Election Question: What steps have been taken to protect the nation’s election systems from potential interference by foreign powers like Russia?
Have voting systems been “hardened” in any way?Answer: Federal, state and local officials prioritized securing voting systems after Russia interfered in the 2016 election, breaking down bureaucracy to improve communication of potential threats, conducting security reviews and installing network sentinels to detect known cyberthreats and suspicious activity.A key step was the January 2017 decision by the outgoing Obama administration to designate the election systems as “critical infrastructure” on par with nuclear reactors, banks and the electrical grid.