U.S. officials dealing with election security widely agree that the United States is far better prepared to deal with possible foreign meddling this November than it was when the Russians injected themselves into the 2016 race.
A senior Department of Homeland Security official said during an election threats briefingwith reporters on Wednesday that “over the last three years, we’ve worked really hard at the U.S. government level to foster an election security community” by working with all the states and territories, along with local officials, to prepare for the 2020 election. “Election officials have done a ton over the last three years to respond to the lessons that we learned in 2016,” including improved security systems, better communication, and more than 90% of votes to be cast having a record that can be audited, the DHS official said.
“We didn’t have nearly the level of visibility or awareness in 2016 that we have now. And so part of what we’ve been able to do over the last three years is really baseline the types of activity, the level of visibility in what we’re seeing in and around state and local election networks in order to understand what that threat environment looks like. We didn’t have that visibility, near that level. We are literally exponentially better in understanding that because of the types of information sharing, the sensors deployed, items like that … We are way ahead of where we were in 2016 to even be able to understand what that activity looks like," the official said.
A senior Department of Homeland Security official said during an election threats briefingwith reporters on Wednesday that “over the last three years, we’ve worked really hard at the U.S. government level to foster an election security community” by working with all the states and territories, along with local officials, to prepare for the 2020 election. “Election officials have done a ton over the last three years to respond to the lessons that we learned in 2016,” including improved security systems, better communication, and more than 90% of votes to be cast having a record that can be audited, the DHS official said.
“We didn’t have nearly the level of visibility or awareness in 2016 that we have now. And so part of what we’ve been able to do over the last three years is really baseline the types of activity, the level of visibility in what we’re seeing in and around state and local election networks in order to understand what that threat environment looks like. We didn’t have that visibility, near that level. We are literally exponentially better in understanding that because of the types of information sharing, the sensors deployed, items like that … We are way ahead of where we were in 2016 to even be able to understand what that activity looks like," the official said.
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