As 2026 approaches, states will face election security threats with less federal help

The midterm elections are a little more than a year away. Primaries in some states — including Arizona — are less than a year away. And a new report from the Brennan Center for Justice has some recommendations for state and local governments to prepare for 2026 — especially in the face of fewer resources from the federal government.

Derek Tisler is counsel at the Brennan Center and one of the report’s authors. He joins The Show to talk about some of what he’s suggesting.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: Derek, what concerns you about the upcoming midterms as it relates to what states have to do and how well they're going to do it?

DEREK TISLER: So what concerns me is that really since 2016 there's been a concerted effort across the federal government, across state governments to both improve election security at the state level, but then also to invest more resources into election security and spread information across different levels of government, and a key player here has been the federal government.

We've seen a huge increase in the amount of funding being made available to states to replace outdated voting equipment to put in place cybersecurity best practices, that sort of thing.

We've seen information sharing networks set up and all these other structures of support have been built up since 2016 with the federal government playing a supporting role.

This year we've seen a shift in that. We've seen the federal government, in particular the Department of Homeland Security, reducing staff support for election security that used to exist, cutting funding for information sharing networks, and in other ways signaling that more than what we've seen in recent years, states are going to be expected to go at election security on their own, and I think that's a big concern heading into the midterms and elections that are coming up sooner than that.

BRODIE: Are you seeing that there are particular vulnerabilities that are sort of common across the country, or are they kind of like state- and maybe even site-specific?

Brennan Center for Justice

TISLER: I think we certainly see very common risks, very common threats across the country. So for example, in the cybersecurity space we have seen foreign adversaries as well as domestic criminal actors probing really all critical infrastructure in the United States, but election infrastructure included in that.

From a physical security perspective, we've seen across the country a rise in threats and harassment directed at election officials, certainly in some states more than others, but we've seen it pretty much across the country.

In 2024, a new thing was widespread bomb threats directed at polling places or election offices — again, more so in some states that have a higher national profile, but it was a pretty widespread threat and certainly something that any county across the country could be facing the risk of. So I think that from a threat perspective, election officials are generally preparing for the same types of things but also preparing for the things that they just can't predict at this time.

BRODIE: How do you go about doing that? To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, like how do you prepare for the unknown unknowns?

TISLER: Well, hopefully there are a lot of preparations that you can do that will put you in a better position to face any sort of risk that may come up during the voting period. And, and central to that is really planning, coordination, and then making sure you have the right backup measures in place.

BRODIE: So you mentioned there's sort of a go it alone strategy on the part of the Department of Homeland Security with relation to the states. I wonder if that means that states are missing out.

What kind of resources? Is it, is it money? Is it expertise? Is it something else?

TISLER: It's really all of the above. So certainly there was funding made available, and that has actually been declining year over year since 2020.

Expertise has been critical here. There's a lot of experts at the federal level in cybersecurity and physical security, and they were able to conduct hundreds of trainings, assessments, scenario planning exercises across the country. So that sort of thing we expect to be heavily deprioritized by the federal government and have less staff available for these sort of assessments.

And then the third thing is again that access to information, which is so critical. Each state can only see what is happening within their boundaries, but they need visibility into what's happening across the country.

What's happening in one state is typically a predictor of something you are going to see in your own state. And the federal government played a huge role in both directly sharing information as well as funding networks of government officials who could share information across state lines.

BRODIE: Are you finding that states are able to make up any of that? Maybe the information from the federal government would be tough without the feds' participation, but in terms of money and other resources and expertise, like are they able to get it somewhere else or are they just sort of doing without?

TISLER: There are certainly promising models that exist to make up for a lot of the gaps that we're now seeing due to the withdrawal of federal support.

So there are a number of states who have set up interagency working groups, which is essentially state officials from emergency management, from law enforcement, from IT, from a number of other areas, kind of doing an assessment of their own staff, their own resources and capacity. And then reaching out to their state election officials and saying, here's what I'm able to provide.

The problem is there are a lot of people who have the capacity to support who have never really thought of election security as part of their job, and a big thing that state leaders need to be doing now is is kind of making sure that all leaders across state government are aware of this problem and are thinking how can I participate.

In response, and then of course a big thing for states is going to be just investing in election security, making sure that election officials have reliable funding so that when their voting system hits the end of its life cycle, they're able to replace it with the most modern equipment with the latest security best practices.

And similar with their electronic poll books, there are other systems that they rely on as well, as you know, funding the type of backup measures that can keep voters voting, that can keep lines down if there are any disruptions that occur.

BRODIE: Is there still time to be doing all of that leading up to elections coming up, in some cases primaries in less than a year?

TISLER: There is absolutely time for that, you know, in many ways we're not talking about large changes to election procedures or anything like that. Election officials can continue to do the same processes they have done to register voters, to oversee the voting process, to count ballots.

We're talking about everything that happens around those processes, and so much of that just comes down to greater communication, collaboration, and that's something that can start anytime. Certainly the further away you are from an election, the more ability you will have to plan and to make a difference, but a week out from election day is never too late to start building connections because you never know when you're going to need them in the election space.