Situation Room: Generative AI is making it dramatically easier to spread false information and fuel harassment online, exacerbating existing risks for election officials.
Resource Library: AI detection tools can aid in determining whether online content is authentic.
Planning Desk: Testing the overall election process includes verifying all hardware devices and accessories can meet expectations. Preparation begins now.
AI As a Social Media Threat Multiplier
The conversation about artificial intelligence of late tends to center on national security, but theintersection of generative AI and social mediais a more immediate concern for state and local election officials. The January 2024 AI-generated robocall that imitated President Biden and targeted New Hampshire primary voters showed how fast a speculative threat can become operational.
Automated Harassment at Scale: Harassment campaigns used to require a large number of people coordinating fake or misleading accounts. AI is removing that requirement by lowering the barriers to entry. A single actor, or even an automated system, can generate thousands of unique, targeted comments that name a specific clerk, push the attack into trending feeds, and overwhelm staff with threats and doxxing (posting someone's home address or personal information to encourage further harassment).
Impersonation of Officials: Bad actors scrape public materials, including video and audio footage of officials, to create realistic videos or voice clones that they post on social platforms. These clips might falsely announce changes to voting procedures or conditions, such as precinct closures or machine failures, potentially sparking chaos at polling places or confusing voters before election officials can issue a correction.
Images of Misconduct That Never Happened: Tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini can produce photorealistic images of misconduct that never happened, such as poll workers burning ballots. Once those images are seeded on visual platforms like Instagram or Reddit, the initial shock drives rapid sharing, leaving a lasting impression of misconduct even after the content is flagged as fake.
The Situation Room focuses on real security incidents and threats in the news relevant to election security. To review previous issues, see thenewsletter archive.
Can You Trust What You're Seeing? Tools for Your AI Toolbelt
The rapid rise of AI-generated content on social media presents a practical challenge for election officials: how to quickly determine whether something is authentic and wade through the potential deluge of information at scale. This dual threat can impede or dilute an effective response to ensure the right information stays in front of voters. When a suspicious screenshot or media file circulates, officials need tools to evaluate the threat so they can decide whether to monitor, escalate, or issue a public response.
Digital Footprints or Signals
There are two key signals or footprints that are making their way through broad industry adoption, providing officials with capabilities to verify authentic or inauthentic content. It’s important to note that these tools are still maturing, much like generative AI commercial tools, but nonetheless, they still provide a boost to more traditional detective work. The first is watermarks, and the second is provenance.
Watermarks. A watermark is a signal hidden inside the image or video itself, a bit like the security thread in paper currency. You cannot see it, but the right software can, if it knows what to look for. Several major AI companies now offer public tools that check for their own watermark. You upload the image or video, and the tool tells you whether that company's system made it.
The Resource Library section of the newsletter spotlights election security resources. All highlighted resources are available online in the Resource Library.
Week E-15: Equipment Readiness Check
Part 2: Pre-election Testing of Hardware
Elections operate on a complex series of systems, where a single failure can cascade. Ballot-marking devices (BMDs), tabulators, e-pollbooks, scanners, printers, batteries, and cables all share and transfer data, and each connection is a potential point of failure. Thoroughly testing and preparing equipment and accessories before an election is part of ensuring the security and resilience of the overall election process.
As noted in Part 1 of this series, pre-election testing reduces risk and confirms that equipment is secure and ready for use. While some equipment is needed for software testing, such as tabulators and BMDs during logic and accuracy (L&A) testing, every device and accessory can be prepared now so election offices aren’t rushed once data becomes available for testing. Early hardware checks allow time to repair or replace malfunctioning pieces long before election day.
Testing should verify:
Preventive maintenance and calibration are currenton every unit, not just the ones that were troublesome last election.
Batteries and backups hold a full charge. These should be checked twice: now, and again shortly before election day.
Cables, cords, and connectors actually work. If they look damaged or frayed, replace them.
Each device powers on and performs the way it needs to.
Actual cord discovered in use
during the 2024 general election.
Safe and secure equipment deployment to polling locations and back to the election office or warehouse. A deployment plan should include securing equipment in the polling place when deployed prior to election day and ensuring set-up provides the power and space needed. Designate responsibilities for transportation and installation and confirm chain of custody procedures are in place.
Equipment readiness doesn’t end when the devices power on. A testing plan needs to establish deadlines for completing initial testing, resolving issues, retesting, and final certification for election use. Any jurisdictions facing the possibility of last-minute redistricting should account for this in their pre-testing timeline.
Election-day problems that make the news are rarely sophisticated attacks. They tend to be the dead battery, frayed cable, or machine nobody plugged in to test. Testing is a core security function. By testing the entire election process, jurisdictions inform their emergency preparedness and bolster their resilience.
The Planning Desk is a running timeline of key election security tasks. You can find prior editions in thenewsletter archive.
Want to get daily updates on election news? Subscribe to electionline.
