To the Editor:
The national security establishment is in agreement: Russia carried out a sophisticated campaign to hack American state boards of elections and voting machine companies — and the Kremlin is already gearing up to do it again in future elections.
What has the Senate done in response? Sit on its hands.
The Senate should take the House of Representatives’s lead. The House recently passed a bill allocating $600 million for states to update outdated electronic voting equipment with systems that use verifiable paper ballots, which are the best protection against cyber attacks attempting to change the outcome of our elections. Currently, many states have no way of verifying vote counts in the event of a cyberattack.
I’m counting on my senators to support a Senate version of this critical bill and convince other senators to do the same. Election security efforts to date simply aren’t enough, and this $600 million is a step in the right direction.
The American people deserve safe and secure elections.

Sincerely,
Debbie Royalty
Johnson City