Election 2024: Disinformation Didn’t Keep Voters From the Polls

With polls closed in much of the United States, election officials and voting rights advocates say that voting related problems have so far been minimal, but federal officials still warned of the lingering dangers of foreign disinformation operations designed to undermine trust in the democratic system.

Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump continued to make baseless claims that the election is rigged, saying in a Tuesday afternoon Truth Social post there was “A lot of talk about massive CHEATING in Philadelphia” and that law enforcement was on the way. But the Philadelphia Police Department told CNN they didn’t know what Trump was referring to. Trump also made similar comments about Detroit, with police there also debunking claims of a heavy police response.

Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said that while there were some “minor disruptive activities” throughout Tuesday, they were largely expected and planned for. Additionally, CISA saw no evidence of malicious activity affecting the security or integrity of the election.

“More broadly we witnessed the resilience of our process and the preparedness of elections officials as they administered free, fair safe and secure elections,” Easterly said during a conference call with reporters just before midnight on the East Coast.

Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said the parade of voters to the polls was “remarkable” given the continued swirl of disinformation and litigation designed to keep people from voting. 

“People are voting today and that’s worth noting,” Hewitt said during an afternoon press briefing held by the umbrella voting rights group Election Protection. “Democracy works when you let it, and sometimes we need to give it a nudge to make sure that there are no obstacles in the way.” 

While scattered voting precincts experienced the kind of problems you’d expect when polls open, like malfunctioning equipment and longer-than-expected lines, most of the issues were localized and easily handled at the local level.

Early in the day, several non-credible bomb threats caused the temporary closures of two Georgia polling places. The FBI released a statement later in the day saying that it was aware of multiple bomb threats across several states but none of them had been deemed credible. It added that many of them appeared to originate from Russian email domains.

Hewitt emphasized that Georgia voters were safe at the polls and that the threats didn’t keep people from voting, just made the process take longer. One of the polling places will stay open longer to make up for time lost due to the bomb threat evacuations, and Hewitt said his group was seeking an extension for the other. 

The group was also asking that some polling places in Pennsylvania, including those covering Lehigh and Villanova universities, along with Lafayette College, stay open later as a result of more than 4-hour wait times to vote at those locations. 

Easterly said CISA didn’t track any disruptions at the national level through the day. With the election coming to a close, she urged Americans to be patient, stressing that vote totals announced on election night are not final results and that election workers need time to do their jobs.

Meanwhile, CISA remains concerned that America’s adversaries, particularly Russia and to a lesser extent Iran, will continue to ramp up their disinformation operations, in an effort to undermine American confidence in the legitimacy of elections and stoke violence in the coming days.

“We cannot, as we have said repeatedly, allow our adversaries to have a vote in our elections,” Easterly said. “We all have a roll to play in protecting and preserving the democracy.”