Castro Dallas Morning News Op-Ed: “4 Things Texas Must Do To Secure Elections”
Washington, D.C.—Congressman Joaquin Castro (TX-20), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, authored an op-ed in the Dallas Morning News today about four things Texas must do in order to secure our midterm elections this year.
A preview of the op-ed can be found below, with a full version available here.
“Here are four ways we can protect Texas' midterm elections.
“1. Texas Gov. Greg Abbot should call a special session to establish a minimum level of cyber security protection. This would enable Texas to ensure we have, at a minimum, protections and systems in place to prevent meddling attempts or to detect more sophisticated hacks. It is critical to protect both voter registration databases and ballots.
“2. Replace old voting machines with new, auditable systems. We know that paperless, direct-recording electronic machines are still used in 14 states including Texas. The Texas Legislature should establish a fund that counties can tap to help defray the costs of replacing these digital voting machines with new, auditable systems used in 36 other states that allow us to ensure the accuracy of ballots cast and security of our voting infrastructure.
“3. Implement statewide pre- and post-election auditing. State law requires post-election audits for jurisdictions using only paper ballots, and the Texas secretary of state has the discretion to audit electronic ballots. However, Texas does not mandate statewide post-election audits that test accuracy of the outcome using methods endorsed by the American Statistical Association. And pre-election auditing would allow us to detect errors before votes are cast.
“4. Texas should work with the Department of Homeland Security to secure voting systems. If both our local and federal systems are being targeted, we must continue to share intelligence and best practices so we can guard against foreign intrusion at any level of government. And Congress needs to step up and provide resources for Texas and other states to safeguard voting infrastructure. We should start by appropriating the $400 million already authorized by law.
“Given the specific mentions of Texas in Mueller's indictment, it is critical that we work at both the federal and state level to ensure our elections are secure. The integrity of our democratic institutions are at stake, and we, as lawmakers and elected officials, must uphold our oath to protect the Constitution.”
Read the full version here.
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