As Americans head to the polls this week, they will contend with two competing realities of modern electoral politics. Voting is more secure than ever, thanks to increasingly stringent election security measures taken by state and local officials. At the same time, the persistent, ambient threats of political violence and widespread misinformation have inculcated a culture of fear and distrust for many voters.
Local authorities have beefed up security around the thousands of election centers across the country, including security fencing and rooftop snipers, additional law enforcement presence around polling places with officers wearing bulletproof vests, and heightened surveillance around ballot boxes and voting centers. The National Guard is on standby in Oregon and Washington state—where two ballot boxes were set on fire last week—and in Nevada, in case of election-related unrest.
“Going into Election Day, the highest priority is really making sure not only election workers are safe but the voters and the poll workers on Election Day are safe,” said Kim Wyman, the former Washington secretary of state and former senior election security adviser for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA. “So the things that you’re hearing about, from bulletproof glass to panic buttons in the polling places, are designed to keep that whole experience safe and secure for everyone participating.”
These actions are in large part a response to the proliferation of baseless claims of voter fraud in the wake of the 2020 election, championed by former President Donald Trump. In the run-up to this year’s election, misinformation about election security—including conspiracies promoted by foreign actors—is running rampant on social media sites, most notably X, which is owned by Trump supporter Elon Musk. Early voting has already been subject to disruption, from the arson of ballot boxes in Oregon and Washington state to the punching of a poll worker in Texas.
Officials anticipate that the effort to spread misinformation will only heat up over the course of what will be a tense Election Day. As Politico’s Olivia Beavers reported Monday night, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, in concert with the FBI and CISA, issued a joint statement: “Since our statement on Friday, the IC has been observing foreign adversaries, particularly Russia, conducting additional influence operations intended to undermine public confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections and stoke divisions among Americans. The IC expects these activities will intensify through election day and in the coming weeks, and that foreign influence narratives will focus on swing states. Russia is the most active threat.“
But Rachel Orey, the director of the Bipartisan Policy Center Election Project, noted that any election interference efforts, whether domestic or foreign, “haven’t been successful at scale.” “We haven’t seen any documented instances wherein an external group has been able to successfully either compromise an election system or significantly interfere with election operations,” Orey said. “That is a testament to the preparation that election officials have been putting in for the last four years.”
Officials and experts are also quick to note that actors spreading misinformation and conspiracies are not reflecting the reality of voting; rather, their most potent potential effect is in warping the perception of voting. Recent polling by Pew Research Center found that while the majority of Americans are confident that elections will be run well this year, Harris supporters are more likely than Trump supporters to believe that election systems are secure from hacking and technological threats. Polling by the Bipartisan Policy Center and Morning Consult has also found that 80 percent of voters believe that their vote will be counted accurately, an increase from last year, although Democrats and independents are more likely to be “very” or “somewhat” confident than Republicans.
Voter confidence is “stubborn,” Orey explained. However, a person is more likely to trust the results of an election if their preferred candidate wins, and they can also be swayed by the rhetoric from elites. “The way that people in power, the way that candidates, the way that the media talks about election outcomes, does influence how the public perceives them,” Orey said. If a voter is an enthusiastic supporter of Trump and only watches conservative media, for example, they may be less likely to believe their vote will be accurately counted, regardless of the reality.
But voters should feel confident their ballots are secure, said Gowri Ramachandran, the director of elections and security in the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government program. “We estimate 98 percent of voters are going to vote using a paper ballot. There will be a paper record of their vote that they’re able to verify, make sure it has all the correct choices on it before they cast that ballot,” Ramachandran said. The decentralized nature of American elections can also ensure that voting machines are safer from any foreign interference efforts.
However, Ramachandran continued, human error exists—and that doesn’t indicate anything nefarious. “Small glitches can happen. Some of these ballot scanners, they can have paper jams. There’s about 130,000 polling places across the United States,” she explained. But there are also “resiliency measures,” and the presence of minor glitches “doesn’t mean the overall election is not secure,” she said.
Orey also emphasized that submitting a ballot via a ballot box is also largely secure, despite the incidents in Oregon and Washington. “Election officials have processes in place to minimize harm should additional interference occur,” Orey said. “We know that voters are worried about political violence going into Election Day, but instances of political violence are isolated.”
The period before and after Election Day may be more at risk than Election Day itself. Rachel Brown, the founder and executive director of Over Zero, an organization that studies the interaction between communication and political violence, said that violence ahead of an election is typically intended to deter certain groups from voting, while postelection violence can be used to attempt to contest results.
“We know the dates that are relevant in the process and are able to anticipate where, where that might happen. But in a close election, we could see the use of violence or intimidation to attempt to sway how the results are processed,” said Brown. State executives must certify their state’s slate of electors by December 11, and the Electoral College results are set to be certified on January 6, 2025.
Ramachandran identified the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021, in an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, as an “attack on election officials,” given the role that members of Congress play on that date in tabulating and confirming election results. But she also recalled the efforts to intimidate local election officials after the 2020 election, when ballot-counting centers faced protests.
Given the expected closeness of the presidential election and the lengthy period of time that some states take in tabulating results, the ultimate outcome may not be clear for days. Election officials have cautioned that this is to be expected and is not indicative of any issues or wrongdoing. Experts are also encouraging voters to stay critical of potential misinformation on the safety of voting; essentially, don’t take the bait.
“Do not fall for the rampant fake videos, false information, and conspiracy theories that are flooding all our social media channels—if you see something that seems unbelievable, it is probably because it should not be believed,” said Kathy Boockvar, the former Pennsylvania secretary of state.
