Election integrity is becoming increasingly difficult to defend

Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, stands before an exhibit entitled “Prominent US Media Sites Supported by Russian Agents of Influence” during a hearing in Washington, DC, September 18, 2024. Photo: Kent Nishimura – Bloomberg/Getty Images.

ABOUTOn Friday afternoon, with the presidential race just days away, federal agencies that help ensure the security of American elections warned voters about a video that was circulating online. It appeared to show that immigrants were voting illegally in Georgia, and U.S. intelligence officials concluded that it was the latest in a series of hoaxes created by “Russian agents of influence.”

“This Russian activity is part of a broader effort by Moscow to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of U.S. elections and stoke discord among Americans,” it said. statement from the FBI and two other federal agencies, which warned that Russia will continue to create and spread these fake news even in the weeks and months after the election.

For anyone who lived through the last two presidential elections, this statement might sound familiar. It’s been eight years since the 2016 US election was tainted by disinformation attributed to Moscow, and the government has found no way to curb this kind of interference. Instead, the problem became even more confusing.

China and Iran are now using the same tactics to try to sway US voters, and the number of these Kremlin-linked operations has increased over the past eight years from two to more than 70, says Clint Watts, head of Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Center. , which tracks and often exposes foreign influence operations. “Now there are thousands of people working in this field,” he says of the Russians.

There is a long list of government agencies working to counter these threats, ranging from the FBI to more obscure bureaucracies such as the USPIS, which handles mail crimes. When I reached out to three of them to talk about election interference, they all pointed me to the Department of Homeland Security agency known as CISA – the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which co-authored Friday’s statement with the FBI.

Responsible for protecting everything from the power grid to the banking system from malicious cyberattacks, CISA also often takes the lead in protecting U.S. elections. His short history speaks volumes about the complexity of his mission. The agency’s first director, Christopher Krebs, set up in response to a Russian influence operation in 2016, was fired by then-President Trump for publicly defending the integrity of the election, which Trump lost in 2020. (Krebs learned of his dismissal from the president’s tweet.)

House Republicans have since tried unsuccessfully to cut CISA’s budget. This was stated by Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Jim Jordan. blamed the agency attempts to censor political speech, and there are growing concern Democrats believe Trump will gut the agency if he wins the presidential race.

The dispute has put CISA in an awkward position. In addition to his mission to secure election infrastructure, he has been forced to deal with a “firehose of disinformation” aimed at the American public, said Keith Conley, a senior adviser at CISA focused on election security. The agency’s response, she said, is to “flood the area with accurate information.”

CISA Director Jen Easterly went on a media tour to reassure voters that the election results can be trusted. Last year, the agency also launched a podcast called CIS Livewhose monthly issues carry the same message, along with discussions of Chinese cyber threats and advice on what gadgets to buy as holiday gifts. On YouTube, they rarely get more than a thousand views, far less than the roughly 3,000 people who work at CISA.

Now think about what they faced. According to Washington Post analysisMore than two dozen of the country’s most popular podcasts have amplified claims that the upcoming election will be rigged. The main source of this message was Trump, who has never backed down from his claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. His ally in the current race is Elon Musk, owner of the social network where much of our political discourse takes place.

“Often we try to blame this mistrust on foreign threat actors, but the reality is that this particular narrative is very much domestic,” says Olga Belogolova, a disinformation expert at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “This could be amplified by foreign threat actors—Russia, China, Iran,” she says. “But these stories are being spread by American officials and candidates.”

Since 2016, Americans have become more receptive to them. One study last year by Monmouth University found that two in three Republicans believe voter fraud determined the 2020 vote. Another poll released this month NPR, PBS News and Marist found that a majority of Americans are concerned about fraud in the current election, including 86% of Republicans and 33% of Democrats.

After the 2016 presidential election, Belogolova worked on Facebook’s Trust and Safety team, trying to identify and block Russian disinformation agents on the platform. She describes it as a game of whack-a-mole, with new accounts appearing to replace deleted ones. She said the work felt rewarding but also frustrating as her team removed counterfeits without offering anything in return. “You have to find ways to tell stories that people will care about so that they have something to believe in,” she says. “I think that’s the challenge now.”

In an attempt to address this problem, CISA has attempted to expand the number of reliable sources of information. In mid-October, it responded to a fake video that appeared online showing the destruction of what appeared to be Trump mail-in ballots. It took only a few hours for state election officials to refute the video, and the FBI accused Russian actors of creating it. A few days later, with only a week left until Election Day, CISA launched a “single window” website expose fake videos and other forms of misinformation.

Watts, the Microsoft threat analyst, says this quick response helps slow the spread of these videos online as news outlets quickly identify them as fake. But they can still get millions of views on social media because so many Americans are willing to share them. Although government agencies have become more effective in responding to election interference since 2016, the American public has become more suspicious of the conduct of elections.

This challenge to the democratic process may prove much more difficult to overcome. As Watts says, “It’s all about rebuilding trust over time.”

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