IC Workforce & Organization — 2026-08-01

CISA Official Tells Congress Agency Too Depleted to Provide Normal Election Security Assistance Ahead of 2026 Midterms

BLUFCISA will likely release its promised security plan by mid-August, but the federal election-security baseline has already fractured into a patchwork of paid subscriptions and private contracts that disadvantages under-resourced jurisdictions.

A CISA official recently assigned to election security told congressional staff in a closed-door briefing this month that the agency has been so depleted it cannot provide its normal election-security assistance ahead of the midterms 12. CISA's workforce has fallen from roughly 3,400 employees in January 2025 to about 2,300, per reporting by the New York Times and CBS News cited in coverage of the briefing 2. An internal summary CISA emailed to Capitol Hill staff on July 17 says the agency is reassigning remaining staff into liaison roles and will issue a public security plan within 30 days covering cyber and physical resources for states 1. States have responded by contracting private cybersecurity vendors and paying individually for access to the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, now used under a paid subscription model across 44 states after CISA previously provided it free 12.

Analysis
Reassigning survivors into liaison roles trades depth for reach, leaving states without the tabletop exercises, threat-intelligence fusion, and physical-security assessments that required trained regional staff rather than relationship-building, and the shift to paid EI-ISAC subscriptions and private vendors across 44 states will not reverse even once the promised plan appears, since budgets and contracts are now locked in for the cycle. The restructuring could instead reflect a deliberate pivot toward relationship-driven state engagement rather than improvised attrition management. CISA likely releases its public security plan by August 16, though a document alone cannot restore the cross-agency fusion that once flagged foreign interference. This assessment is held with moderate confidence, given a single internal memo and consistent but uncorroborated workforce figures from two outlets. If the plan proves substantive, states can scale back vendor spending; if not, the paid subscription model becomes the de facto permanent replacement for federal support.

4 sources