At Scientific American, Jackson Barnett writes about the challenge of election security:
One reason for the inadequate response is that elected representatives and their staffs are not tech savvy enough to understand the scope of the problems, says Lawrence Norden, director of the Election Reform Program at the Brennan Center and co-author of the cost analysis. His sentiments are echoed by other cybersecurity specialists. “I just didn’t have the tools,” recalls Meg King, director of the Digital Futures Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, who worked on a cyberdefense bill a decade ago as a senior staff member on a House homeland security subcommittee. She now describes that bill as “too little, too late.” Today her think tank has begun to offer staffers short courses in cybersecurity issues, but security researchers worry that step will not be enough.
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King says one reason Capitol Hill keeps proposing solutions that fall short of the problem is high staff turnover, which means knowledge evaporates when people leave. Further, institutions that provide nonpartisan information to Congress, such as the Congressional Research Service, are stretched thin. The Office of Technology Assessment, a Congressional service that was intended to advise lawmakers on science and technology issues, was shut down in 1995. Recently representatives from both parties have begun efforts to resurrect it, but support has yet to materialize into real funding.