--- title: The State of U.S. Election Technology | TIME description: With the rise of cyber-hacks and the spread of misinformation ahead of the midterms, what is the U.S. doing to address gaps in election security. canonical: https://time.com/video/WI132ffk/ og:title: The State of U.S. Election Technology og:description: With the rise of cyber-hacks and the spread of misinformation ahead of the midterms, what is the U.S. doing to address gaps in election security. og:url: https://time.com/video/WI132ffk/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/WI132ffk/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The State of U.S. Election Technology twitter:description: With the rise of cyber-hacks and the spread of misinformation ahead of the midterms, what is the U.S. doing to address gaps in election security. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/WI132ffk/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # The State of U.S. Election Technology > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: The State of U.S. Election Technology [Watch (HLS stream): The State of U.S. Election Technology](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/WI132ffk.m3u8) (3:25)  _Published 2018-10-24. With the rise of cyber-hacks and the spread of misinformation ahead of the midterms, what is the U.S. doing to address gaps in election security._ --- Jul 28, 2023 12:44 AM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [U.S. Accuses Russia of Spreading Disinformation Before November Election](/video/YvkmUM3g/) ### U.S. Accuses Russia of Spreading Disinformation Before November Election [U.S. Officials Address Iranian Election Interference Threat After Trump Campaign Claims Email Hack](/video/WBPWG9U9/) ### U.S. Officials Address Iranian Election Interference Threat After Trump Campaign Claims Email Hack [Microsoft Uncovers More Russian Hacking Attempts Ahead of Midterms](/video/7lmTkw7z/) ### Microsoft Uncovers More Russian Hacking Attempts Ahead of Midterms --- ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] It's time to talk election's security. Over the years Washington rarely paid much attention to mechanic states elections. But Russia surprise attacks on 2016 campaign, through cyber hacks and spreading misinformation across social media Has triggered an alarm across the government and the public. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed that Russians tried to hack election system of 21 states in 2016. In a dizzying pace of election threats as of late has only heightened fears in the run up to November's midterms. Microsoft said it spotted interference attempts against at least three midterm campaigns Google's taken down more than 3 dozen YouTube accounts it believes were linked to Iranian intelligence while Facebook said it deleted 652 accounts linked to foreign interference from Russia and Iran. But despite these advanced security threats, US voter tech is stuck in the past. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, 43 states have voting machines that are at least a decade old, and numerous reports show that most machines are vulnerable to hacking. In fact, at this year's DEFCON Hacking Convention, an 11 year old hacker needed just ten minutes to change the votes on a replica of Florida's election system. It's this reason that congress set aside $ 380 million in March to support states efforts to bolster election security. And some states, like California, plan to use the funds to operate software while Hawaii plans to provide voting officials with cyber security training. Five states still don't even have voting machines with paper backups to verify election results. With so much at stake, how far are we from election technology that matches the 21st century? Here to discuss the future of voter security tech is Fortune's digital editor, Andrew Mesca. All right Andrew, thanks so much for joining us. And let's get right to it. With the ongoing threat of election interference, what's wrong with the current voting tech? What isn't wrong, right? I mean, we have a system that is just behind the time. We don't wannainvest in technology and so we have huge swats of the country that still only do voting by paper. So that's the big problem, we just won't invest to begin with. So what's changed since the last election? I mean, not a whole lot, technologically, because of that resistance, right? But there has been a huge change in mentality. In the old days of security, we used to think about it like a walled garden, a castle. Keep everybody out. Keep the barbarians out of the gate. But now, we assume that we're gonna get hacked, with the government talking about Facebook. Russia interference and all that kind of a thing we are seeing that there is an acknowledgement which means we are building the technology differently and that is great . >> So the reality is that the advanced technology is expensive right ? >> Oh yeah >> So will next generation technology will actually make it to the [ UNKNOWN ] [ LAUGH ] I hope so, I mean this should be a [ UNKNOWN ] issue, protecting what makes our democrasy a democrasy, the vote We should all agree on but there has to be a will. I for one hope that there's a space race of some kind, the same way we see the rhetoric around artificial intelligence and 5G wireless networking. This should be a national issue we should be ploughing money, public and private into securing our voting systems. So I think it's possible if they want to. All right, very insightful stuff. Andrew thanks for joining us. 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