Casting doubts on suggestions by President Trump and Attorney General William Barr, the U.S. intelligence community said it is not aware of any evidence that a foreign adversary is trying to undermine the mail-in voting process.
Less than 70 days before Election Day, a senior official with the FBI and another senior official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the intelligence community’s 17 agencies, said during an election threat briefing call that there is not currently any evidence of a mail-in voter fraud effort being carried out by any foreign adversary. However, the two agencies warned that the broader threat of foreign election interference remains ever-present.
“We have no information or intelligence that any nation-state actor is engaging in any sort of activity to undermine any part of the mail-in votes or ballots,” the senior ODNI official said Wednesday when asked about the concern.
Barr told New York Times Magazine on June 1 that “in terms of foreign influence, there are a number of foreign countries that could easily make counterfeit ballots, put names on them, send them in — and it’d be very hard to sort out what’s happening.” He followed up on that by telling Fox News on June 21 that “right now, a foreign country could print up tens of thousands of counterfeit ballots, and be very hard for us to detect which was the right and which was the wrong ballot. So, I think it can upset and undercut the confidence in the integrity of our elections.”
When pressed in a July 28 hearing by House Judiciary Democrats on whether he had evidence that foreign countries could successfully sway an election with fraudulent ballots, Barr replied, “No, but I have common sense.” Barr was repeatedly cut off as he attempted to expound upon the issue.
Trump himself has echoed these sentiments, including in a June 22 all-caps tweet. “RIGGED 2020 ELECTION: MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS. IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!” he said in the online missive. During a June 23 speech in front of the right-wing student activist group Turning Point USA, Trump asked: “Will they be counterfeited by groups inside our nation? Will they be counterfeited maybe by the millions by foreign powers who don’t want to see Trump win because nobody has been tougher on trade or making our country great again?”
A senior FBI official said Wednesday that “we are fully aware that COVID-19 and the expectation of the increased mail-in ballots has created a new environment for this election cycle; however, we have not seen, to date, a coordinated national voter fraud effort during a major election.” The FBI official argued that “it would be extraordinarily difficult to change a federal election outcome through this type of fraud alone, given the range of processes that would need to be affected or compromised by an adversary at the local level.” But the official stressed that “that doesn’t minimize our commitment to investigate those incidents” and said that “election crimes coordinators” nationwide train to be ready for any sort of voter fraud they might encounter.
It would likely be difficult for a foreign adversary to create, print, mail, and have counted large numbers of fraudulent ballots for a number of reasons, given the very decentralized nature of the U.S. election system, with 50 states, Washington, D.C., territories, and thousands of localities with different ballots. The differing ballots often use different designs and paper and generally employ bar codes or other tracking that would be difficult to recreate. It would also likely be a challenge for a foreign adversary to match the unique ballot to the proper person in a voter database, although Russian hackers have shown interest in probing voter files.
“The American public should rest assured that it is very difficult for a foreign adversary to meddle with actual vote counts” and that “the decentralized way in which we as Americans cast and record our votes turns out in the end to be a key element of election resiliency,” another senior FBI official stressed.
“We know it’s not just Russia operating in this space, but just to be clear: Russia is still very active when it comes to malign influence, and it works hard to get Americans essentially to tear each other apart politically,” the bureau official added. “But we also know that China is a significant malign foreign influence player. Its game is to gain an economic and technological advantage over the United States and, over time, manage what it hopes to be our decline on the world stage. And we certainly can’t neglect the current malign foreign influence threat from several other actors, including Iran.”
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who has overseen all of the nation’s spy agencies since May, recently said in a statement obtained by the Washington Examiner that “China poses a greater national security threat to the U.S. than any other nation — economically, militarily and technologically” — and “that includes threats of election influence and interference.”
This was after Bill Evanina, who leads the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, released an intelligence assessment in early August warning that Russia is actively trying to denigrate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. The same statement also said China “prefers” that President Trump not win reelection and is “expanding its influence efforts ahead of November 2020.” The counterintelligence official also said Iran “seeks to undermine” Trump’s presidency.
Robert Mueller’s special counsel report, released in April 2019, said Russians interfered in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” but “did not establish” criminal collusion between any Russians and anyone in Trump’s orbit. The Senate Intelligence Committee released a report last week detailing the “counterintelligence threat” posed by Russian meddling in the last presidential race.
“The American public, and the media, have a significant role to play in securing this election, particularly in maintaining vigilance against foreign influence,” the ODNI official said Wednesday. “Elections should be our own, and they are our own. Foreign efforts to influence or interfere with our elections are a direct threat to the fabric of our democracy. Neutralizing these threats will require a whole-of-society approach, not just a government approach.”
