2020 vote was 'most secure in American history,' election council says

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Adam Mazmanian By Adam Mazmanian,
Former Executive Editor, Nextgov/FCW
 

Connecting state and local government leaders

By Adam Mazmanian

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The Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council said that "[t]here is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

The 2020 general election "was the most secure in American history," according to a Nov. 12 statement from the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council, a team working under the aegis of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security, "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised, the council said.

The statement directly contradicts the conspiracy theories tweeted by President Donald Trump, the most recent of which charged that a voting machine vendor secretly changed votes. This and other claims by Trump have been tagged as "disputed" under a new policy by Twitter to point to potential election misinformation.

"When states have close elections, many will recount ballots. All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary. This is an added benefit for security and resilience," the statement reads. "This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors."

The statement was issued amid reports in Reuters and elsewhere that CISA Director Chris Krebs expects to be asked to resign or to be fired by the Trump administration. Bryan Ware, CISA's assistant director for Cybersecurity is leaving the agency on Friday -- a move first reported by Cyberscoop. According to a Reuters report, Ware was asked to resign.

CISA has been aggressive in combatting misinformation about voting fraud in the wake of the Nov. 3 elections, and Krebs has been out in front on social media to call attention to specific conspiracy theories being peddled on social media – including some promulgated by Trump himself.

This article was first posted on FCW, a sibling site to GCN.

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