Election securityScientists: No Credible Evidence of Computer Fraud in the 2020 Election Outcome
“Anyone asserting that a U.S. election was ‘rigged’ is making an extraordinary claim, one that must be supported by persuasive and verifiable evidence. Merely citing the existence of technical flaws does not establish that an attack occurred, much less that it altered an election outcome. It is simply speculation,” 59 top U.S. computer scientists and election security experts write in an open letter. “We are aware of alarming assertions being made that the 2020 election was ‘rigged’ by exploiting technical vulnerabilities. However, in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent. To our collective knowledge, no credible evidence has been put forth that supports a conclusion that the 2020 election outcome in any state has been altered through technical compromise.”
On Monday, fifty-nine top U.S. computer scientists and election security experts rebuked President Donald for spreading disinformation about the integrity of the 3 November election and rebuffed his baseless claims of voter fraud and hacking. In an open letter, the experts wrote that such assertions are “unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.”
The rebuttal did not mention Trump by name, but it was yet another forceful corrective to the deluge of disinformation and conspiracy theories that Trump has posted on Twitter.
The security experts’ letter followed another strong rebuttal of the president’s false assertions last week by the Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council, which includes top officials from the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and secretaries of state and state election directors from around the country.
In the joint statement, that group declared that the 2020 election “was the most secure in American history” and that “there is no evidence” any voting systems had been compromised.
The New York Timesnotes that some of those officials expect to be fired in the coming weeks for their refusal to echo the president’s lies (Trump, in a Twitter post, on Tuesday fired one of those behind the agencies’ statement: Christopher Krebs, the director of the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency , or CISA; see “Trump Fires Security Chief Who Said 2020 Vote Was ‘Most Secure’ in U.S. History,”HSNW, 18 November 2020)
Here is the scientists’ open letter:
We are specialists in election security, having studied the security of voting machines, voting systems, and technology used for government elections for decades.
We and other scientists have warned for many years that there are security weaknesses in voting systems and have advocated that election systems be better secured against malicious attack. As the National Academies recently concluded, “There is no realistic mechanism to fully secure vote casting and tabulation computer systems from cyber threats.” However, notwithstanding these serious concerns, we have never claimed that technical vulnerabilities have actually been exploited to alter the outcome of any U.S. election.
Anyone asserting that a U.S. election was “rigged” is making an extraordinary claim, one that must be supported by persuasive and verifiable evidence. Merely citing the existence of technical flaws does not establish that an attack occurred, much less that it altered an election outcome. It is simply speculation.
