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outlined a number of vulnerabilities that could be introduced by increasing the use of voting by mail. They include an enhanced risk of cyberattacks on voter registration systems, security risks for offices and warehouses where mailed ballots will sit before being tabulated, and disruptions as risk management responsibilities shift from local election officials to other entities, such as ballot printers and the U.S. Postal Service.
CISA officials concluded that all those risks “can be managed through various policies, procedures and
controls.” In fact, addressing those challenges could increase Americans’ confidence in election results by shifting votes from direct-recording electronic voting machines to a process that leaves a better paper trail.
“For us, anytime you get paper into the system, that’s...an opportunity to audit, and auditing is a good thing,” CISA Director Chris Krebs said.
The agency’s assessment aligns with what many local election officials say: Mail-in voting is a safe, secure process that has multiple layers of verification.
Disinformation — foreign and homegrown
The greatest threat to voting by mail lies not in the process but in domestic and foreign actors’ manipulation of the public’s perception of that process. CISA’s assessment states that although mail-in and in-person voting face similar disinformation and misinformation risks, “threat actors may leverage limited understanding regarding mail- in voting processes to mislead and confuse the public.” It also notes that voting by mail “has already become an issue among partisan political voices,
election officials the ability to track and verify individual votes.
“No election system is perfect, and this is why it’s critical to continually review and improve systems by enhancing security access transparency, particularly in this unprecedented time,” McReynolds said.
Undermining voter confidence
Even though the consensus among election officials and security experts is that the expansion of mail-in voting can be done safely and securely, many election administrators are being bombarded by false information, vitriol and abuse from politicians and voters over mail-in ballots.
In fact, experts testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee expressed optimism about a range
of election issues, but they continue to be concerned about disinformation. Such campaigns have become markedly easier to establish
and scale up through the use of widely available open-source tools that make it easier to push messaging through
a coordinated network
and
Security assessments about voting by mail indicate that “if people spread [misinformation]
and disinformation about
Democracy. Disseminating false or
unsupported claims about fraud associated with voting by mail can make people more skeptical about voting, undermine
confidence in election results and encourage state
and local governments to restrict access to voting.
In late August,Texas Director of Elections Keith
Ingram sent a letter to officials in Harris County threatening
legal action if they proceeded with plans to mail absentee ballot applications to their
2 million registered voters
to make it easier for them to apply for mail-in ballots if they
are eligible. Ingram said the move could prompt voters who aren’t eligible “to provide false information on the form.”
Texas Republicans have also gone to court to block localities from expanding mail-in voting during the pandemic, often citing unsubstantiated charges of voter fraud.
— Derek B. Johnson
interact
with targeted groups of voters.
Although much of that activity is being carried out by domestic actors, some experts said they also offer an opening for countries like Russia,
China or Iran to promote
that messaging in their own campaigns.
the vote-by- mail process, if they say the
process is easily rigged, that’s the kind of thing that can be easily amplified by foreign adversaries,” said David Levine, elections integrity fellow at
the Alliance for Securing
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