Senate Budget Includes $400 Million in Funding for State and Local Election Departments
While Short of Full Funding, the Senate Budget Number is an Important Step Forward for State and Local Election Departments
CHICAGO -- The Election Infrastructure Initiative has released the following statement in reaction to the Senate FSGG bill today including $400 million in funding for state and local election departments – up from $75 million in the last omnibus.
“The $400 million recommended by the Senate is an important step forward and we are grateful to the Senators for beginning to address the enormous funding needs of state and local election departments,” said Tiana Epps-Johnson, executive director for the Center for Tech and Civic Life. “We know that this is still well short of what election departments ultimately need to modernize our country’s election infrastructure, but moving forward, we will work to ensure this funding is included in the final budget and that Congress builds on this funding in future years so that election departments have the resources required to run secure and fair elections.”
Today’s recommendation from the Senate comes after the House recommended $400 million in funding earlier this summer. Prior to that President Biden released a budget that proposes $10 billion over 10 years for state and local election departments. President Biden’s request came following a study from EII that estimated the need at $53 billion over 10 years.
Today’s funding recommendation came following a series of ads calling on the Senate to boost funding for state and local election departments. The full-page ads ran this week in newspapers in Vermont, Illinois, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, Kansas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Washington, D.C. View the ad here.
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 that called on Congress to allocate $20 billion in funding to local and state election administrators for secure election infrastructure over the next 10 years.
