A group of former U.S. government officials and election security experts have expressed concern over the period immediately following the November midterm elections, stating that the time required to count ballots could be used to challenge the results. The comments were made during a virtual briefing hosted by the Brennan Center for Justice, a non-partisan law and policy institute.
Panelists identified the post-election “counting window,” which can last for days or weeks in some states, as a period of potential vulnerability.
Caitlin Durkovich, who served as a deputy homeland security adviser on the National Security Council, suggested that claims of foreign interference could be utilized during this time. “I think because the administration has lost so many of their attempts to disrupt the normal process in court, that they are going to use the claim of foreign interference at the end of voting days to either seize equipment or to seize ballots, whether they’re legally justified to do so or not,” Durkovich stated at the event.
She added that the delay in finalizing results can create an opportunity for doubt to spread. “That period, that waiting time, is where doubt begins to surface,” Durkovich said. “And when it is then amplified by foreign actors and, frankly, by domestic actors, it starts to cause distrust in the integrity of the process.”
Larry Norden, vice president of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center, said state election officials are working to inform the public about standard vote-counting timelines in an effort to counter potential misinformation. “To me, this is the biggest threat right now,” Norden said.
The discussion also addressed the actions and rhetoric of the federal government concerning election integrity. Ben Hovland, former chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, noted that government claims of widespread fraud, often without presented evidence, “back up a narrative of fraud to undermine confidence in the elections.”
The panel also addressed the distinction between foreign influence and foreign interference. Beth Sanner, a former deputy director of national intelligence, said that while foreign influence through propaganda is a known issue, direct manipulation of vote counts by foreign actors has not been documented in recent elections.
“It’s very important for people to understand that we don’t have any examples of a country trying to interfere in the electoral process, in that technical process,” Sanner stated, adding, “It just didn’t happen in 2020.”
Regarding the security of election infrastructure, Geoff Hales, a former official at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), reported that states have made progress. “Every state audits its results,” said Hales. “Election officials across the country have really taken cybersecurity seriously.”
However, Hales also noted a change in federal support for state election security. He stated that CISA has reduced staff and spending on election security, which has affected the technical assistance previously available to state officials. “The federal support that used to be there has pulled back sharply,” he said. “This means that cybersecurity services have been reduced, funding for information sharing environments have been cut, the threat briefings about nation-state adversaries that used to occur dozens of times a year are occurring rarely or not at all.”
