US election officials worry about personal safety ahead of elections

When US intelligence and national security officials gathered at a classified facility last April to speak with election officials across the country, there was no new intelligence to share about cyber threats to American democracy.

The briefing covered the Russia’s war against Ukraine and foreign and domestic sources of disinformation about the US election, according to three people familiar with the briefing.

But there was a striking change from the pre-2020 briefings: it mentioned violent threats to election officials stemming from conspiracy theories about the voting process.

Concerns about physical security “have really increased since 2020 because of the threats we’ve seen to state and local officials across the country,” said Kim Wyman, top election security official at the U.S. Federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, who encouraged election officials to report threats to law enforcement and is hiring more workers to advise election officials about physical threats.

Many of the thousands of local election officials across the U.S. are living with a new reality as the midterm elections approach: They have spent countless hours refuting false claims by former President Donald Trump and his supporters that the election of 2020 was stolen as they were wondering about their personal safety and trying to prepare for upcoming elections on a limited budget.

At the same time, local election officials need to be aware of cyber threats that could exacerbate misinformation about the voting process.

It is a new hybrid threat environment – ​​encompassing potential physical and digital threats and how the public perceives them – shaped by the 2020 elections and the false narratives of fraud that have emerged from them.

“It’s exhausting,” said Barb Byrum, who for nearly a decade has overseen elections in Ingham County, Michigan, home to some 285,000 people.

“We are always responding to allegations of conspiracy,” Byrum said, describing a plethora of emails (some of which said “shame on you”) and public records requests looking for voter fraud.

Byrum is buying a new set of blinds for his office after hearing about election officials elsewhere facing death threats. She keeps her head spinning around Ingham County, which is home to the capital of Lansing, and she voted 2-1 for Joe Biden in 2020.

“You can’t just plan one scenario,” Wyman said in her first interview since the Biden administration chose her in October to lead the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s election security efforts.

She is crisscrossing the country encouraging election officials to sign up for free federal cybersecurity services and to speak out with a clear voice against false voting information.

“A race with no finish line”

In this year’s midterm elections and the 2024 general election, the spotlight will be on election workers like never before, a sliver of voters can allege fraud if their candidate loses, and foreign spies or trolls can exploit the environment to further diminish. voter confidence.

“Let’s be honest: in terms of foreign influence, actors like Russia have a history of coordinated efforts where they’re not just trying to attack voters’ trust in the electoral system, trying to sow discord and amplifying disinformation,” Wyman said, “but also undertaking a coordinated effort with attacks on cyber infrastructure.”

“None of that has gone away,” he added.

However, Wyman told the CNN that US officials are not aware of any “specific threat to the 2022 election. But this is that proverbial race with no finish line. We are telling electoral authorities to maintain a surveillance state.”

Federal officials are trying to get ahead of any foreign influence campaign, in part by amplifying the voices of local election officials, hoping they can effectively debunk conspiracy theories about the voting process that bots and trolls can take advantage of.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is advising state and local officials to create their own dedicated websites to combat election-related rumors and misinformation, in hopes that voters will trust their local officials more than an unfamiliar face in Washington.

“We see people trust their local election officials more than information coming from the state or the federal government,” said Meagan Wolfe, head of the Wisconsin Election Commission. “These are your neighbors and your friends.”

Convincing voters of the integrity of the voting system – which numerous audits of the 2020 election have affirmed – is still a difficult task.

About half of Americans polled believe a future election is likely to be overturned on partisan grounds, according to a poll by the CNN published in February.

“Voter trust is what worries me the most,” said Wolfe, who, as Wisconsin’s top election official, has publicly debunked conspiracy theories about the state’s elections.

As the Republican secretary of state in the state of Washington in the 2020 election, Wyman has refuted Trump’s false allegations of voter fraud.

“The polarization that we’ve seen coming out of 2020 — I’m not sure it’s possible, in a way, to convince some people that the election was safe,” Wyman said.

“I think the best place for us to spend our time is really trying to be transparent about the way we conduct elections in this country, the security measures that are put into cyber and physical security to secure our elections, how we are being responsible for all the ballots. for which we produce results,” Wyman said.

Another highlight for his agency staff ahead of the elections: helping election administrators secure their voter registration databases, which Russian and Iranian hackers attacked in the 2016 and 2020 elections, respectively.

While much of the information found in voter registration databases is public, the datasets can be used to sow doubts about the election.

money speaks louder

Domestic and foreign threats converged after the 2020 election, when, the FBI concluded, Iranian agents created a website that included death threats to US election officials and their personal information.

But election experts say the industry needs more money and people to deal with this type of blended threat in the coming years.

States will need more than $500 million over the next five years to replace aging voting equipment, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, not to mention the money needed to protect election workers from physical threats.

The Infrastructure and Cyber ​​Security Agency has 127 physical security experts across the country who can assess election facilities for security; the agency plans to hire 15 more by the end of the year.

The Justice Department has encouraged prosecutors to bring charges against those who threaten election officials when deserved, while emphasizing that a criminal justice grants program that gives states millions of dollars each year can be used to protect against threats. physical.

But the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the division of the Justice Department that oversees the grants, as of June 6 had not reported any use of the funds to protect against threats of violence to election workers, a department spokesperson told CNN.

A draft of the House Appropriations Committee’s 2023 fiscal finance bill for government and financial services would give the Federal Election Assistance Commission $400 million in security grants to distribute to states.

That money would be welcome, but election funding efforts still lag, according to Ben Hovland, an EAC commissioner.

“In the aftermath of the big lie, with physical threats and harassment of election officials added to cybersecurity challenges and the ongoing pandemic, it has never been more difficult to administer elections and it has never been more expensive,” Hovland told CNN.

“The real question policymakers must ask themselves is: are we willing to invest in our democracy in the way it deserves?”

A 42-year-old man from Nebraska pleaded guilty last Thursday to threatening an election official on Instagram and faces up to two years in prison.

Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Dick Durbin of Illinois on Thursday urged the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to consider issuing a public service announcement to local law enforcement agencies “to ensure they are aware the recent increase in these threats against election officials and federal resources to denounce and combat them.”

Threats and harassment of election officials affected the profession. Nearly 1 in 3 local election officials know election workers who have left their jobs at least in part out of fear for their safety or because of increasing threats or intimidation, according to a survey released by the Brennan Center in March.

Despite the turnover, there are still thousands of seasoned election officials across the country who can leverage the closer ties they’ve established with federal officials and each other since the 2016 election to deal with the new landscape of physical and cyber threats.

“Because of all the work we’ve been doing together since 2016 to address cybersecurity issues, we’ve been able to include physical security and concerns in these conversations,” Wolfe said.