CHICAGO -- The Election Infrastructure Initiative has released a series of ads calling on the Senate to boost funding for state and local election departments. The ads come after the House recommended $400 million in funding for state and local election departments – a massive cut from President Biden’s budget request and well below the need, estimated at $53 billion over 10 years.

The full-page ads are running in newspapers in Vermont, Illinois, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Kansas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Washington, D.C. The ads will run this week. View the ad here. 

“The simple fact is that when the House recommended $400 million in funding to state and election departments, it was both a sign of progress and deeply concerning,” said Tiana Epps-Johnson, executive director for the Center for Tech and Civic Life. “With the cost of everything from paper ballots to staffing and mail surging, $400 million in funding doesn’t come close to the scale of the need. The Senate can help ensure reliable elections by increasing funding to state and local election departments.”

“One of the biggest barriers to Americans’ access to the ballot has nothing to do with partisan fights — it’s basic maintenance of election infrastructure,” said Sam Oliker-Friedland, executive director of the Institute for Responsive Government. “We need to actually support the people who run our elections, who are now working under the toughest conditions ever seen in this country. They need secure internet, physical security, reliable staff and equipment to carry out one of the most important jobs in America.” 

Earlier this year, President Biden released a budget that proposes $10 billion over 10 years for state and local election departments – up from $75 million in the most recent omnibus budget. 

According to a recent national survey from Data for Progress, 69 percent of likely voters nationally agree that lawmakers should invest in election infrastructure to give election officials the resources to make voting accessible and secure. Support was strong across all parties, with 69 percent of Republicans supporting investments. 

The polling found strong support from voters for Congress to allocate funding so that their local election departments have the basic tools -- including secure internet access (76 percent), at least one permanent employee (58 percent), physical and cybersecurity systems (76 percent), reliable voting machines (70 percent) and mail equipment (60 percent). View the polling memo here.

According to a recent study from MIT, public spending on election services ranks near the bottom, about the same as what local governments spend on parking facilities.

The Department of Homeland Security in 2017 officially designated election infrastructure as “part of the existing Government Facilities critical infrastructure sector.” DHS noted that election infrastructure “is vital to our national interests, and cyberattacks on this country are becoming more sophisticated, and bad cyber actors – ranging from nation-states, cybercriminals and hacktivists – are becoming more sophisticated and dangerous.”

Previously, EII rallied a bipartisan group of state and local officials from around the country called on Congress to allocate $20 billion in funding to local and state election administrators for secure election infrastructure over the next 10 years.