Nearly a month out from Election Day, the head of the nation’s cybersecurity agency is forcefully reassuring Americans who have been swept into the chaotic churn of election disinformation and distrust that they will be able to feel confident in the outcome.
State and local election officials have made so much progress in securing voting, ballot-counting, and other election infrastructure that the system is more robust than it has ever been, said Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
As a result, she said, there is no way Russia, Iran or any other foreign adversary will be able to alter the results.
“Malicious actors, even if they tried, could not have an impact at scale such that there would be a material effect on the outcome of the election,” Easterly told in an interview Wednesday.
Easterly’s trust in the election process comes as intelligence officials have warned of escalating efforts by foreign adversaries to influence voters, deepen partisan divides, and undermine faith in U.S. elections.
Easterly emphasized how prepared election officials are for emergencies, simple mistakes, and attacks — and how motivated they are to protect Americans’ votes.
Easterly pointed to layers of security and transparency — such as the paper record of votes in more than 97% of voting jurisdictions as protections that will help verify the results.
“Things will go wrong. There could be another storm. There could be a ransomware attack, a distributed denial of service attack,” she said. “These disruptions will create effects, but they will not impact the ability and the votes being cast or those votes being counted.”
Easterly noted that China also was “very interested” in influencing the 2024 election.
“We have not seen specific cyber activity designed to interfere with actual election infrastructure or processes,” Easterly said.
“Those election officials, they are not faceless bureaucrats,” Easterly said. “They’re folks we see in the community every single day. And they’re not doing this for pay. They’re not doing it for glory. They are doing it because they believe in the process of democracy.”
In the interview, Easterly acknowledged “a very convoluted, very confusing information environment,” and said her agency works with election officials to promote accurate information.
However, she also made it clear that her agency does not monitor social media sites or attempt to moderate their content.
“That is not our role,” she said.
