"Ultimately when I look at 2020, the top priority for me is engaging as far and wide as possible, touching as many stakeholders as possible, and making sure we have auditability in the system," Chris Krebs, DHS' top cyber official, said at a DEFCON cyber conference Friday when discussing election security.

"IT, key tenant, can't audit the system, can't look at the logs, you don't know what happened," he added. "Gotta get auditability, I'll say it, gotta have a paper ballot backup."

Krebs said that he doesn't "have all the answers" on election security, adding that "a lot of these policy suggestions are not my job to answer -- Congress has a role here."

The cyber head also called for state legislatures to pick up the slack along with federal lawmakers in addressing a lack of much needed funds to update different states' election systems.

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