Despite domestic and foreign threats, the election that’s now underway will be safe, secure, free and fair.
That was the message delivered by Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, at an Omaha gathering of Midwestern secretaries of state earlier this month aimed at boosting voter confidence in election security.
The domestic threat to election security is rooted in former President Donald Trump’s “big lie,” that he was cheated out of his re-election bid four years ago and his continuing claims that if he doesn’t defeat Vice President Kamala Harris, the November election also will be rigged against him.
The foreign threats are of the cyber variety, aiming to manipulate the election results using the internet.
But Easterly told the gathering that more than 97% of registered voters will cast their ballots in jurisdictions where there are paper records that can be verified by the voter as well as to count and recount if elections are very close.
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"That's hugely important," she said. "It's important for the American people to know that the machines that they use to cast their ballots are not connected to the internet. So (it is) very, very hard for malicious cyber actors to be able to get into those machines, nearly impossible."
Additional security efforts are also being employed state by state.
In Nebraska, which uses paper ballots filled in by hand, every ballot counting machine is tested for accuracy three times before every statewide primary and general election.
After the election, the state will select 10% of its precincts, at least one in every county, hand count three races and compare that count to the machine count.
In 2022, the state hand-counted more than 48,000 ballots and found discrepancies in 11, a miniscule discrepancy rate of 23 thousandths of 1 percent.
That finding and the use of paper ballots should be enough to reassure voters that the election will be secure and accurately counted.
But it and the rest of the election security efforts taking place online and at the ballot boxes, won’t damper Trump's claims of fraud, ineligible voters and “theft” that are undermining confidence in the election, and, thereby our democracy.
