By: Linden Joan Hill
Elections are meant to be secure—such an ideology is the foundation of our democracy. It's our constitutional right to vote fairly, to choose who we want representing our nation and who we want at the forefront on state and local levels. But the threat of foreign interference with our elections raises serious concerns as we head into the final days of the 2024 election. The advent of artificial intelligence creates vulnerabilities and distortions, putting elections at risk. Cyberattacks on election infrastructure and influence campaigns loom. In 2016, The Associated Press reported that twenty-one states were targeted by Russian agents. Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, and Washington were among those states. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) designated election systems as a critical infrastructure subsector. The denial of the 2020 presidential election results and the spread of misinformation culminated in the attack on the Capital on January 6. While the United States has a robust framework to prosecute instances of election interference, the nation must be poised to meet this threat.
Our government must shield against corrupt foreign influence. Should the United States encounter interference in the upcoming election, it needs to be prepared to reassess and readjust the ways it shuts down its elections to foreign manipulation. Prevention should not be parochial. Public outreach is prudent—increasing public education and awareness about election threats should be a focal point. The security of our election infrastructure is not partisan; as stated by Republican Senator Richard Burr, “Russian activities during the 2016 election may have been aimed at one party’s candidate, but . . . in 2018 and 2020, it could be aimed at anyone, at home or abroad.”
The nation is filled with anticipation. But Americans are not the only ones who have their eyes on this election. Election interference by foreign actors continues to be a real threat to our democracy—and one to which the United States ought to pay attention.
What is Election Interference?
Election influence refers to covert efforts conducted by foreign actors acting on behalf of foreign governments intending to control a U.S. election—including candidates, voters and their preferences—or other political processes, either directly or indirectly. Interference is a subset of election influence, and refers to activities that are targeted at technical facets of the election, including registration, voting, and reporting results. Certain aspects of election interference, like the hacking of voting systems, are easier to address through established legal measures. Others, such as the promulgation of disinformation in voting cycles, are much more difficult to prevent and prosecute due to the nature of the crime itself.
Election interference is not a new threat; it first hit the news feeds during the 2016 election cycle. In his Report on the Investigation Into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, Special Counsel Robert Mueller found Russia’s attacks to be “sweeping and systemic.” He found that such attacks included a wide range of activities, from an “information warfare” campaign on social media that favored Trump, to the hacking of Hillary Clinton’s campaign databases. Additionally, the Kremlin accessed the information of millions of registered voters. Following the 2020 election, the National Intelligence Council similarly released a report which found that Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized actions to undermine President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party. Through these efforts, Putin strove to undermine public confidence in the electoral process and establish his support for Trump. However, the report found that no election interference occurred by means of altering the voting process. China has similarly engaged in widespread attempts to interfere with elections by adopting misinformation tactics and promoting false ideologies on social media through the use of fake accounts and artificially-created images. Other countries such as Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela have also taken steps to influence elections through similar tactics. U.S. officials have signaled that Iran is currently working to undermine Donald Trump’s campaign to avoid an outcome that would worsen geopolitical tensions. It is clear that these past attempts at interrupting the U.S. democratic process may very well continue in the lead up to Election Day.
As the 2024 election ramps up, the Intelligence Community assesses that Russia is the most active threat to this election. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence warned that the Kremlin “views U.S. elections as opportunities for malign influence as part of its larger foreign policy strategy.”
In an effort to counter this growing threat, the State Department recently announced three actions to counter Kremlin influence, particularly from their media outlets. These steps include a new visa restriction policy, the announcement of a reward offer for information regarding individuals engaging in interference, and the designation of a major media outlet as a “foreign mission,” essentially an arm of the Kremlin. Iran has made more of an effort to influence the 2024 election by increasing efforts to interfere with cyber operations. China is primarily shifting its focus to influencing down-ballot races and promoting negative narratives about both political parties. Any actions to prevent interference from Iran and China remains to be seen.
Government Response to Interference
Given previous efforts by foreign nations to interfere in American democracy, the federal government has taken steps to further bolster and respond to the threat. These efforts can be categorized into two approaches: prevention and prosecution.
Bolstering Efforts to Prevent Interference
Following the 2016 election, Senators Marco Rubio and Chris Van Hollen introduced the Defending Elections from Threats by Establishing Redlines Act of 2018, or the “DETER Act.” The Act “aim[ed] to dissuade Russian intervention in U.S. elections by automatically imposing serious retaliatory sanctions are “extraordinarily severe” and would essentially result in the blocking of all of the target’s property within U.S. jurisdiction. This legislation was not passed, however.
In September 2018, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 13848 and declared a national emergency to deal with the threat of election interference. The order required the Director of National Intelligence to conduct an assessment on any foreign government that acted with intent to interfere with the election and if a government or person acting as an agent of that government were determined to have targeted an election, they would be subject to sanctions. While the order does not name a specific threat, the language naming election interference as an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” underscores to Americans that this threat is not one to be simply ignored.
There are several entities at the national level focused on ensuring the integrity of U.S. elections. For example, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), established in 2018, is responsible for securing the nation’s infrastructure, including elections infrastructure, from physical and cyber threats. This agency has taken several approaches to prevent interference through detection, including the formation of the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation, “CDM,” an initiative aimed at continuously identifying cybersecurity risks and accentuates necessary repairs by notifying personnel to prioritize and remediate the most critical issues. Separate from but complementary to CISA, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) is an independent bipartisan commission established in 2002 which shares resources and alerts to the public, ranging from resources for election workers, and election security toolkits. Most recently, the EAC issued an alert on October 11, cautioning the public about a misleading voter registration phishing email.
Statutory Authority to Prosecute Interference
The United States has a host of statutory authorities at its disposal to respond to foreign interference in elections. Section 245(b)(1)(A) of Title 18 to the U.S. Code imposes penalties on whoever “intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure . . . any class of persons from voting or participating in other election activities.” In 2020, a defendant was sentenced to forty-one months of imprisonment for violating Section 245(b)(1)(A) by unlawfully interfering with a candidate campaigning for elective office and Section 245(b)(4) for racially motivated interference with a candidate. Another part of the U.S. Code, Section 241 of Title 18, makes it unlawful to “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person” who is exercising their legal right to vote. In 2023, a defendant was sentenced to seven months imprisonment in violation of Section 241 of Title 18 for his role in promulgating misinformation on social media. The Department of Justice (DOJ) reported that the defendant attempted to interfere in the 2016 presidential election by sending “fraudulent messages that encouraged supporters of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to ‘vote’ via text message or social media.” While the defendant was not linked to a foreign threat, this action to prosecute the misuse of social media messaging could be generally applicable to foreign actors, such as individuals conducting criminal activity on behalf of an entity such as Russia or China, if they continue to ramp up efforts to target the United States online.
Moreover, Section 594 of Title 18 prohibits intimidating, threatening, or coercing anyone for the purposes of interfering with someone’s right to vote. DOJ has utilized Section 594 to indict two Iranian nationals for their involvement in interference campaigns in 2020 that involved threatening potential voters through email messages. Section 875(c) of Title 18 of the U.S. Code prohibits the transmission of communications containing a threat in interstate or foreign commerce. Although the provision is not specifically aimed at preventing election interference, it was also applied in the case involving the Iranian nationals and they were charged with the transmission of interstate threats. These provisions and several more give the United States a robust menu of options when it comes to preventing and prosecuting foreign election interference.
Conclusion
The presidential election is just around the corner. On November 5th, polling stations across the nation will be flooded with voters. The election landscape has changed drastically over the past few months. On July 21st, President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, who has since raised a whopping $1 billion for her campaign. In another shock to the nation, former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt on July 13th at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania; he took the stage at the Republican National Convention just a few days later to accept the GOP nomination for president. During a September debate between Harris and Trump, both candidates offered their differing visions of a path forward, rejuvenating the debate among voters over which candidate has the best interests of the country in mind.
The world will be watching the upcoming election. A prompt and transparent approach toward the protection of our election infrastructure is paramount.
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