How Homeland Security Is Undermining Faith in U.S. Elections

Now that the party nominees for president have all but been decided, America’s entire election infrastructure is under assault, from foreign governments, hackers, and extremists. Or at least that’s the frenzied message being conveyed from on high these days. Russian warning lights are flashing. Think tanks are working overtime to grind out panicked reports about cybersecurity and disinformation. Fearmongering proliferates on both sides of the political aisle. 

But it is the federal government that is most active in this effort, and in its zeal to “protect” the elections, Washington is building a narrative that achieves exactly what it blames foreign adversaries for. By arguing that the elections can and will be manipulated, federal agencies are delegitimizing the highly effective and secure electoral system, and affirming the view of too many Americans that the vote can’t be trusted.

Polling shows that conservative voters continue to be distrustful of America’s electoral system. The opinion of the electorate at large is murkier to assess, but some Democrats have also waded into the election denialism.

Last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before Congress that election interference is a major priority in the coming months. As evidence of the Bureau’s work on the issue, Wray cited an FBI investigation into two Iranian hackers who had used voter rolls to disseminate misinformation about illegal ballots being cast overseas. 

In his testimony, Wray conflates the threat posed by cyber attacks with targeted disinformation campaigns. There is abundant evidence that foreign governments like Russia engaged in efforts to influence the 2016 and 2020 elections. But there are no examples of successful cyber attacks on the election system itself.

More recently, the FBI, Justice Department, and the Department of Homeland Security reported in late December that despite incessant hand-wringing over election security, foreign adversaries had no impact on the 2022 midterm elections. This week, they reported that there were no credible threats against Super Tuesday’s primary election. 

“While the government detected some foreign government-affiliated and criminal cyber activity targeting election infrastructure, including activity by suspected People’s Republic of China cyber actors and activity claimed by pro-Russian hacktivists, there is no evidence that this activity prevented voting, changed votes, or disrupted the ability to tally votes or to transmit election results in a timely manner; altered any technical aspect of the voting process; or otherwise compromised the integrity of voter registration information or any ballots cast during the 2022 federal elections,” the report states. 

“Additional identified activity involved Russian, Iranian, and Chinese government-affiliated cyber actors scanning and, in some instances, accessing political campaign infrastructure, that is, information and communications technology and systems used by, on behalf of, or closely associated with a political organization, campaign, or candidate. However, there is no evidence that any information obtained through such activity was used in any foreign influence operation or was otherwise deployed, modified, or destroyed.”

None of these conclusions have deterred the now vibrant election protection apparatus of the federal government from accelerating their work. After the 2016 Democratic National Committee cyber attack, the Department of Homeland Security took much of the lead, designating election systems as critical infrastructure and pushing cyber security. DHS not only gained greater power over the U.S. voting system, but it also stoked fears that the decentralized and highly eclectic state and voting system was weak. 

Earlier this month, former DHS intelligence chief John Cohen told ABC News that America is “heading into a highly dangerous, perfect storm” as the 2024 election approaches. Former DHS assistant secretary Elizabeth Neumann added that “there are barrages of threats coming from multiple vectors – and multiple components of election infrastructure. It’s not just the voting machine.” 

According to a DHS bulletin obtained by ABC, Homeland Security today is sounding the alarm regarding foreign influence operations, which they say are “designed to undermine” the democratic “processes and institutions, steer policy, sway public opinion or sow division.”

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The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, housed within DHS, is also distributing information to voters in an effort to combat what it labels as “disinformation,” which it claims is an unprecedented threat to democracy. Earlier this month, CISA announced the creation of a new election interference program: #Protect2024, suggesting it is the duty of American civilians to fight a domestic war for election security. 

In addition to dozens of materials warning of potential threats and urging state and local teams to practice “emergency response plans,” CISA has also extended its offer to conduct physical and cyber security assessments, alluding to the notion that elections cannot be safe without the federal government’s helping hand. An FBI report detailing federal agency responsibilities for election security further describes CISA’s role as providing “election infrastructure partners with no cost physical security assessments to identify vulnerabilities and provide recommended mitigation measures.”

Outside the FBI and the DHS, the director of national intelligence is also overseeing a governmentwide push to raise the specter of foreign election interference. In a Q&A with DNI’s Election Threats Executive Shelby Pierson — a position created in 2019 — the top elections intelligence chief outlined her desire to see the federal government further penetrate into local election infrastructure. 

“We are focused on how the IC” — intelligence community — “can best support the FBI and DHS. … I want to see us evolve and continue to cultivate this whole-of-government approach to securing our elections and encourage our mission partners to reach beyond their limits and look beyond 2020,” Pierson said in the interview soon after being appointed, adding an allusion to the intelligence community’s efforts to police social media. “Through our FBI and DHS partners, the IC shares appropriate intelligence to state and local election officials, and private sector partners to include social and digital media platforms.”

Pierson was later criticized for repeating her own disinformation before Congress in a classified briefing. Contrary to Pierson’s testimony that Russia was working to tilt the 2020 election for Donald Trump, multiple national security officials contradicted this statement, clarifying that there was no intelligence to that effect, and offering solely that Russia was intending to sow discord in America. 

The federal government seems intent on conveying the message that the electoral system is vulnerable, despite the fact that the highly distributed state and local electoral system — protected in part by its decentralization and diversity — inherently makes it resilient and overall invulnerable. Michael Cornfield, an associate professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management told CBC: “The chances that the actual ballot tabulation could be hacked are next to nothing. … It’s almost impossible.”

Because the federal government knows this, it has shifted its emphasis to a far more ambiguous and unprovable threat, that “foreign malign influence” is the problem. That Russia or China are trying to influence American public opinion isn’t new and shouldn’t ring alarms. Martin Libicki, a cyber warfare expert at the Rand Corporation, points out that all countries regularly attempt to influence foreign elections, highlighting Barack Obama’s visit to the U.K. to advocate against the Brexit referendum. 

The federal government’s argument is that Russia and China (and even Iran) — through “malign influence” — are clandestinely seeking to undermine American’s faith in elections and even damage American democracy. Acceptance of this proposition, and the belief that “they” are succeeding, is central to the federal government’s larger effort to combat disinformation, which plays out in new efforts to police social media and even regulate free speech. For local election officials, the only solution on tap from Washington is offering to supply secret “intelligence.”

To deal with protecting the vote itself against interference or manipulation, the federal government has been offering cybersecurity “hygiene” audits of state and local systems, while employing the National Security Agency and the military’s Cyber Command to thwart any incoming electronic attacks. While “election security” makes sense on the surface, the overall effect, particularly as the bureaucrats push greater centralization and standardized machines and procedures, is that it might actually increase the vulnerability of a system that is already secure because of its very decentralization and variety.

None of this directly addresses “malign influence” or the vitality of American democracy, neither of which are solvable by government efforts to restrict information. And by increasingly doling out security clearances to state and local officials so that they can get “intelligence” on foreign influence efforts, the federal government enlists election officials into a bifurcated public and secret world, one that undermines transparency and consequently lessens public confidence.