The American election system has safeguards

By DAVID KLEPPER and CHRISTINA A. CASSIDY

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hacking into a local election system in the United States wouldn’t be easy, and secretly altering votes on a scale large enough to change the outcome of the presidential race would be impossibleelection officials have said, thanks to decentralized systems, paper records for nearly all ballots, extensive reviews, due process and decades of work by U.S. election officials, volunteers and citizens.

But foreign actors and domestic extremist groups want to get involved next week’s elections can focus on a much weaker link: voters’ perceptions and emotions. Those who want to undermine confidence in American democracy don’t need to change their vote if they can convince enough Americans not to trust the outcome.

It’s a possible scenario that’s especially troubling to intelligence analysts and officials charged with protecting U.S. elections: An adversary tries to hack into a state or local election system and then releases a document — perhaps a fake document or even material that’s publicly available is available – and suggests that it is evidence. of voting fraud.

Or a video is made in which someone supposedly hacks a voice scanner, voting machine or a state voter registration system. But it didn’t happen and it wouldn’t be true.

It’s called a perception hack, which may or may not involve an actual breach of voting systems, but gives the impression that this has indeed happened. In some cases, small information can be stolen – enough to make a video appear legitimate – but this does not change the votes. A related threat involves fake images purporting to show election workers destroying ballots.

In both cases, the goal is the same: to generate confusion, distrust And fear.

Governments at all levels have been working to strengthen electoral infrastructure in recent years. However, the human brain remains difficult to defend.

“I think that will almost certainly happen,” said former CIA political analyst Adam Darrah, discussing the risk of perception hacks.

Darrah, now vice president of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm ZeroFox, said tricking people into thinking election systems are vulnerable is a lot easier than actually hacking them. ‘It’s a way to create panic. We are technically very resilient. Our emotional resilience, our hypersensitivity, that is still a challenge.”

Narrow margins of victory or delays in counting votes could increase the risk that a perception hack could fool a large number of voters, further polarizing the electorate, increasing the risk of political violence and potentially complicating the transition of power in January.

Intelligence officials warned about this last week Russia And Iran may consider encouraging violent protests in the US after the elections. The country’s intelligence community and private analysts agree the Kremlin supports former President Donald TrumpMoscow’s ultimate goal is to divide Americans and undermine the US support for Ukraine and the NATO alliance.