Election Officials Brace for Foreign Threats — and an Unpredictable Washington — Two Days Before the Midterms
The channels that carry federal foreign-threat warnings to the officials who run America's elections are at their weakest since 2016, election experts told CNN, even as Russia, China and Iran stay active in the campaign's final stretch.
Two days before voters decide control of Congress, the officials who actually run the election are preparing with less help from Washington than at any point in a decade. CNN reported on Sunday that the channels for federal officials to communicate foreign threats to election officials are at their weakest since the 2016 vote, according to numerous sources who work in elections — even though U.S. intelligence officials are tracking familiar efforts by Russia, China and Iran to influence American voters.
The bottleneck, CNN reported, is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Homeland Security arm that took a leading role defending elections during President Donald Trump's first term. The agency was gutted during Trump's second term, and a last-minute Homeland Security effort to stand up an online platform for sharing threat intelligence does not carry the same credibility with election officials as past systems, people familiar with the matter told CNN. A much-anticipated classified briefing for election officials in mid-October — the first since the 2024 presidential cycle — was marred by technical difficulties when the video call would not work; it was rescheduled and later held without those problems. A CISA spokesperson told CNN the agency had launched an information-sharing tool and that authorized federal, state and local partners are granted access daily upon request, but did not say how many election officials have used it.
"The relationship between elections officials and the federal government has broken down," Ryan Macias, a longtime election security expert and former consultant to CISA, told CNN. David Becker, a former Justice Department attorney who works with officials of both parties, told CNN he does not know a single election official, Democrat or Republican, who is actively sharing cybersecurity information with the federal government this time around — a stark contrast, he said, to the past four federal elections.
The foreign threats themselves have not receded. People briefed on U.S. intelligence assessments told CNN that Russia is again using disinformation to denigrate Democratic candidates, while China is focused on down-ballot candidates seen as anti-China, and federal officials are watching Russia-aligned hacktivists of the kind that knocked election-related websites offline ahead of the 2022 midterms. In recent weeks, private firms that track the activity have seen suspected Russian operatives post a wave of AI-altered videos attacking Democratic candidates. For the capital region, where Maryland, Virginia and District officials run Tuesday's vote in the federal government's own backyard, the practical effect is the one local administrators describe across the country: the preparation continues, but more of it is being done without the federal partner that used to coordinate it.
