The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seal hangs on a fence at the agency's headquarters in Washington, on Dec. 11, 2014. Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) added entries to its Election Security website it says are “designed to debunk common misinformation and disinformation narratives and themes.”
CISA updated its website on Dec. 2, with two new entries it listed as “rumors”: “Ballots can easily be destroyed without detection, preventing them from being counted,” and “Voting system software is not reviewed or tested and can be easily manipulated.”
The agency is in charge of managing risk to critical infrastructure. It set up an “Election Security” page on its website with “Rumor VS. Reality” as the leading topic.
The entry listed with “Ballots can be easily destroyed without detection” is marked as false and is accompanied with a response: “States have ballot processing and tabulation safeguards designed to ensure each ballot cast in the election can be correctly counted. State procedures often include robust chain-of-custody procedures, auditable logging requirements, and canvass processes. Election officials use these security measure [sic] to check that votes are accurately accounted for during processing and counting.”
CISA updated the page while active lawsuits alleging election irregularities including voter fraud and ballot-counting problems are ongoing in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada.
CISA also said that voting system software has to pass tests to be “consistent with state and/or federal requirements.” The tests include design functions, accuracy, privacy, and accessibility, as well as environmental, security and functional, etc.
Christopher Krebs, former director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, testifies during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington, on Oct. 19, 2017. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The former director of the agency, Christopher Krebs, was fired by President Donald Trump on Nov. 18 on Twitter after the agency released a statement saying the 2020 election “was the most secure in American history.”
In a “60 minutes” interview Krebs said that he stands by the CISA statement.
What Krebs and CISA failed to disclose, however, is that one of the companies at the center of lawsuits alleging electronic ballot manipulation, Dominion Voting Systems, is a member of CISA’s Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council, one of two entities that authored the statement put out by CISA.
An Aug. 24 sworn affidavit from electronic voting security expert Harri Hursti provided a first-hand description of problems he observed during the June 9 statewide primary election in Georgia and the runoff elections on Aug. 11, where he said, “The voting system is being operated in Fulton County in a manner that escalates the security risk to an extreme level.”
Gary Miliefsky, executive producer of Cyber Defense Magazine and a founding member of the Department of Homeland Security said in an interview on “Crossroads” that every piece of electronic equipment that is capable of connecting to the internet by either a wireless router or an Ethernet cable “is a vulnerable piece of equipment that can be hacked remotely,” either domestically or from other countries.
Multiple lawsuits allege Dominion’s systems had a connection to the internet either wirelessly or via ethernet.
Jeff Carlson, Ella Kietlinska, and Joshua Philipp contributed to this report.
