SALEM — Money, security and a new way of voting are part of the growing drumbeat of news surrounding the 2020 election. The number of candidates who have created campaign finance committees has jumped to 79 as of Tuesday. Candidates can’t officially file for office until Sept. 12, but fundraising political action committees can open their coffers earlier.

Some of the election buzz this past week in the Oregon Capitol:

Flourishing fundraising

Fundraising for the 2020 election is starting to pick up, according to statistics tracking contributions to lawmakers in Congress and the Legislature.

U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, whose district includes Umatilla and Morrow counties, has raised $858,755 in the current federal election cycle, which runs through 2020, according to the political finance watchdog group Center for Responsive Politics.

Walden has $1.7 million cash on hand, which includes money rolled over from the last election cycle. His top contributor, through individual contributions and affiliated political action committees, is Philadelphia-based Comcast Corp. The telecommunications conglomerate has given Walden a total of $31,200 as of June 30.

Campaign contributions to state lawmakers are compiled by the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office.

Election security dry run

Information technology and election officials from all 36 Oregon counties recently gathered in La Grande for a four-hour election cybersecurity exercise sponsored by the Elections Division of the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office. The event was in partnership with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. All Oregon counties belong to the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which shares threat information between federal, state and local governments.

Troubleshooting during the exercise included password strength and recognizing “phishing” attempts. Secretary of State Bev Clarno has said Oregon’s vote-by-mail system makes the state’s elections more secure because there are only 36 county election offices where ballots are gathered instead of having to secure thousands of voting booths across the state. Each location has a secured room for ballots that is under constant video surveillance. The tallying system that determines vote totals statewide is not connected to the internet, making hacking extremely difficult to impossible. There are paper backups for all documents.

Election facts vs. rumors

Clarno said Tuesday she expects the biggest election problem in 2020 to be the same one as the last presidential election in 2016 — unsubstantiated rumors being passed off as facts.

“Just because you read something on social media or online doesn’t mean it’s true,” Clarno said.

Elections Director Steve Trout said Tuesday that one popular myth is that noncitizens are being allowed to register to vote.

“That is simply not true,” Trout said. “Only those who have provided proof of citizenship when they go to DMV are automatically registered to vote.”

Trout said “Oregon continues to be a leader in secure elections.”

Wyden still worried

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is a vocal champion of Oregon’s vote-by-mail system, which he would like to see expanded to the entire country.

Wyden said Friday that the election systems across the 50 states have weak points that adversaries — particularly Russian hackers — will exploit. The time left to shore up defenses before the November 2020 election is running out, he said.

“We would not ask a local sheriff to go to war against the missiles, tanks and planes of the Russian army,” Wyden said. “We shouldn’t ask a county election IT employee to fight a war against the full capabilities and vast resources of Russia’s cyber army. That approach failed in 2016, and it will fail again.”