The Department of Homeland Security is under fire for waiting months to notify 21 states of the mostly unsuccessful efforts of hackers associated with the Russian government to infiltrate their election systems during the 2016 campaign.

Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) called the delay “unacceptable,” saying state election officials must be made aware of all such attempted intrusions, successful or not, so that they can strengthen their defenses.”

California’s Democratic Secretary of State, Alex Padilla, said that DHS ignored his office’s repeated requests for additional information.

“We shouldn’t have to learn about potential threats from leaked NSA documents or media reports,” Padilla said in a statement. “It is the intelligence community’s responsibility to inform elections officials of any potential threats to our elections. They failed in this responsibility.”

Padilla said that Jeanette Manfra, DHS’ Acting Undersecretary for Cybersecurity and Communications, falsely testified to Congress in June that all 21 states whose systems were targeted had already been informed.

“This was simply not true and DHS acknowledged they failed to contact us and ‘two or three’ other states,” Padilla said.

The hackers efforts’ did not affect election results or the systems themselves. They mainly consisted of attempts to scan the systems for vulnerabilities.

Besides California, other states that have confirmed being targeted include Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin and Washington, according to the Associated Press and states themselves.