PORTLAND, Ore. — With the clock ticking down to Nov. 5 and a major Election Day in the U.S., election security and integrity is top of mind for many voters. Regardless of party, voters want to know that when they turn in their ballots, their votes will be counted correctly and the results reported accurately.
According to federal officials, there are a lot of threats to election security out there, both domestically and from foreign actors. But, they say, U.S. election infrastructure has never been more secure.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, is the federal government's newest agency. Housed in the Department of Homeland Security, CISA's job is to protect the government's digital infrastructure, including our power grids, communications and elections.
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CISA got its start in 2018, in the wake of Russia's attempts to interfere in the 2016 election. The agency is focused on two primary threats: cyberattacks from foreign countries, and in-person attacks in the U.S.
"You have cyber threats like ransomware and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on websites. We have very real threats from our foreign adversaries — Russia, Iran and China — who remain intent on using influence operations and disinformation for two key goals," said CISA Director Jen Easterly. "They want to undermine American confidence in our election processes and in our democracy even broader. And then secondly, to sow partisan discord to pit Americans against each other. And these operations are likely to continue after Nov. 5.
"Also very concerning, there are physical threats to election officials: swatting, harassment, bullying, threats of violence to election officials and their families, largely stemming from unfounded claims that the 2020 election did not represent the will of the American people."
The Oregon Secretary of State's office said that they've seen a high volume of threats this year, including calls, social media posts and emails harassing or even threatening violence against election workers. But so far this year, those threats have not yet escalated into in-person violence or intimidation, which some of them did back in 2020.
Oregon's elections office is working with CISA on safety training for election workers across the state, as well as local and federal law enforcement.
Two years ago, Oregon passed the Election Worker Safety Bill, which created penalties for threatening or harassing election workers.
Cybersecurity issues that could impact the election are happening across the country. On Friday, several national news outlets reported that Chinese hackers targeted data from phones used by former President Donald Trump and his running-mate, Senator JD Vance. They reported that it appeared to be part of a wide-ranging effort to collect intelligence on the candidates.
The FBI and CISA issued a joint statement saying that they are investigating the incident.
The director of CISA said that although attacks like these will continue, U.S. election officials have safeguards in place to protect your vote, like ballot-counting machines that are disconnected from the web.
"Election officials have put in place multiple layers of safeguards, physical access controls, cybersecurity protections to prevent election infrastructure from being compromised," Easterly said. "And these include pre-election testing of equipment for accuracy and post-election audits.
"Finally, it's important to remember that every state runs things a little bit differently — different equipment, different processes — and this decentralized and diverse nature of our election infrastructure actually creates enormous strength and resilience because it means it's not possible for a malicious actor to hack into our voting infrastructure in a way where you could have a material impact on the outcome of the presidential election; certainly not without being detected."
Easterly added that her office has done hundreds of cybersecurity assessments and election safety trainings across the country. Many of those resources can be found on the agency's website, cisa.gov.