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In the elections of November 5th, 2024, citizens will choose the president and vice president, among others. How do you know if you can believe that the result will not be manipulated? Counties, states and the federal government have several ways to make sure that only eligible people vote, citizens can vote freely, all votes are accurately and properly counted, and nobody changes the results.
CISA, the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency, assures that it is false that this process can be easily manipulated and tries to debunk all rumors about it. The most widespread rumor, especially sinceDonald Trump used it to justify his defeat in 2020, is that a significant number of foreigners that aren’t eligible to vote participate in the elections illegally, especially using mail-in ballots. According to CISA, reviews conducted by election officials for each mail-in vote application “protect the integrity of the mail-in/absentee voting process.” For example, by verifying “the signature and information received in the application with corresponding voter records.”
A study from the Brennan Center for Justice, an independent institution who is also an ally of Factchequeado, claims that the impact of noncitizens is almost non-existent. In 2016, there were audits in 42 jurisdictions with high noncitizen populations or where claims of noncitizen voting had been received, and the results showed that suspicious cases (not even confirmed) did not account for 0.0001% of all votes. For the Brennan Center, “widespread noncitizen voting is a conspiracy theory.”
Another of the most recurrent claims is that there are still dead people in voter records, and other people are voting on their behalf. However, CISA also believes that reviewing signatures and cross-checking with official death records make it really hard for something like this to happen on a big scale. In total, a studio from The Voting Rights Project between 2000 and 2012 found only 633 cases of fraudulent voters. During this time, there had been hundreds of elections with billions of votes cast.
In addition, as we already explained in Factchequeado, authorities must intervene if any voter is intimidated to vote for a candidate, or not to vote. Voting rights are also protected, so that “once the vote is cast, individual ballots cannot be tracked and their voters identified” and there are “dividing panels between voting tables, and election workers must stay away from voters while they cast their vote.”
Can you “hack” elections?
During Trump's government, CISA made a statement with other election experts assuring that the 2020 election “was the most secure in American history” and “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” Therefore, despite “misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too.”
Additionally, the Brennan Center for Justice has reported that the machines and softwares used in many counties during the elections are antiquated and may be more vulnerable to cyberattacks, but has also affirmed that Trump’s theory of tampered results in the 2020 election is false. The justice system agreed, since there has never been a judge that confirmed fraud in the 60 different lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies.
According to the annual report from intelligence agencies regarding threats to the United States, it is likely that countries like Russia, China and Iran will try to affect the presidential elections. However, according to CISA, “the systems and processes used by election officials to tabulate votes and certify official results are kept secure by several security steps that guarantee their accuracy,” including audits that check that the final results presented by voting systems match the paper records of election machines.
Factchequeado is a verification media outlet built by a Spanish-speaking community to tackle disinformation in the United States. Do you want to be part of it? Join us and verify the content you receive by sending it to our WhatsApp +16468736087 or to factchequeado.com/whatsapp.
Primera fecha de publicación de este artículo: 04/06/2024
