The web security vendor Cloudflare announced Friday that it would provide free top-tier service to local governments' election-related websites.

The program, which Cloudflare has dubbed the "Athenian Project," expands upon an earlier "Project Galileo" program that provided a similar service to public interest sites.

"When Project Galileo began, we did not anticipate that government websites in the United States might be similarly vulnerable because of resourcing concerns. The past few years have taught us otherwise," wrote Alissa Starzak, general counsel for Cloudflare and former general counsel for the Army, in a blog post announcing the offer.

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Cloudflare products mitigate against distributed denial of service attacks, attacks that use overwhelming amounts of internet traffic to knock servers offline.

The Athenian Project will apply to all state, county or municipal government websites providing information on voting or polling places, voting registration or election results.