Frustration grows as federal agency struggles to combat election lies spread by Americans

By Sean Lyngaas, CNN

(CNN) — The federal agency tasked with protecting the nation’s elections systems has retreated from some of the key work it did to counter false and viral information about voting in the 2020 election, including dismissing or ignoring multiple internal and external policy proposals to combat disinformation, numerous sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

The Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency, or CISA, is charged with protecting election infrastructure from physical and cyberattacks, a task that has grown in importance since Russian intelligence agents conducted a wide-ranging effort to influence the 2016 election.

While CISA has actively called out foreign disinformation efforts this year, it has been less active in swatting down domestic election disinformation, according to interviews with election officials, a review of public records and sources in the federal government.

Agency officials no longer pass along to social media platforms viral online falsehoods flagged by election officials from both parties, as they did in 2020, following a lawsuit from Republican attorneys general that accused the agency of censorship.

A webpage that CISA aggressively maintained to debunk viral election rumors in 2020 has been sparsely updated. Some internal proposals to support election officials’ efforts to combat disinformation have made little headway. And one of the agency’s top experts on election-related disinformation has been marginalized and not fully utilized by the agency, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

CISA Director Jen Easterly has emphasized in public remarks that it is not the agency’s job to police speech on social media platforms.

The agency has advised election officials on how to communicate clearly with voters and to prepare for security incidents. Easterly has also used her account on the social media platform X to push out facts about the voting process and has repeatedly gone on national television to discuss the security of the election process.

But inside CISA, sources told CNN there is frustration that the agency hasn’t done more to help election officials counter lies that can inspire violent threats against those officials.

A fear of appearing partisan or of infringing on free speech has shackled the agency’s approach to election-related falsehoods that Americans are freely sharing, the sources said.

In late September, Sen. Mark Warner, the powerful chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sent Easterly a stern letter imploring her to do more to combat disinformation ahead of the election.

“I strongly urge you to use all the tools at your disposal” to support state and local election officials in the face of an “unprecedented rise in targeted disinformation campaigns,” the Virginia Democrat wrote.

CNN has requested comment from CISA on its response to the letter.

Some in the election community would also like to see CISA do more to combat falsehoods.

“I would like to see more a concerted effort from CISA on domestic information that affects election infrastructure,” an executive at a voting equipment company, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, told CNN. Voting vendors have faced violent threats over false claims that their machines rigged the 2020 election.

The executive pointed to recent viral falsehoods that voting machines had flipped votes in multiples states. What if a group of Americans spread those lies on a national scale and created chaos?

“If that does happen, if CISA is really focused on foreign malign influence, who is going to fight back against a coordinated effort?” the executive wondered.

CNN has requested comment from CISA on its response to the recent spate of baseless voting machine claims.

Social media platforms loosen guardrails

Four years after the 2020 election, when false claims of voter fraud fueled a violent effort to overturn the election, the information environment around elections has only grown more chaotic.

Disinformation remains rampant online. But since 2021, under pressure from Republican lawmakers, the social media industry has pivoted from many of the commitments, policies and tools it once embraced to help safeguard the peaceful transfer of democratic power.

After the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, platforms including Meta, Twitter and YouTube suspended thousands of accounts that spread election lies and removed posts glorifying the attack.

Under the ownership of billionaire Elon Musk, Twitter, now X, has emerged as one of the biggest sources of election conspiracy theories.

Election officials in battleground states have tried to relay accurate information to Musk in hopes that he would stop spreading conspiracy theories about voting, to little avail.

There is an acute concern among some senior US officials that the combination of false information and violent rhetoric that complicated the federal response to Hurricane Helene in September could surface in a much more potent way on or after Election Day.

“It got a lot of us worried,” a US official told CNN.

‘It’s another messenger’

Easterly and her top elections security adviser, Cait Conley, have traveled the country to offer support, security advice and training to election officials from both parties. They point out that state and local election officials are the best sources for accurate information. CISA has advised states on setting up their own websites to debunk disinformation.

CISA is one of multiple federal agencies involved in election security. The FBI investigates violent threats to election officials, while the Election Assistance Commission certifies voting equipment and educates voters about the process.

Directly countering false election narratives online and more consistently and forcefully promoting accurate information about voting are well within CISA’s remit, election officials and experts say. And CISA can do so without violating the First Amendment, they say.

“I think it’s valuable to have multiple levels of government saying, ‘That’s false,’” one senior state-level election official said. “It’s another messenger with a different microphone” that can hammer home the point to the American public, the election official said.

Not everyone agrees. Some election officials interviewed by CNN were skeptical about the federal government’s ability to debunk election lies that are part of a broader rise of misinformation in America.

“This is such a larger conversation than election administration,” said Stephen Richer, a top Republican election official in Arizona’s Maricopa County who has faced violent threats for saying the 2020 election was secure. “I tend to think that election administration and democracy is just a proxy war for the larger fight on an objective truth.”

In an interview with CNN, Conley touted CISA’s efforts to protect election officials from disinformation-fueled violence, in part by ramping up physical security resources to those officials

“Since January 2023, we’ve conducted nearly 1,200 physical security assessments of election facilities,” she said.

In many respects, CISA has increased its election security efforts since 2020. The agency now has a team of former election officials who provide physical and cybersecurity services to election offices around the country. CISA, the FBI and US intelligence agencies have rapidly debunked fake videos about voting spread by Russian operatives on X in the last month.

“It is irresponsible when domestic actors amplify those narratives,” Conley told CNN. “We are literally playing into the hands of our adversaries.”

But given the violent threats facing election officials across the country, many in the community are calling for a more robust response from all segments of society in combatting disinformation.

“The defenders and protectors of our democracy need to become much more aggressive, much more assertive,” Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, told CNN, referring to federal agencies and media outlets alike.

“It is worth protecting and it is worth protecting vigorously,” he said. “And if people get their feelings hurt because you’re calling them a liar, let them prove that their lie is true in court.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.