Thinking about Elections

HACKING AN ELECTION used to mean voting machines, but it’s much broader now. Sophisticated state actors (Russia, China, Iran, North Korea) manipulate humans, too. For example:

Phishing attacks - impersonating trusted sources to gain access to critical information. This uses email, texts, phone calls, or voicemails to deceive the victim (voters and election personnel) and gain sensitive information. Can be highly personalized to target specific organizations or individuals.

Covert influence operation - uses online networks of social media accounts to spread falsehoods and propaganda, for instance, blunt attacks on candidates, divisive messages, distrust of elections (for example, did Kamala really lose, did Elon Musk flip the election.). Uses AI and deep fakes. Hack the human is the target. (How many times have you read/seen something outrageous about people whose politics differ from yours? Same thing with “news” that confirms what you’d like to believe, e.g, the 2024 election was rigged. How often do you question its authenticity?)

Malware - many kinds. bad actors install capabilities to disrupt infrastructure and/or to get data. Example: In 2024, malware compromised systems belonging to candidates and accessed sensitive communications.

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I’ve written before that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) partnered successfully with state and local jurisdictions to protect our elections, and I’ve written about the cuts to their funding and staff that make our elections less secure. No state or county can replace what CISA provided. States do not have the federal government’s scale of intelligence gathering or resources. Now what?

https://www.votebeat.org/2026/01/15/cisa-election-security-trust-broken-trump-chris-krebs-denise-merrill/?utm_source=Votebeat&utm_campaign=a2b147038a-National+NEW+Election+officials+say+trust+with+CIS&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d2e6ae1125-a2b147038a-1296820282&mc_cid=a2b147038a&mc_eid=da7003c11c