Iowa’s top election official says election security is strong

JOHNSTON — Threats to Iowa’s election security appeared to be minimal as of Tuesday afternoon, Secretary of State Paul Pate said in an Election Day news conference from the State Emergency Operations Center.

“We’re seeing a calm, which is a good sign,” he said. “We’ll be here until the polls are closed and we’ll continue monitoring everything that’s happening.”

As Iowans went to cast their ballots Tuesday, a team of officials from various state and federal agencies was working to monitor threats to election security. The team included about 50 people from agencies including the National Guard, the Office of the Chief Information Officer and the Department of Homeland Security, Pate said.

The center, housed in an Iowa National Guard building, was the “nerve center” for election security Tuesday, Pate said. The team had prepared for cybersecurity threats, major storms or fires at polling sites, physical threats and civil unrest, he said.

Pate, a Republican, said Iowa’s cybersecurity continued to improve, and all 99 counties’ election offices were working with his office on cybersecurity for the first time this year. The Office of the Chief Information Officer was monitoring for attempts from foreign actors or others to hack election websites or interfere with the state or counties’ internet systems, Pate said.

“We all have the things to keep us from being tampered with, whether it be malware or someone hacking in, which means we’re now safe on all fronts,” he said.

Pate, whose office has put out communications seeking to correct myths about Iowa’s elections, has reiterated ahead of the election that Iowa’s vote tabulators are not connected to the internet. He said he’s confident a bad actor could not affect Iowa’s actual vote.

“The last thing I want is for Iowans to wake up the day after the election and look at those results and not believe in them, not to have confidence in them,” Pate said. “Because if that happens, our republic has fallen.”