesperson did not directly confirm that, but said the assessment “is an internal document that is not planned to be released publicly.”
NASS and NASED officials told Votebeat that states remain committed to ensuring election security, despite the federal pause. But Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes warned U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in a March 7 letter that the halt in services and lack of communication from its officials “raises serious concerns for the security of Arizona’s elections going forward.”
“What was until just last month a longstanding partnership on critical security matters is now complete radio silence from CISA staff except one designee,” Fontes wrote.
Officials in Fontes’ office had invited CISA to join them on election security tours with counties, office spokesperson JP Martin said. CISA often provides physical and cyber security assessments to local election offices across the country.
But Martin told Votebeat that, in mid-February, CISA pulled out of a tour of two northern Arizona counties. Communication stopped after that point.
CISA has now missed tours hosted by the secretary of state in eight of Arizona’s 15 counties, Martin said.
What will CISA’s role in elections be?
As media reported on the cuts and service changes, NASS and NASED officials asked CISA for details about the changes in writing, so they could share it with their members.
But even with the March 3 response, “much remains unknown” about what role the federal agency will play in the future, said Amy Cohen, NASED’s executive director.
Maria Benson, an NASS spokesperson, called that the “the million-dollar question.”
Trump has made it clear, through a Jan. 20 executive order, that CISA will no longer help election officials monitor social media for false claims about elections, which sometimes prompted requests for tech companies to entirely remove some posts. CISA had stepped away from that practice, especially after a 2023 congressional report criticized the agency for unfairly censoring free speech.
At the direction of the Trump administration, CISA completed an initial review of that work, Wieczorek wrote in the email, and is “taking appropriate actions regarding employees found to have participated in these activities.”
Regarding EI-ISAC, Wieczorek wrote, the Center for Internet Security, which ran the system, can still manage it if it chooses. But the center has posted on its website that it no longer supports EI-ISAC because the funding was terminated.
As for the physical and cyber security assessments election officials around the country relied on, Noem told NASS officials in a March 7 letter that the assessments are still available.
State and local officials can continue to receive the assessments, incident response planning resources, and tabletop exercises, Noem wrote.
Officials at Pennsylvania’s Department of State are hopeful that CISA will continue to provide election-related services such as real-time access to threat analyses and warnings about imminent threats, as well as training resources and security services, said Matt Heckel, the department’s press secretary.
Those services were “particularly invaluable to the rural areas of the Commonwealth that cannot replicate those resources,” he wrote.
Votebeat reporter Carter Walker contributed to this report.
This post was originally authored and published by Jen Fifield/Votebeat from AZ Mirror via RSS Feed. Join today to get your news feed on Nationwide Report®.
