Underpinning democracy is an essential trust in voting and elections. Hacking and disinformation have, separately, dominated conversations about election vulnerabilities, but disinformation about hacks presents a threat as well.

All it takes is to raise questions about the integrity of the elections and convince people that the results cannot be trusted. That could actually be pretty easy to do. It’s also much cheaper than an all-out effort, even where it would be possible, to change votes or otherwise manipulate results.