ELECTION SECURITYFeds Deliver Stark Warnings to State Election Officials Ahead of November
Federal law enforcement and cybersecurity officials are warning the nation’s state election administrators that they face serious threats ahead of November’s presidential election, as AI, ransomware attacks, and malicious mail could disrupt voting.
Federal law enforcement and cybersecurity officials are warning the nation’s state election administrators that they face serious threats ahead of November’s presidential election.
Secretaries of state and state election directors must be ready for potential cyberattacks, both familiar and uncomfortably new, according to the feds. And they must remain vigilant about possible threats to their personal safety.
Voter databases could be targeted this year through phishing or ransomware attacks, election officials were told. Bad actors — both foreign and domestic — are trying to erode confidence in the integrity of elections through dis- and misinformation, and advancements in artificial intelligence present unprecedented challenges to democracy.
“The threat environment, unfortunately, is very high,” said Tim Langan, executive assistant director for the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch of the FBI, speaking last week at the winter conference of the National Association of Secretaries of State in Washington. “It is extremely alarming.”
Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams knows this all too well.
Hours after he was sworn in for his second term early last month, there was a bomb threat at the state capitol in Frankfort. An email sent to several state government offices, including Adams’, said that the bombs placed at the capitol would “make sure you all end up dead.” Eight other state capitols received similar threats, but no bombs were found.
“Hopefully, it’s not a sign of what’s to come this year,” Adams told Stateline. “The benefit of all that we have gone through the last several years is that everybody in this room is psychologically prepared in 2024.”
He pointed out that since 2016 — when Russia and China tried to influence the outcome of the presidential election — state election officials have bolstered their relationships with federal cybersecurity and law enforcement agencies, election security experts and with fellow top state officials across the country through information-sharing partnerships.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced election officials to elevate those partnerships in an increasingly stressful and dangerous environment.
While the warnings that Adams and his peers received were stark, state election officials left the conference with a new understanding of the threats, along with new tools to combat them and new allies to help prepare in the months until the 2024 general election.
“We think a lot more creatively today about what could possibly go wrong and what are the challenges than we ever could have thought just four years ago,” Adams added.