"Today, in some senses is halftime," Christopher Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a news conference on Tuesday. "There may be other events or activities or efforts to interfere and undermine confidence in the election."
With more than 100 million Americans having cast their ballots in early voting before Election Day, the final tally may exceed 150 million votes by the time polls close in Alaska and Hawaii, well past midnight on the U.S. east coast. But with a significant number of voters having cast their votes by mail, counting those could take a week or more, and even longer if one factors in legal challenges by both parties.
With no basis in fact, President Donald Trump and his advisors have said that a prolonged count would lead to fraud. In reality each state has a different deadline for certifying the final tally that ranges from 48 hours after Election Day to as late as 22 days after polls close. And the vast majority of states continue to count ballots, such as absentees, in the days after Nov. 3.
Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said that Americans should wait for official results to be announced. "I'd ask all Americans to be patient and to treat all sensational and unverified claims with skepticism."
Election technology, like any piece of electronic equipment, can fail even without a cyberattack, a senior CISA official said on a conference call with reporters, pointing to an announcement from Frank La Rose, Ohio's Secretary of State, that the state's Franklin County was switching to paper poll books because of a technical glitch in their electronic ones. Poll books are used to verify voters' identities before they cast a ballot.
Social media platforms as well as messaging apps can be conduits for disinformation, too, officials noted.
Some Chinese-Americans are said to be receiving messages on WeChat, a messaging platform, warning them that protests are being organized and trying to instill fear in voters.
A CISA official said U.S. officials were aware of such messages and have passed on the information to social media companies to address them.
CISA will continue to update its rumor vs reality webpage to push back on domestic and foreign disinformation efforts, officials said.
The agency's election monitoring hub that has been in operation for the past 40 days may well continue to operate for another 45 days, officials said.
©2020 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
