Kentucky led with bipartisan election reform. Now Congress should fund infrastructure.

Around this time last year, I was already starting to hear from Kentucky county clerks who were worried. How do you make elections safe, secure and accessible in the middle of a global pandemic? And just how much would it cost? The questions were easy; the answers were much more difficult.

We know how the story ended — voter participation was up more than one point compared to 2016 — reaching 60.3 percent in Kentucky in the 2020 presidential election. That was no accident, but it happened because of the work of our state board of elections, secretary of state, and 120 county clerks and their staff around Kentucky.

The 2020 election was safe and secure. Now we must turn to the future so that Kentucky voters — and local election officials — are set up for success in the next election.

The Kentucky General Assembly has already taken an important first step with a bipartisan reform bill that expands access to early in-person voting and mandates a statewide transition to paper ballots, among other changes. This new law is a step forward, strengthening security and adding options for voters to participate.

Of course, Kentucky county clerks will need the resources to implement these changes. There is no better time for Congress to act and fund election infrastructure like other infrastructure. After all, updating voting machines is just one expensive piece of infrastructure Congress can help local governments with. Implementing other security measures requires resources too. That’s why Congress should allocate funding for local election administrators in the upcoming infrastructure package.

The work done by election administrators here in Kentucky is part of securing our nation’s critical infrastructure. Just ask the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In 2017, DHS officially designated election infrastructure as “part of the existing government facilities critical infrastructure sector.”

We all saw what happened recently when hackers forced the shutdown of a gasoline pipeline, disrupting supplies and causing gas prices to surge for days. The last thing we need is for a similar attack to disrupt our elections, which would risk undermining our election system.

To name just a few urgent needs, Congress could add funding in the infrastructure package for local election officials to modernize and strengthen election security – from replacing outdated voting machines to upgrading voter registration databases and websites, offering additional cyber security training and even investing in secure facilities for the storage of election materials and equipment.

Thanks to the hard work of Kentucky election officials, the 2020 election was safe, secure and participation was up. The Kentucky General Assembly has built on that success with reforms that will strengthen security and voter participation.

On several other occasions, Congress has offered assistance for elections – each time, with bipartisan support. Now it has another chance to step up – this time by making a sustained investment. Kentucky’s counties – and our voters – would benefit from such a smart investment.

Trey Grayson is an attorney with Frost Brown Todd and served two terms as Kentucky’s Secretary of State.