Thirty-one secretaries of state sent a bipartisan letter to Congress Wednesday urging mandatory pre-election stress tests on vote-tabulation software that incorporates machine learning for ballot sorting, signature verification, and anomaly detection. The officials asked for federal funding to hire independent red teams and for vendors to publish remediation timelines when tests expose exploitable flaws.
Letter signers include leaders from Michigan, Georgia, Colorado, and Ohio who disagreed on other election reforms but shared concern that vendors accelerated AI features without uniform testing standards. They cited two county pilots in 2025 where signature-matching models produced divergent results across scanner firmware versions.
What Officials Want
The proposal requires vendors serving more than 1 million registered voters to complete third-party adversarial testing 120 days before general elections. Tests must include synthetic ballot marks, degraded scan images, and deliberate model-evasion attempts. Results would be shared with state chief election officers and summarized publicly without disclosing exploit details.
Officials requested $180 million over three years through Election Assistance Commission grants, arguing states cannot fund specialized AI security labs individually. They rejected nationalizing tabulation software but said federal minimum testing beats the current patchwork of vendor self-certification.
Vendor and Federal Response
Dominion and ES&S spokespeople said they welcome uniform standards if timelines respect certification deadlines. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency officials said they already offer voluntary penetration testing and would expand capacity if appropriators provide funding.
House Administration Committee staff said leadership is reviewing the letter alongside separate bills criminalizing deceptive synthetic election audio. Senate Rules Committee aides called testing mandates a potential add-on to must-pass funding measures after July 4 recess.
Political Context
Conservative groups skeptical of federal election involvement conditioned support on prohibiting remote internet voting provisions unrelated to testing. Progressive signers insisted stress tests must include bias reviews when signature models disproportionately flag ballots from non-English speakers.
Former CISA directors from both parties endorsed the letter publicly, arguing adversarial testing reduces conspiracy theories fueled by unexplained software behavior on election night.
Timeline Pressure
Officials said counties need vendor commitments by August 15 to complete testing before November mail-ballot processing begins. Failure to legislate this cycle would leave 2026 midterms reliant on voluntary vendor pledges and uneven state executive orders.
Election technology investors said mandated testing could delay feature rollouts but might reduce litigation costs from post-election challenges citing opaque algorithmic decisions.
