EP. 8 — THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING

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Weston Wamp: Like you, we at Issue One are most concerned in this moment with the health and wellbeing of our fellow Americans. There are no doubt policy issues regarding the coronavirus that deserve the undivided attention of Congress for the foreseeable future. 

But many of us are going to be home for a while, and might even have some more time on our hands. So we’ve decided to move forward and finish the Swamp Stories podcast in the middle of this time of great uncertainty. 

The subject matter of this episode happens to be the most relevant to the coronavirus outbreak because we’re still going to have to have elections in November and we must be vigilant because our foreign adversaries will do everything they can to try and take advantage of this crisis and undermine the integrity of our elections.

I'm Weston Wamp and this is Swamp Stories brought to you by Issue One.

Ambassador Tim Roemer:  When we go cast our vote in South bend, Indiana, or Knoxville, Tennessee, we want to make sure that's our vote, and that's our voice. A Russian, Chinese, a North Korean hacker is not going to take that right away from us that we've died to protect.

Weston Wamp:  That was former 9/11 commissioner Tim Roemer. He spent the better part of the last two decades fighting to strengthen democracy, both here at home and overseas. He served in Congress for more than a decade and then became our ambassador to India, now he works with Issue One. Ambassador Roemer really sets up this episode perfectly. Because in a way we never could have expected a generation ago, our enemies have determined that the most effective way they can attack us is at the very heart of our Republic: our elections.

Now, 21st century soldiers of a different sort, sit in darker rooms in far corners of the world, seeking to disrupt our elections, trying to sow division through digital warfare and disinformation campaigns. All with one goal to weaken democracy and true self-government here and around the world.

This is Episode Eight: The Russians are Coming.

Ambassador Tim Roemer: Right after 9/11 happened, one of the first things I read was a statement from Osama bin Laden that was several years old, and he said, "We are not going to attack the United States with tanks, with air force equipment, with traditional means, we are going to do it with cells and we know they're vulnerable."

Weston Wamp: Ambassador Roemer draws a straight line from the style of war that started on September 11, 2001 to today's foreign attacks on America from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and other non state actors.

Ambassador Tim Roemer: There's an eerie and threatening similarity because these people don't even need to be radicalized in a cave, shipped to the United States and snuck in and commandeer an airplane. They can hack from any country in the world.

Weston Wamp: There is in a way a real "made for the movies" aspect to this. Imagine a blockbuster film where America's under attack, the entire country rallies together. But here we're not talking about an invasion or missiles being launched. The unseen and frankly still misunderstood attacks from our enemies are just beginning.

The good news is America's getting its act together in the fight against foreign interference in our elections. The bad news is America's still getting its act together to combat foreign interference. So I reached out to Republican Senator James Lankford from Oklahoma for some perspective. He's been leading a bipartisan charge in the Senate on the two different battlefields where this war is being fought.

Senator James Lankford: There's really two sets of threats that we face. One is a cybersecurity cyber attack from a Russian government or the North Koreans or the Iranians, there's any group of folks that are out there, or quite frankly, a domestic activist. Then there's a separate one that's an influence campaign from some of these, and sometimes they get conflated, but they're two entirely different strategies.

Weston Wamp: So we're up against two issues: foreign countries trying to disrupt our discourse and a sprint to stay ahead of their ability to attack our voting systems. And a big reason we're at risk in 2020 is partisan politics, pure and simple. Everything since 2016 gets painted with the brush that the Russians tried to help Donald Trump win the presidency. And to be fair, President Trump and some of his biggest supporters have minimized Russia's efforts, likely because they want to minimize the significance of the role the Russians may have played. But that really misses the point. That election is behind us, Donald Trump is the president, and foreign actors are still trying to interfere in our elections.

Now comes the swampy part. Because of these politics, some Republicans in the Senate have stood in the way of legislation to stop foreign interference in our elections. 

Female Narrator: The GOP leader Mitch McConnell blocked that bill. He called it a partisan effort and said that the Trump administration has already done a lot to boost election security. 

Weston Wamp: Even simple proposals like the Honest Ads act, which would close loopholes in our transparency laws that have allowed foreign countries and foreign actors to illegally buy online political ads, couldn't get a hearing in Congress. That's basic transparency, the American people want it. It's not a new idea.

The Supreme Court has routinely said, as we've covered in other episodes, that Americans have a right to know who's trying to influence their vote, but bills that would undermine the ability of foreign actors to anonymously try to influence our elections. They're not even being debated formally in Washington, so it's up to us to sort this out. It's got all the makings of a national security emergency fueled again, by some political loyalties. And my party has to step up. We need bipartisan action. But where do we start? 

Nick Penniman: When it comes to election security, everyone always wants there to be some kind of a silver bullet. So if you just do one thing, everything’s solved. But unfortunately, it’s just not that way. You’ve got to do a bunch of things.

Weston Wamp: I sat down with Nick Penniman, the CEO of Issue One, which developed a comprehensive strategy to protect our elections.

Nick Penniman: Issue One is pushing what we call our "Don't Mess with Us" package. It's five pieces of legislation that we support. All of them are bipartisan. All of them have Republican support. The five pieces would do things like, 1. Stop online disinformation campaigns. 2. Promote election integrity. 3. Put deterrence measures in place against future attacks in our elections. 4. Close foreign lobbying loopholes. And 5. Stop dark money from coming into our elections through shell companies. We view these as all being really common sense measures that would stop foreign disruption in our elections so that our elections are our elections.

Weston Wamp: Don't miss the big picture of what he said. For every known problem, there's already a bipartisan piece of legislation in Congress today to fix it. Despite the partisan politics dynamics that affect everything in Washington, there are some great Republican champions on this issue because after all, this is not a Republican or a Democratic problem, it's an American one. The way that we elect our leaders in a free and democratic fashion and the peaceful transition of power, they’re the core of what makes us American.

There are two parts of the issue, stopping for interference and securing our elections. Countries like Russia spread disinformation because there's nothing they like more than a divided and misinformed America. Arguably the grand prize that they're all after is a direct hit to our election systems. We all know that's what they want and we know they've tried and failed, so it's time to fight back.

Late last year after outcry over how much we've honestly done to secure our elections, we took a big step forward as advocates help to secure $425 million to help States replace voting machines, update software, and more.

This was a huge win and it took everyone pushing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to get onboard. This was possible because Secretaries of State from across the country and key senators like Republican James Lankford and Democrat Amy Klobuchar and lots of reform groups made it a top issue. A unique campaign formed that included prominent Republican Grover Norquist's organization, Americans for Tax Reform, along with FreedomWorks, Issue One, the National Election Defense Coalition, the Brennan Center, and Common Cause. A list of strange bedfellows that worked together to make this a reality. But much more needs to be done to secure elections because the way we run them is, well, a little complicated. Here's Senator Lankford.

Senator James Lankford:  Well, the states run their elections, they are just as responsible for running their elections as they are cutting the grass of the governor's mansion. I mean, that is a distinctly state responsibility. In fact, constitutionally it is assigned to the states.

Weston Wamp:  All right, I'm for that. I'm a conservative. I respect federalism. Makes sense.

Senator James Lankford: But the federal government also has a role, and it's one of the key things that I've worked a lot with, with the Department of Homeland Security over the past several years to say, "what can we do to be able to support the states in this process?"

Weston Wamp: That piece seems critical. So how can the federal government help? There are more than 8,000 jurisdictions that actually run our elections and everyone has different rules and it does things a different way with unique challenges, from budget to staff to weather, to almost everything else you can think of. I was so blown away by all of this that I reached out to Liz Howard, Counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center. She's a former election administrator from Virginia. And she did not pull punches.

Liz Howard: The reality is, in November of 2020 there is going to be a huge fleet of equipment that is deployed across this country, and there will be some isolated incidents of technical failures and the election officials are going to have to respond to those situations.

Weston Wamp: So that's a cleareyed look at the challenges that are ahead of us, but here's the good news. The Brennan center has one solution that at least could make every election more secure. And I think rebuild the public trust as we know that we're under attack.

Liz Howard: One of the foundational election security measures that we think is just essential is to have that paper record backup of every vote cast.

Weston Wamp: It seems almost unbelievable in today's technological age, but here we are. Maybe the most important way that we can protect ourselves is to make sure there are paper records of how people vote in our elections. And I gotta tell you, coming from a background in venture capital and technology, I used to answer questions all the time about how we might be voting on our iPhones. But if anything, here we are headed back to where we started, to paper.

We’ll be right back after this short break.

We’re back. The longer that I talked to Liz Howard, the more it became clear that the solution here is simple. So we're going to walk through this next part by looking at two states. First, here's what we know about Tennessee's voting equipment in my hometown, Chattanooga in Hamilton County.

Liz Howard: Because so much of the equipment in Tennessee is over a decade old and was purchased back in 2000 and around 2004, when the federal government passed what's called the "Help America Vote" act and gave states money in order to purchase new voting equipment. A lot of that equipment that was purchased in 2004 hasn't been replaced.

Weston Wamp: While my home state has a lot of equipment that is on its way to being dated, we did make a common sense decision that was ahead of our time.

Liz Howard:  Hamilton County made what we think is a smart decision and implemented paper-based voting systems several years ago.

Weston Wamp: So I asked Liz how that compares to Virginia, where she worked.

Liz Howard: Virginia in 2015 was very similar to Tennessee. Each locality selected basically from a menu of certified voting systems created by the state, what type of voting system that they wanted to use. At the beginning of 2015, the majority of Virginia counties and localities used paperless voting machines. In 2015, when we were at the state, we discovered that some of our voting systems were connected to the internet. So we decertified those paperless voting machines. What we saw over the next year and a half or so was that localities that could afford it, all transitioned over to paper-based voting systems.

Weston Wamp:  All good. Right? The state saw an opportunity to try and update its election infrastructure and made it a priority. But what Liz didn't know then, is that they had just dodged a bullet only to find out another dozen were headed their way.

Liz Howard: In August of 2017, a white hat hacker conference called Defcon had for the first time, an exhibit at their conference called "The Voting Machine Hacking Village." This exhibit included paperless voting machines used across the country, including some models which were used in Virginia and hackers hacked voting equipment that was still in use in Virginia. And there was a password for one of our voting machines that was published online, after and during that conference. So we became very, very concerned. And in Virginia, less than 60 days prior to our November general, we decertified all of the paperless voting systems in the state.

Weston Wamp: You heard that, right. Because Virginia couldn't afford to update all of their election systems, the voting machines that they were using were literally publicly hacked at a conference. And they had to fix that with less than 60 days to an election. It was a close call.

Liz Howard: I'll tell you, Weston, this became very important to us in Virginia. In 2017, somewhat unexpectedly, the Democrats increased the number of House seats that they won to the point where control of this state legislature was going to be determined by one House race. This House race went to a recount, and it was in a district that had formerly used paperless voting machines.

Weston Wamp: It's at that point that this felt very real. I flash forward to Election Night 2020, and what could happen. But ultimately, because Virginia had gotten rid of those paperless voting machines, they'd saved themselves a potential world of hurt and an uncertain election outcome. And that is where the simple paper ballot backup comes into play. If you know your vote was recorded on a machine and there's a paper backup, then you can have confidence in the system. No reason to think that your vote wouldn't be counted fairly.

Liz Howard:  The real answer to the election security issues that we are facing across this country is to provide consistent funding that election officials can rely on in order to plan, in order to implement, and hire the staff and the measures that they need to in order to create an election infrastructure that we can all have faith and confidence in. And election officials need to know that money is coming so that they can do their jobs. These one time funding packages are much appreciated, but they are not the complete answer to this problem.

Weston Wamp: She's right. The one off $425 million from Congress needs to be seen as a good first step, but it's just a downpayment and one that came very late in the election cycle. Now with all this in mind, you might think we've really got our work cut out for us, and we do, but it's not all doom and gloom. The fact is, a lot of people have been hard at work behind the scenes fighting the good fight. Let's go back to Senator James Lankford.

Senator James Lankford:  I think that there will be plenty of people that will actually engage to try to find some way to be able to mess with our system. But what we found in 2016 is, the Russians were able to get to some of our voter files, but they weren't able to actually use that information to be able to find a way to be able to basically weaponize it. They were able to get towards some of our voting machines, but our voting machines are much better protected now than they were in the past.

Weston Wamp: As Senator Lankford alluded to earlier, the Constitution makes clear that it's the state's responsibility to run their own elections. But the federal government should play a major support role.

Senator James Lankford: Our national protection system is the highest in the world of what we do in our federal networks. We're loaning that system, basically to states to say, "if you want to run through, if you want to call it a virus protection system, that you have in your own state. But also run through the federal system so that everything coming in and out of your networks is double checked on it." We're allowing States to be able to do that. To say, “we want to have that extra layer of protection.”

Weston Wamp: Some fixes were total no-brainers.

Senator James Lankford: What we have done in the past several years is get someone with classified clearance in every single one of our states, so that if there is a threat that pops up from a state, or that the Russians are trying to engage, our FBI can talk directly with someone in that state and say, "Hey, someone from Russia is trying to engage in your system" and there's no delay saying, "Hey, there's no one with clearance."

We had that problem, as odd as it sounds, in 2016 that the FBI couldn't talk to people on the state level because no one had clearance. That problem's fixed.

Weston Wamp: Look, this problem is complex and it's not going away. As Senator Lankford pointed out to me, there are plenty of things foreign adversaries could do to undermine the confidence Americans have in our democratic process. Even if they don't successfully break into our systems or change votes.

Senator James Lankford:  One of the big threats is really kind of an odd one that people wouldn't think about. If the Russians or Iranians or whoever it is, we're able to break into the unofficial results on election night. That would be get in and change the formula in the system. So let's say the election group from a state puts in the data, once they get into the results, it goes up on the website is "unofficial results", but they, the Russians have changed the formula in the background. It would pop up with one person winning when three days later when the official results came out, it would actually show another person winning. Well, that would destabilize the election, that it hasn't actually changed the ballot and all of those election results can be verified. But it would make people lose trust in what actually happened in the election.

Weston Wamp: Whether or not you think Russia or any other country favors a particular candidate or party, one thing is for sure: their goal is to destabilize and ultimately divide all of us.

Nick Penniman sums up how we can come together as a country to protect our elections from foreign attacks.

Nick Penniman: We've already notched some very clear victories. Late last year with pieces of our election security bills that have already been passed into law. That is a huge thing, especially in Washington today, in which, you know, very few things happen and especially very few things happen in a bipartisan fashion. But, there is so much more to be done. This is not just a problem that's kind of one and done, problem fixed. There are many different threats to our election security in this country, and probably new threats will emerge. So we need to do is we need to constantly be coming together as a country, Republicans, and Democrats, and independents and we have to be vigilant and nimble and aggressive and proactive in making sure that our elections are sovereign. That our elections are not being messed with. That's the way to move forward.

Weston Wamp: And as we close, let's come full circle to Ambassador Roemer.

Ambassador Tim Roemer: We talk about our favorite football teams and our colleges that bring us together. What state we're from, Tennessee or Indiana. Our country should be something that unites us, our country, and our representative democracy. That is something you have to fight for every generation. This is a miracle. This is a great experiment that we all have to devote our time to protecting and keeping. How do we all try to drain the swamp together and put country above party? How do we all try to protect our election security together? These will be critical questions for us all to work on, Democrats and Republicans together.

Weston Wamp: On our next episode, we're going to take a look at how lobbying in the swamp really works and discuss a loophole that's been used more in modern times than ever before. But in the process, we're going to tell you a story about a Republican and a Democrat, both new to Congress who came together to find a solution.

Thanks for listening to Swamp Stories presented by Issue One, the country's leading political reform organization that unites Republicans, Democrats, and independents to fix our broken political system. Please subscribe to the podcast and share it with your friends. Even better rate and review it on iTunes to help us reach more listeners, you can find out more at swampstories.org. I'm your host, Weston Wamp. Thank you to executive producer, Ethan Rome, producers Evan Ottenfeld and Sydney Richards, and editor Parker Tan from parkerpodcasting.com. Swamp Stories was recorded in Tennessee, edited in Texas, and can be found wherever you listen to podcasts.

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