Silver Spring, Maryland (CNN) A top Kentucky election official said Thursday that counties there are "severely under resourced," affecting their abilities to provide adequate cybersecurity.

"Most of us cannot compel our local election jurisdictions to update their equipment," said Jared Dearing, executive director of the Kentucky State Board of Elections, before an Elections Assistance Commission panel in Silver Spring.

The comments came a week after the annual Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas, where the three lawmakers who attended -- all Democrats -- blamed Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, for the Congress' stagnation on any election security bill.

At Def Con, a group of election security researchers host a Voting Village, now in its third year, where independent hackers try to break into decommissioned voting equipment. While no system can be guaranteed safe from hackers, election security experts -- including ones consulted for the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report on the subject -- resoundingly say that machines need to be routinely updated and use paper ballots so results can be audited.

Last year's Senate appropriations bill gave $380 million for election equipment and cybersecurity services, divvied up through a preexisting Elections Assistance Commission formula established by the Help America Vote Act. But a commission study in April found that states have been slow to spend that money.

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