Pam Fessler

The devastating floods in Texas have led to a need for massive aid, including from charities and nonprofit groups. Most say what they need is money, not things. And they hope donors will be around for what could be a years-long recovery.

Weird things started to happen as people showed up to vote in parts of North Carolina on Nov. 8. Why didn't state workers know that their elections contractor had been hit by a cyberattack?

For all the focus in 2016 on the cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, less attention was paid to what was happening in the states.

"One has to wonder what they're worried about," President Trump said of states that haven't shared data with the commission. "There's something, there always is."

President Trump's Advisory Commission on Election Integrity holds its first meeting Wednesday to uncover voter problems that undermine public confidence in U.S. elections. The panel has already faced criticism, especially from state election officials disturbed by the panel's request to send detailed voter registration data. The commission is looking for signs of voter fraud, which most election officials and experts say is rare.

The panel has faced credibility problems right from the start and the concerns have only grown after it asked all 50 states to send detailed voter registration records.

Many election experts and voter advocacy groups say matching efforts to identify inaccurate or out-of-date registrations are flawed and could lead to legitimate voters being taken off the rolls.

Voting rights groups fear that the Trump administration's look into voter fraud is really aimed at weakening a 24-year-old law meant to expand opportunities for people to register to vote.

A leader of the effort looking into voter fraud says reports that few states have agreed to comply with the request are"fake news." But most states only want to send a fraction of the data.

The states say that they won't comply with a White House commission request for the personal data. Even a commission leader isn't able to turn over all of his state's records.

The panel looking into voter fraud allegations wants names, addresses, birthdates, party affiliation and elections voted in since 2006 for every registered voter in the country.

Most Democrats say that "everything possible" should be done to make it easy for citizens to vote. Most Republicans don't agree.

Security experts estimate it would cost roughly $400 million to replace voting machines and add paper audits. It's about the same amount the Pentagon spent on military bands last year.

The House and Senate Intelligence Committees heard from intelligence and election officials about Russian efforts last year to hack into U.S. elections and the future threat of more cyber attacks on voting systems.

Russia's efforts to interfere with last year's elections will be front and center during two hearings on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

"Even though NSA says it's likely that we opened them, we did not," VR Systems COO Ben Martin says of emails that came into the company's system.

Hearings in the House and Senate this week will deal with Russian hacking attempts on the U.S. presidential election last fall including targeting e-mail accounts with malware attachments.

Even if most voting machines aren't connected to the Internet, "they are connected to something that's connected to something that's connected to the Internet," says one cybersecurity expert.

The Intercept reveals an NSA report that Russian military intelligence hacked into one voting software supplier, and sent phishing emails to local election officials days before the November election.

Russia's GRU intelligence agency targeted an American provider of election services, The Intercept says; a U.S. intelligence contractor was charged with revealing a secret report about the scheme.