John,

We don’t need to tell you that all aspects of our democracy are under attack. As we at Free Speech For People work daily to fight back to protect democracy and the right to vote, we recognize that means not just protecting everyone’s right to cast a ballot, but to have that ballot counted as cast.

That’s why we co-hosted an important symposium on election security on August 8-9 with the Election Integrity Foundation (EIF) at the DEF CON Voting Village in Las Vegas to confront the facts about election security.  

At FSFP, we’ve long fought for more secure, transparent, and auditable voting equipment. We know that our voting system vendors are poorly regulated, that our voting systems have significant security weaknesses, and that corrupt election officials can and have enabled insider attacks. 

But since Donald Trump claimed falsely and without evidence that the 2020 election was rigged, there’s been a communications backlash to try to counter these false claims by overstating the security of our election systems and the strength and effectiveness of our post-election audits. 

As our democracy is on the brink, we cannot afford to deceive ourselves about the true state of our election infrastructure that counts our votes. We cannot afford to ignore well-documented security breaches and known system vulnerabilities because of political posturing or well-meaning campaigns to build voter confidence. We need to confront the facts.

This symposium separates fact from fiction and provides a clear-eyed understanding of our election systems’ strengths and weaknesses for the press, public, and other organizations protecting democracy. Voters have the right to understand when there are legitimate concerns about our voting systems. 

That’s why this symposium is so important – we need to understand and confront the problems so we can effectively address them for 2026 and beyond.

You can watch the full symposium here.

In Solidarity, 

Susan Greenhalgh
Senior Advisor on Election Security, Free Speech For People