The cyber experts helping local officials prepare for 2026, 2028 elections

“Smarter people than I always describe it as: cyber is a team sport, and you don’t want it to be a pick-up game,” Geoff Hale, visiting fellow for election security at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said in a recent interview for the Priorities Podcast. “You want to know who you’re passing to, you want to know who you’re engaging with and who your defense is. Nobody’s going to be an expert across the board on everything.” Hale said that state and local elections officials have vastly improved their cybersecurity game over the past decade, but that there are still gaps, particularly during the current presidential administration, which has scaled back support for elections. Hale said a new initiative at CDT, which he’s leading, will help fill those gaps.

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The State of Representatives in Idaho has approved legislation that would prohibit the state from procuring or even using large language models that promote diversity, equity or inclusion. Borrowing language from an executive order the president issued last year, the bill aims to ensure that all LLMs used by the state are “truth-seeking” and possess “ideological neutrality.”

California Chief Information Officer Liana Bailey-Crimmins last week announced she’s retiring from state service, after nearly four decades in government and several years heading IT in the Golden State.

North Carolina’s CIO, Teena Piccione, has also announced she’s stepping down, but to return to the private sector. She called her less than two years heading IT in North Carolina a “profound honor.

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