Do declassified files support Trump’s election security claims?

Protecting America’s “election infrastructure” has been a bipartisan goal for years. The United States has pushed to establish standards to strengthen and streamline voting mechanisms after the disputed 2000 presidential election and again following evidence of Russian election interference in the 2016 election.

While election procedures are managed by state governments, most votes are now recorded on some form of paper ballot.

There may be a more partisan purpose behind Trump’s republication of these claims. He appears to be using these concerns to cast doubt on the 2020 presidential election, which he lost, and potentially call into question the validity of future elections.

In his speech, Trump said previously classified US intelligence assessments proved that the US government knew voting machines were “extremely vulnerable to attack.”

“As noted in an assessment, we determined that at least adversaries of the United States, including Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, as well as non-state groups, have the capacity to compromise US election infrastructure,” he said.

Documents released by the Trump administration Includes January 2020 declassified NIC assessment, external About security vulnerabilities in that year’s election, he acknowledged that “ballot and voting machine preparation was vulnerable to cyber, supply chain or insider threats.”

Machines without paper backup are “particularly vulnerable to cyber operations”, it said.

But the NIC assessment also noted that “the security and mitigation measures used in these processes, as well as the nationwide distribution of voting machine storage facilities, would make it difficult for an adversary to coordinate a campaign to manipulate voting results across an entire state or across multiple states.”

The specific assessment Trump means is something else. Declassified NIC report dated August 2020, external“Foreign states or other actors may attempt to compromise our election infrastructure,” he said.

It is also important to note that Trump has taken steps in recent years to cut funding and undermine the independence of some government programs and agencies charged with monitoring election security.