US seeks to reassure voters that presidential election will be safe

Top US election security officials are urging American voters to ignore the noise and reject what they describe as baseless claims that the upcoming presidential election will be rigged.

Instead, in the first of a series of election security briefings planned in the run-up to the November election, they say American voters should have confidence that when they go to the polls their votes will be counted accurately.

“Over the next few months, you’re going to hear a lot of different things from a lot of different sources. The most important thing is to recognize the signal through the noise, the fact from the fiction,” said Jen Easterly, director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is responsible for election security.

“Our election process, our election infrastructure has never been more secure, and the election stakeholder community has never been stronger,” Easterly said at a news conference Tuesday. “That’s why I have confidence in the integrity of our elections and that’s why the American people should have confidence, too.”

Easterly’s effort to reassure voters comes just over a month after the U.S. intelligence community issued its own warning that America’s adversaries, led by Russia, Iran and China, are seeking to interfere in the November election.

But those efforts, highlighted in the intelligence community’s warning, are spearheaded by influence operations or disinformation campaigns designed to sow doubt about the U.S. electoral process and help or hinder certain candidates.

In contrast, efforts by U.S. adversaries to attack or hack the systems used to conduct elections and count votes have so far been nonexistent.

“We have not seen any intent to interfere in the election process,” Cait Conley, a senior adviser at CISA, told reporters.

And while some of that could be explained by what officials describe as a steady stream of investment in election security infrastructure, including the hiring of more field offices and election security advisers, CISA officials aren’t assuming there’s no malicious activity.

“That’s something that could change at any time,” Conley said. “When we look at this threat landscape for this election cycle, it really is possibly the most complex yet.”

CISA said other efforts to safeguard the upcoming presidential election include a variety of election security exercises, accuracy testing of voting machines, and enhanced security measures to protect election-related computer networks.

They also point out that none of the systems recording votes are connected to the Internet and that 97% of American voters will cast their ballots in jurisdictions that have backup ballots.

But none of that will stop countries like Russia, Iran and China from trying to convince voters that things are going badly.

Easterly said one of the biggest concerns is that America’s adversaries will portray small setbacks as major scandals.

“It’s almost inevitable that somewhere in the country someone will forget to bring their keys to open the polling place,” he said. “Someone will unplug a printer to plug in a slow cooker. A storm can cause a polling place to lose power.”

Cybercriminals could even find a way to temporarily disable what officials describe as election-adjacent systems, including the websites of state and local agencies that record and count votes.

“We can absolutely expect our foreign adversaries to remain a persistent threat that seeks to undermine American confidence in our democracy and our institutions and sow partisan discord,” he said. “It is up to all of us to not allow our foreign adversaries to succeed.”

Easterly and Conley said the best way to avoid unnecessary panic is for American voters to trust state and local election officials for information.

But if Americans rely on social media accounts that are passed on by word of mouth, it could cause problems.

“It’s a difficult problem for social media companies,” a senior U.S. intelligence official said at a recent briefing, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.

“The PRC definitely uses influential actors on social media to try to at least stir up discord in the United States,” the official said. “So I would expect that platform to be [utilizada]”.

And there is growing evidence that China may be stepping up its efforts.

Graphika, a social media analytics firm, issued a report Tuesday warning that a China-linked disinformation operation known as “Spamoflage” has become increasingly aggressive.

Graphika said it has identified more than a dozen accounts on platforms such as X, formerly known as Twitter, and TikTok “claiming to be US citizens and/or US-focused peace, human rights and information integrity advocates frustrated by US and Western policy.”

“These accounts have seeded and amplified content that denigrates both Democratic and Republican candidates, sowing doubt about the legitimacy of the U.S. electoral process and spreading divisive narratives about sensitive social issues,” Graphika’s report said, adding that few of the accounts have managed to gain much traction.

Graphika’s findings appear to be consistent with previous assessments by Meta, the social media company behind Facebook and Instagram, when it first identified the effort last year.

“Despite the vast number of accounts and platforms he used, Spamouflage constantly struggled to reach beyond his own echo chamber. [falsa]”Meta said at the time. “There have only been a few reported cases where Spamouflage content on Twitter and YouTube was amplified by real-world influencers.”

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