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State of security: California

Who’s in charge: Secretary of State Alex Padilla

Security in action: California can list several initiatives it has taken to ensure to the best of its ability that the 2018 election is safe from cyberattack.

Secretary of State Alex Padilla met with federal and state law enforcement officials on October 9 to discuss California’s election cybersecurity initiatives ahead of the general election. Representatives from the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the California Highway Patrol were in attendance.

While the details of what was discussed were not released California has spent the last few years scaling up its cybersecurity efforts. The legislature and governor approved $134 million to invest in new voting equipment and $3 million to establish the Office of Election Cybersecurity and Enterprise Risk Management.

California is also looking toward the future with the state recently passing a law requiring that starting with the 2020 primary elections all counties must perform a post-election audit to confirm the accuracy and integrity of the results in lieu of the one-percent manual tally.

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