Hackers Are Already Screwing With the 2020 Election

Donald Trump has spent months promulgating bad-faith attacks on remote voting, masking his fears that high turnout could favor his Democratic opponent with unfounded claims that it would result in widespread fraud. “WE CAN NEVER LET THIS TRAGEDY BEFALL OUR NATION,” he tweeted of mail-in voting last month. But while the president’s attacks on proposals to ensure votes can be safely cast amid the coronavirus pandemic may be obvious lies, some remote voting measures have raised legitimate concerns about the risk of foreign interference.

With COVID-19 almost certain to remain an enormous public health issue through election day in November, several states—including ones led by Republicans—have sought to expand access to mail-in voting. A handful are going even further, experimenting with or ramping up online voting. According to the New York Times, the latter is potentially vulnerable to hacking, with researchers warning that online voting could present opportunities for foreign manipulation. “Online voting raises such severe risks that, even in a time of unrest and pandemic, these jurisdictions are taking a major risk of undermining the legitimacy of their election results,” University of Michigan computer science professor J. Alex Halderman told the Times.

The vulnerabilities of online voting underscore the broader concerns about this year’s election. Observers already warned that Russia, which meddled in the 2016 election on Trump’s behalf, and other bad actors are seeking to interfere with this cycle. Trump and his allies have also been remarkably open about their voter suppression efforts. But the pandemic has compounded the existing concerns and created new ones.

Trump, underwater in polls against Joe Biden, has baselessly attacked the legitimacy of mail-in voting, though he had personally voted by mail in Florida’s election—exacerbating concerns that he could use the pandemic as an excuse to cancel the election, close polling places, or dismiss the results if he loses. “In the eight to 10 months I’ve been yapping at people about this stuff, the reactions have gone from, ‘Don’t be silly, that won’t happen,’ to an increasing sense of, ‘You know what, that could happen,’” Georgetown University law professor Rosa Brooks told the Times. The Biden campaign says it is prepared for that scenario, and Democrats have led a push to ensure voters can cast ballots without risking their personal health. But that has renewed scrutiny of the potential vulnerabilities to foreign hackers that online voting, and online state voter registration systems, may have. In a study released Sunday, Halderman and his colleagues found that OmniBallot, a platform used to facilitate internet voting, could be hacked to alter votes without detection. “Some voters, including those with certain disabilities and some overseas servicemembers, have long faced significant obstacles to participation. Now, with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, all voters may need better options for voting safely,” the study read. “On the other hand...online ballot return represents a severe danger to election integrity and voter privacy that no available technology can adequately mitigate.”

Russia is not believed to have changed votes last cycle—their meddling consisted of hacking and the spread of disinformation—but United States officials believe that they could attempt to do so this time around. Already, there have been other attempts at hacking: Chinese hackers have targeted members of the Biden campaign, and Iran has targeted Trump’s team, according to Google’s Threat Analysis Group. The Department of Homeland Security has said it is working to buttress voting systems to make them less vulnerable to outside interference, but Trump—who has dismissed the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia meddled to help him win last time around—has given little attention to the matter and, with his allies, has stood in the way of legislation to further protect the integrity of American elections. Instead, he has worked to sow further doubt in the American election system. Expanding access to the ballot will be necessary this cycle, as officials scramble to hold an election against the backdrop of a pandemic. But the security vulnerabilities they present are almost certain to be exploited by the president and his allies.

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