By gutting election security programs in the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency ( #CISA ),
the Trump administration may be exposing future elections to external threats, experts warn.
The agency has been crucial to helping state and local election officials secure elections from foreign and domestic cyber attacks and handle disinformation and influence campaigns that seek to erode Americans’ faith in democratic institutions.
Such election interference operations have grown both in scope and sophistication over the past decade,
-- especially with the rise of artificial intelligence.
The Trump administration placed employees that worked on CISA’s election programs on administrative leave
and stripped federal funding for systems that alert thousands of state and local governments to cybersecurity and election threats.
State and local election officials have told Democracy Docket they fear that dismantling these programs will leave future elections less secure.
Additionally, the administration disbanded an FBI special unit tasked with confronting foreign threats to elections,
creating what a former FBI counterintelligence head called “a free for all for foreign intel services seeking influence.”
Trump may be able to meddle with the nuts and bolts of election systems by controlling the Election Assistance Commission ( #EAC ).
With a similar leadership structure as the FEC,
the EAC helps state and local officials improve how elections are conducted.
It distributes grants to improve election infrastructure, certifies voting equipment and analyzes state-by-state data to determine best practices in election administration.
The EAC has long been targeted by Republicans,
and if Trump gains the ability to fire its board members at will, he could cripple the agency or influence how it certifies
— or decertifies
— voting system hardware and software.
The Trump administration has already attempted to influence the EAC’s work by including $55 million in election security grants administered by the agency
in its massive indefinite federal funding freeze earlier this year.
The administration rescinded the freeze after it set off a wave of legal challenges.
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