Secretaries of state from both parties say the federal government has sharply pulled back the intelligence briefings, technical help and funding that once anchored election cybersecurity — forcing states to improvise their own defenses just as the 2026 midterms approach and officials warn foreign adversaries remain actively interested in American elections.
What’s been cut
Congress cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s budget earlier this year, and the administration has proposed deeper reductions still. CISA has also reduced its election-security staffing and scaled back the regular intelligence briefings it once provided to state and local officials. In a February memo reported by Wired, acting CISA Director Bridget Bean wrote that ‘it is necessary to rescope the agency’s election security activities.’ The administration also ended federal funding for the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a nonprofit hub that helped state and local governments share cyber threat information, leaving states to cover its membership fees themselves.
Officials across the spectrum notice the difference
The pullback has drawn concern from officials regardless of party. Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, put it starkly: ‘If you go back to 2020, we had 30 different federal threat briefings. This year we received none.’ Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, a Democrat, said the federal government is reducing resources even as it acknowledges that nation-state actors continue to target U.S. elections. Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon said the lost briefings are ‘very difficult to replace,’ and his office has turned to private-sector cybersecurity testing and tabletop exercises to fill the gap.
A GOP counterpoint
Not every Republican official shares Raffensperger’s alarm. Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins said he has ‘the utmost confidence’ in the administration’s approach, even while acknowledging the current threat environment remains serious — illustrating that the response to the federal pullback breaks less cleanly along party lines than the broader fight over citizenship-verification laws.
States paying their own way
With federal MS-ISAC funding gone, Georgia, Minnesota, Washington and New Mexico are among the states now paying membership fees themselves to keep access to the information-sharing network. Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, wrote to then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in May expressing concern about the pullback, part of a broader pattern of congressional Democrats pressing the administration over reduced election-security support. Geoff Hale, a former CISA election security official, has warned that the retreat leaves states more exposed to threats from Russia, China and Iran.
The administration’s response
DHS has not substantively addressed the specific cybersecurity cuts in public comments. A department spokesperson instead said CISA is focused on its core statutory mission, attributing the agency’s earlier budget growth to what the spokesperson described as ‘censorship, branding, and electioneering.’ Separately, CISA released its 2026 Election Infrastructure Security Plan in September, naming the agency’s 10 regional directors as election security advisers and promising a new information-sharing platform modeled on one used during the 2026 World Cup — though the plan does not restore dedicated election-adviser positions or specify new funding.
What it means heading into November
With classified intelligence briefings no longer a given and federal technical assistance diminished, state election offices are increasingly relying on a patchwork of private contractors, informal peer networks and self-funded information sharing to defend their systems. Whether that patchwork proves adequate may not be clear until Election Day itself, but the bipartisan unease among state officials — even as they disagree on how urgent the threat is — suggests the federal-state gap in election cybersecurity support is likely to remain a live issue through the midterms and beyond.
Photo: Tima Miroshnichenko / PEXELS via Pexels
