Enemy at the polling gates

See if this scenario seems plausible to you. It’s election day, 2020. President Trump is seeking reelection and running against a popular democratic challenger. Polls indicate that the race is tight, but after the 2016 election polling debacle, no one believes the polls anyway. In fact, the electorate as a whole is skeptical. Two of the last five Presidential elections were decided by the Electoral College not by the majority of the voters. Still there is excitement and enthusiasm.

One other group is highly involved in the election. Kremlin cyber experts are ready to strike.  They sat out the 2018 mid-term elections because the U.S. was on heightened alert due to their meddling in the 2016 election. However, during the interim they increased their capabilities. Their efforts in 2016 were mostly exploratory designed to examine State voting systems and ascertain their vulnerabilities. They learned much, and now have a plan to disrupt the American election.

The Russian plan is simple. They want to disrupt the process, not try to engineer the results. To do this, they will hack into each State’s election system and delete 10,000 eligible voters from the rolls. They will also create 10,000 fake names on social media who will post allegations that they were denied the right to vote. If successful, 500,000 eligible voters will find their names are no longer on the voting rolls and will not be allowed to vote. In addition, the 10,000 fake names will use social media platforms to decry the denial of their right to vote. 

Election Day comes and there are widespread reports of people being turned away from voting precincts. Voters report that their names are no longer on the voting rolls. Both Republican and Democratic campaigns cry foul stating that their voters have been denied their constitutional rights. Fox News and CNN pick up the stories along with all the other major news outlets.  Social media sites light up with thousands saying they were denied their voter rights. The internet is awash in conspiracy theories. Anger and frustration are ready to boil over. Each side accuses the other of election fraud.

Leaders at all levels are taken by surprise. The validity of the election hangs in the balance, and sorting it all out seems impossible. Thousands of people are coming forward saying they were denied their right to vote.  Their names are not on the voting rolls, but many stories seem credible. There is no easy way to check their allegations. The country is now in uncharted waters. Finally President Trump declares a Constitutional crisis and asks the Courts to disavow the election, thus allowing the President to continue in office until another election can be scheduled. This creates even more furor. 

Who knows if this could happen? However, here are two plausible takeaways from this story.  First, our election infrastructure is vulnerable. This is according to a February 2018 report by the Center for American Progress. Forty-three states use voting machines that are no longer being made. Many states manage their voter databases with software from the 1990s. The Department of Homeland Security informed 20 states that the Russians attacked their election systems in 2016. They were able to penetrate the voter registration sites in Illinois and possibly several other states. Upgrading our systems would cost upward of a billion dollars. However, neither Congress nor the President has shown any interest in allocating such funds. 

President Trump has consistently downplayed the role of Russia in the 2016 elections for unknown reasons. Only reluctantly and recently has the Administration leveled sanctions against Russia for their meddling. Meanwhile $120 million that Congress allocated to the State Department to fight disinformation campaigns has gone unspent according to recent news reports. We are clearly vulnerable to an attack again, but this next time it may be better organized and implemented. 

Second, the Russians can disrupt elections without actually engineering specific outcomes.  Paper trails, while important, would not prevent the disruption described above. However, denying citizens their right to vote would make us angry at our democratic system. That would achieve their long term goal of undermining democratic governments. That is why we need better cybersecurity measures including performing threat assessments, acquiring updated voting machines, and conducting postelection audits along with assuring voting paper trails. 

Casting a ballot is the best opportunity most of us will ever have to say who will represent us, what issues they will address, and how they will spend our money. The right to vote (and have that vote count) is so basic to our democracy.  Lyndon Johnson said it well in 1965: “Without it [the right to vote] all other rights are meaningless.” Democratic government can be a fragile. We need to furiously defend it and the integrity of our election process.         

Tom Deloe is a member of Gettysburg Democracy for America.