ATLANTA– For election officials preparing for the 2024 presidential election, the list of security challenges continues to grow.
Many of the concerns from four years ago remain: the possibility of cyberattacks targeting voter registration systems or websites that report unofficial results, and equipment problems or human error amplified by those seeking to undermine confidence in the outcome.
Add to that the new risks that have developed since the 2020 election and the false claims of widespread fraud being spread by former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies. Death threats against election workers and breaches of voting equipment in election offices have raised questions about safety and security. Some states have changed their voting and election laws, expanding legislative control over local elections and adding penalties for election workers who break the rules.
The unrest has contributed to a wave of retirements and layoffs among election staff, leaving a vacuum of institutional knowledge in some local election offices.
With Trump running again and already warning that the 2024 vote is “on track to become another rigged election,” election workers are preparing for a difficult year with no room for error.
National security experts have warned for years that foreign governments – especially Russia, China and Iran – want to undermine the US and see elections as a way to do so.
In 2016, Russia attempted to interfere in a multi-pronged effort, including accessing and releasing Democratic emails and scanning voter registration systems for vulnerabilities. Four years later, Iranian hackers obtained voter data and used it to send deceptive emails.
According to a recently released report, there were multiple cases in 2022 in which hackers linked to Iran, China and Russia connected to election infrastructure, scanned state government websites and copied voter information.
While there is no evidence that compromises have been made that affect the integrity of US elections, experts say these countries are more motivated than ever given the tensions around the world.
“The 2024 election could be the first presidential election in which multiple authoritarian actors simultaneously attempt to interfere with and influence the election outcome,” Microsoft warned in a November threat assessment.
The company said it is unlikely that Russia, China and Iran will sit out next year's competition because “the stakes are simply too high.” The report says Russia remains “the most committed and capable threat to the 2024 elections,” with the Kremlin seeing next year's vote as a “must-win political battle” that could determine the outcome of its war against Ukraine .
Democrat Jocelyn Benson, Michigan's secretary of state, said she believes foreign adversaries have a “greater incentive than ever before” to get involved in the upcoming election.
“We are going to do everything we can to be prepared, but we are facing well-funded, serious adversaries, and that requires all of us to be clear about these challenges – and for voters to also know that there are foreign actors who want their vote influence to further their own goals and not America's,” she said.
Many of the conspiracy theories that have persisted since Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden involve voting technology and claim that equipment was manipulated to steal the votes. There is no evidence of tampering and the systems have safeguards in place to detect problems.
Intensive work has been going on for several years to build defense mechanisms around voting machines and calculators, and to develop plans to recover if tampering occurs. Experts are particularly concerned about non-voting systems such as voter registration databases, electronic polls and websites that report results because they rely on internet connections.
Experts have warned that a well-timed attack, possibly using ransomware that locks computers until payments are made or systems are restored from backups, could disrupt election operations.
Many local election offices have moved their systems outside of national networks to protect them, but not all have done so. In early September, election officials in Hinds County, Mississippi, were preparing for a statewide election when everything came to an abrupt halt.
Election office workers were unable to access their computers for about three weeks. The breach of the county's computers caused a slight delay in the processing of voter registration forms and delayed the training of poll workers.
Local election offices, especially in rural areas, often struggle to secure adequate funding, staffing, and cybersecurity expertise. Shirley Varnado, Hinds County elections commissioner, said it was a “great idea” to keep their election office networks separate from the county, but that would cost money they don't have.
“That should happen, but we're in a building with no heat or air,” she said.
Election integrity groups say more needs to be done, pointing to a series of voting system violations since the 2020 election that have led to proprietary software being distributed to several Trump allies. They want a federal investigation and for authorities to force anyone with copies to hand them over.
They also worry about technical glitches, noting an incident last November in which some votes in a judicial race in Pennsylvania were overturned. The prevalence of false election claims has made it difficult to level valid criticism, said Susan Greenhalgh, a senior election security adviser at Free Speech For People, a left-wing nonprofit focused on election and campaign finance reform.
“Our election system is not perfect,” Greenhalgh said. “There are many things that need and need to be improved.”
Improvements since the 2016 election, in which Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton, include replacing outdated and fragile voting machines that lacked a paper record of every vote cast. In 2020, an estimated 93% of votes cast nationwide produced a paper record, compared to 82% four years earlier.
After 2016, election systems were added to the list of critical infrastructure in the US, which also includes dams, banks and nuclear power plants.
In 2018, Congress created the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which provides security assessments. CISA Director Jen Easterly launched a cyber defense initiative in 2021 and said last summer that 10 new regional election security advisers would be hired to work directly with local election offices.
“So much has happened to change the security of election infrastructure in the last seven years,” Easterly said in an interview last August. “In a space where people can get quite down at times, I think we have to be optimistic.”
Larry Norden, an elections expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, said he sees “tremendous progress” but also said turnover at local election offices has reduced institutional knowledge.
Only 29% of local election officials surveyed for the Brennan Center this year were aware of routine vulnerability scans by CISA, and only 31% were aware of the agency's physical security assessments.
“There wasn't nearly as much awareness of the services being offered as I think there should be,” Norden said. “It's not surprising, but it means there is work to be done.”
Staffing has long been a challenge for local election offices, which rely on both permanent and temporary workers, including those who staff some 80,000 polling places nationally on Election Day.
But 2020 was a turning point, with challenges related to the coronavirus pandemic before the presidential election and all that followed: death threats, a flood of information requests from election skeptics, hostile county administrations and new laws imposing fines or criminal penalties on election officials for breaking rules. That has contributed to a wave of retirements and resignations among election officials. Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said two-thirds of county clerks there are new since the 2020 election.
“This is all coming together in this perfect storm,” said Henderson, a Republican. “It's a real challenge.”
Insider threats – the possibility that someone working in an election office could tamper with or gain access to systems – is another concern. To address this, election officials have increased security around key equipment by restricting access and adding surveillance cameras.
In the meantime, the threats and intimidation continue. Georgia's Fulton County, a target of several conspiracy theories in the 2020 election, was one of several election offices that sent envelopes in November containing a powdery substance that in some cases tested positive for fentanyl.
The letters are another reminder of the charged atmosphere surrounding the US elections leading up to 2024. Despite all the challenges, Henderson said election officials are doing everything they can to prepare.
“If you have a human-run system, there are going to be human errors. That's just part of it,” she says. “But we are working hard to ensure that we reduce these human errors and risks and continually improve our processes so that people can have the confidence that when they vote, only eligible voters vote, and when they vote, their votes counting accurately.”
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