A top Federal election security official reported no national-level incidents that would impact the security of election infrastructure as of Tuesday afternoon, while intelligence and law enforcement agencies pegged Russia as the most problematic threat for election mischief designed to undermine voter confidence.
Cait Conley, a senior advisor at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told reporters Tuesday afternoon that the election day incidents the agency is monitoring are “expected” and while disruptive, they will not impact the outcome of Americans’ votes.
Conley reemphasized that state and local election officials have prepared for these temporary disruptions, including power outages and weather events.
Ahead of the polls opening Tuesday morning, CISA, the FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) issued a joint statement warning that “Russia is the most active threat” when it comes to conducting influence operations intended to undermine public confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections and stoke divisions among Americans.
The intelligence community (IC) said it has assessed that Russian influence actors posted an article falsely claiming that U.S. officials across swing states plan to orchestrate election fraud using a range of tactics, such as ballot stuffing and cyberattacks.
The IC also noted that Russian influence actors manufactured a video that falsely depicted an interview with an individual claiming election fraud in Arizona, which involved creating fake overseas ballots and changing voter rolls to favor Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Arizona secretary of state has refuted the video’s claim as false.
The FBI today also warned voters that its name and insignia is being misused in promoting false narratives surrounding the election. They noted that a fabricated news clip is circulating purporting to be a terrorist warning issued by the FBI. The fabricated news clip reports falsely that the FBI purportedly stated that Americans should “vote remotely” due to a high terror threat at polling stations.
“This video is not authentic and does not accurately represent the current threat posture or polling location safety,” the FBI said.
Bomb threats have also temporarily closed some polling locations across the nation, and Conley confirmed that those threats are “non-credible.”
While Conley declined to attribute any of the disinformation that was stirred up today directly to Russia, she reemphasized that Russia remains the nation’s most active election day threat.
“When we look at the prior election cycles, it is a greater scope and scale of foreign influence operations we have seen in 2024 than in prior cycles,” she said. “Russia presents, in terms of our adversaries, the greatest degree of capability and sophistication in this space that we have seen targeting our elections process.”
“We continue to see them and others use a range of tactics in order to achieve these objectives – from things like propagating narratives through social media channels to the establishment of websites purporting to be media organizations … to deliberate outreach through chat applications targeting specific elements of the American populace,” she said.
“Overall, I think the range of tactics we are seeing being employed and the level of sophistication is greater than prior cycles, and again, just reflects the commitment of our adversaries to their own stated objectives in terms of undermining American democracy and pitting Americans against one another,” Conley concluded.
