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US Department of Homeland Security Under Secretary Chris Krebs speaks during the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity Summit on July 31, 2018, in New York City. Kevin Hagen/Getty Images
The 2020 US election was the most secure in American history, according to US elections officials.
“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double-checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result,” the coordinating bodies on election infrastructure and security said in a joint statement issued by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
The statement directly contradicts President Donald Trump, who has made unfounded allegations of widespread voting irregularities and fraud. The president is using these claims to challenge the vote counts in several key states that delivered President-elect Joe Biden his apparent Electoral College victory.
The Trump campaign has filed dozens of lawsuits, some of which have already been dismissed. But the barrage of legal action and Trump’s false claims — often bolstered by right-wing media and some of the president’s allies in the Republican Party — have undermined overall faith in the electoral process and in the safety and security of US elections.
In the statement, election officials noted that though some states may do recounts, “All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary.” This beefs up the security of the vote and allows officials to correct and identify mistakes in the counting process.
But the statement made one thing very clear: “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
Or as Chris Krebs, the head of CISA, put it: “TLDR: America, we have confidence in the security of your vote, you should, too.”
Learning the lessons of 2016 and fearing further foreign interference in 2020, CISA undertook massive efforts in 2020 to protect America’s election infrastructure. Krebs made securing elections a priority and received bipartisan backing for his efforts to do so.
In 2020, CISA set up a 24/7 “war room” that election officials could contact to report suspicious activity in real time, and had CISA officials at the ready to deploy to polling places, if necessary, according to the Washington Post. CISA also beefed up its public communication before and after the election on potential threats, including setting up a “rumor control” web page that debunks election disinformation.
Of course, countering election disinformation is infinitely more difficult when the president of the United States is the main purveyor of that disinformation. Krebs has reportedly told people he believes he’ll be fired soon, in large part because his efforts to correct false claims about election vulnerabilities has, not surprisingly, put him on the wrong side of the White House.
The 2020 election faced a lot of challenges. But the system worked.
Krebs and CISA are not the only voices here. America’s election officials agree that this US election was not only secure but incredibly successful given the unprecedented challenges states faced.
The Covid-19 pandemic forced election officials across the country to quickly adapt protocols, often with limited resources. Some states vastly expanded mail-in voting. Election officials had to manage public health concerns at polling places, like social distancing and sanitation, and had to come up with innovative solutions such as deploying curbside voting.
“The 2020 general election was one of the smoothest and most well-run elections that we have ever seen, and that is remarkable considering all the challenges,” Ben Hovland, a commissioner on the Election Assistance Commission, told the Associated Press.
The New York Times spoke to election officials in every state, including plenty of Republican officials, and all stated there was no evidence of widespread fraud or irregularities in this election. “There’s a great human capacity for inventing things that aren’t true about elections,” Frank LaRose, the Republican secretary of state in Ohio told the Times. “The conspiracy theories and rumors and all those things run rampant. For some reason, elections breed that type of mythology.”
Some states have begun running post-election audits; in Arizona, for example, half the counties conducted post-election audits, and none of them found any evidence of systematic voter fraud. That includes Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located; authorities there found no irregularities, according to CNN. Pima County, where Tucson is located, discovered just a two-vote discrepancy. The state, where he leads by more than 11,000 votes, has already been called for Biden.
International election observers from the Organization of American States also said they witnessed no fraud or voting irregularities. Another international election watchdog, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), said the US elections were “well managed,” though they warned against Trump’s rhetoric undermining faith in the results.
As more states conduct recounts or post-election audits, discrepancies are going to emerge. But voter fraud is extraordinarily rare in the United States — just a handful of cases out of the tens of millions of ballots cast.
NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice did a study in 2007 that found the incidence of voter fraud to be between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent, which made it more likely that an American would be struck by lighting than “he will impersonate another voter at the polls.” A Washington Post report in December 2016 found just four cases of voter fraud in that year’s election.
Trump’s focus on mail-in voting as somehow full of fraud also doesn’t hold up. In Oregon, which has been voting by mail for about two decades, officials referred 54 cases of possible voter fraud to law enforcement in 2016. Of those, 22 people — representing just 0.0001 percent of all ballots cast that year — were found guilty of having voted in two states.
Another analysis by the Washington Post and the nonprofit Electronic Registration Information Center found officials in Colorado, Washington state, and Oregon referred 372 possible cases to law enforcement of double voting or voting on behalf of a dead person, out of about 14.6 million mail-in votes in the 2016 and 2018 general elections. That comes out to about 0.0025 percent of all ballots.
Trump’s rhetoric undermines faith in the democratic process, but it also obscures the hard work done by election officials, ballot counters, and poll workers across the country in 2020. Beyond the logistical hurdles of Covid-19, the threat of foreign interference loomed over this election. So did fears of potential voter intimidation and violence at the polls. But with the exception of a few isolated incidents, the elections were largely safe and peaceful.
The pandemic also raised concerns about poll worker shortages, and that led to a surge of volunteers in some places, a trend that played out across the country.
Emily Hou, a 27-year-old who volunteered as a poll worker in San Francisco this year, described a long Election Day that began at 6 am and ended long after the polls closed. It took her and her colleagues about three hours after the polls closed to shut down the polling location, as they had to triple-check the number of ballots they’d received against the number of ballots the machine had counted.
Sophia Radis, an 18-year-old college student who signed up to be a poll worker in Madison, Wisconsin, saw firsthand the meticulous process of absentee-ballot counting: teams of two, handling just three to five ballots at a time, with observers present and election officials overseeing their work.
Kristi Critchley, who worked as a poll clerk in Pima County, Arizona, kept a running list of how many people had cast ballots, and then checked that against the number of ballots turned in — not what was written on those ballots, just that the numbers matched up. The numbers are checked, and checked again, and checked again. “I very much got a greater appreciation for how tight the process is, and how hard people are working to try to keep that as accurate and transparent as possible,” Critchley told me.
But maybe the biggest testament to the election’s success was the incredibly high turnout, with a preliminary estimate of 160 million Americans voting. With votes still to be counted, 2020’s turnout is now at more than 64 percent of all eligible voters, the highest percentage since 1900. A huge chunk of those voters did so early, either in person or by mail, another first.
Janet Boyd, who’s worked as an election official for nearly three decades in Arlington County, Virginia, told me that law changes before and after Covid-19 could have created challenges for both election officials and voters. But they were prepared and managed everything well, both during the early voting period and on Election Day.
“There could be some little mistakes here and there,” Boyd said of the election, “but I can’t imagine that any of them are to such a level that would create a change in the election results.”
It’s Official: The Election Was Secure
These government officials, judges, and elected leaders, overwhelmingly Republican, have publicly acknowledged confidence in the November election.
Election officials and election security experts have long been clear: voter fraud is extraordinarily rare and our system has strong checks in place to protect the integrity of our voting process. These are the facts. But the facts have not stopped bad actors from trotting out baseless claims of “systemic voter fraud” to suppress votes and undermine trust in our democracy for political gain.
By all measures, the 2020 general election was one of the most secure elections in our history. Voters turned out in record numbers to cast their ballots by mail and in person, and the votes were counted in a timely manner. This success, however, did not dissuade President Trump and his enablers from loudly claiming fraud when the race did not go his way. In a brazen attempt to overturn the results, he unleashed an onslaught of outlandish claims about widespread fraud in the election, shamelessly targeting the votes of Black and Latino citizens in several cities. The severity of the allegations by the president and his allies, however false, has elicited a resounding rebuke of the myth of widespread voter fraud from officials at every level of government. And today, the Supreme Court all but ended the legal fight to overturn the election when it rejected Texas’s lawsuit to throw out the presidential election results in four battleground states that President Trump lost.
Democratic officials and civil rights leaders have been outspoken about the strength of our election systems and their trust in our election officials. And despite the alarming number of Republicans enabling Trump’s attempts to subvert democracy, there is a growing bipartisan coalition of leaders united behind the facts. What follows is a collection of definitive statements rejecting the myth of widespread voter fraud from federal agencies; the courts, including Trump-appointed judges; and Republican election officials and elected officials.
Federal Agencies
The nation’s top intelligence and law enforcement agencies have confirmed that there is no evidence of significant voter fraud in American elections and that the 2020 election was secure.
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
- “We have not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it’s by mail or otherwise.” – Christopher Wray, FBI Director, September 24, 2020, hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. (Director Wray was appointed by President Trump in 2017.)
Department of Homeland Security – Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
- “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history . . . . There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised . . . While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections . . . we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too.” – Joint Statement by CISA, the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council (GCC), and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council (SCC), November 12, 2020.
- “[Election] Day was quiet. There was no indication or evidence that there was any evidence of hacking or compromise of election systems on, before, or after November 3 . . . . We did a good job. I would do it one thousand times over.” – Chris Krebs, Former Director of CISA, November 29, 2020.
Shortly after releasing the joint statement, Chris Krebs was fired from his position as director of CISA. His firing was directly linked to the joint statement in a tweet by President Trump. In a 60 Minutes interview, Krebs reflected on his agency’s work and described the Trump team’s claims of fraud as attempts to “undermine confidence in the election, to confuse people, to scare people . . . ”
Department of Justice (DOJ)
- “To date, [DOJ investigators] have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.” – Attorney General William Barr, December 1, 2020, announcement.
This conclusion was especially notable in light of Attorney General Barr’s extraordinary efforts to support President Trump’s ludicrous fraud allegations. In a break from long-standing DOJ policy, Barr announced in a November 9 memorandum that federal prosecutors were authorized to investigate some election fraud cases before the results of the election were certified, and noted that there may be irregularities that “could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State.” The directive was roundly criticized by many former DOJ officials and elections experts.
Richard Pilger, head of the DOJ’s Election Crimes branch, responded to the move by stepping down from his position. Twenty-three Democratic attorneys general signed a letter expressing confidence that “any such investigations will not succeed in overturning the election’s outcome, ” but criticizing the move for exacting “the terrible cost of undermining trust in the democratic institutions on which this country depends.” In another critical letter, 16 U.S. attorneys who track election malfeasance noted that the “policy change was not based in fact” and confirmed that in their jurisdictions there was no evidence of substantial election irregularities.
U.S. Election Assistance Commission
- “Time and time again, when the rubber hits the road, there’s no evidence — whether that’s in court cases, whether that’s in the presidential commission that was created in 2017 to find the alleged non-citizens fraud after the 2016 election that cost, in his mind, the president the popular vote, but found nothing and disbanded in embarrassment, or academic studies. We never see evidence of widespread voter fraud. And there’s no indicators that 2020 will be different in that regard.” – Benjamin Hovland, Commissioner of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, Business Insider, November 12, 2020
The Courts
The courts have emphatically rejected claims of widespread election fraud and irregularities from President Trump and his allies. Despite bringing roughly 50 postelection lawsuits at the time of this writing, Trump and his allies have failed to discount a significant number of votes, block the certification of results, or overturn the results of any race.
In a number of these cases, courts have forcefully rebuked the lawyers for their outlandish claims of voter fraud, egregious lack of evidence, and attempted misuse of the judiciary.
United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania
- “This claim, like Frankenstein’s Monster, has been haphazardly stitched together . . . . This Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more.” – Judge Matthew Brann, rejecting an attempt by Trump campaign to throw out all the votes in Pennsylvania based in part on unsubstantiated insinuations of voter fraud, in Donald J. Trump for President v. Boockvar, November 21, 2020
Third Judicial Circuit Court of Michigan
- “‘Plaintiffs’ interpretation of events is incorrect and not credible.” – Chief Justice Timothy Kenny, rejecting attempt by Trump allies to block the certification of the vote in Wayne County, in Costantino v. City of Detroit, November 13, 2020
United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
- “Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.” – Trump-appointed Judge Stephanos Bibas, rejecting motion to block certification of election results in Pennsylvania in an unanimous opinion, in Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. v. Secretary of the Commonwealth, November 27, 2020
Wisconsin Supreme Court
- “At stake, in some measure, is faith in our system of free and fair elections, a feature central to the enduring strength of our constitutional republic. It can be easy to blithely move on to the next case with a petition so obviously lacking, but this is sobering. The relief being sought by the petitioners is the most dramatic invocation of judicial power I have ever seen. Judicial acquiescence to such entreaties built on so flimsy a foundation would do indelible damage to every future election.” – Judge Brian Hagedorn (concurring), rejecting request to nullify Wisconsin’s presidential results, allow the state legislature to appoint its own slate of electors, and compel the governor to approve said electors, in Wisconsin Voters Alliance v. Wisconsin Election Commission, December 4, 2020
Election Officials and Experts
New York Times Survey of Election Officials
- “Election officials in dozens of states representing both political parties said that there was no evidence that fraud or other irregularities played a role in the outcome of the presidential race . . . ” – New York Times, November 10, 2020
The Times contacted the offices of the top election officials in every state. Notably, all 29 Republican secretaries of state were surveyed, most responding directly to the Times. None reported any major voting issues, refusing to back up Trump’s portrait of a fraudulent election.
59 Election Security Experts and Computer Scientists
- “Anyone asserting that a U.S. election was ‘rigged’ is making an extraordinary claim, one that must be supported by persuasive and verifiable evidence . . .” In the absence of such evidence, they added, it is “simply speculation.” – Letter from 59 of the country’s top election security experts and computer scientists, November 16, 2020
- “We are aware of alarming assertions being made that the 2020 election was ‘rigged’ by exploiting technical vulnerabilities. However, in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.” Letter from 59 of the country’s top election security experts and computer scientists, November 16, 2020
Gabriel Sterling (R), Georgia’s Voting Systems Implementation Manager
- [Claims of voter fraud] are “hoaxes and nonsense. Don’t buy into these things. Find trusted sources.” – Los Angeles Times, November 9, 2020
- “It has to stop, ” Sterling said, reacting to Trump’s sustained assaults on Georgia’s election process and resulting violent threats to local election officials. – New York Times, December 1, 2020
Scott Schwab (R), Kansas Secretary of State
- “Kansas did not experience any widespread, systematic issues with voter fraud, intimidation, irregularities or voting problems . . . . We are very pleased with how the election has gone up to this point.” – Spokeswoman for Secretary Schwab, New York Times, November 10, 2020
Kim Wyman (R), Washington Secretary of State
- Of attempts by Republican candidates to raise accusations of fraud, Wyman said “it’s just throwing grass at the fence at this point . . . see what sticks.” – New York Times, November 10, 2020
Lisa Posthumus Lyons (R), Kent County Clerk
- “We’ve just got a lot of checks and balances and transparency here in Michigan, and in Kent County we take that very seriously. I am 100% confident in the results in Kent County, and I’m confident that our canvass, once it’s all concluded, will validate that.” – USA Today, November 14, 2020
Elected Officials and Political Operatives
While the courts, federal agencies, and election officials have roundly rejected claims of widespread voter fraud, perhaps the sharpest — albeit surprising — rebukes have come from key elected officials and political operatives within the Republican party.
Ben Ginsberg, Veteran Republican Party Election Lawyer
- “The truth is that after decades of looking for illegal voting, there’s no proof of widespread fraud. At most, there are isolated incidents — by both Democrats and Republicans. Elections are not rigged.” – Washington Post, September 8, 2020
- “Proof of systematic fraud has become the Loch Ness Monster of the Republican Party. People have spent a lot of time looking for it, but it doesn’t exist.” – Washington Post, November 1, 2020
- “As he confronts losing, Trump has devoted his campaign and the Republican Party to this myth of voter fraud . . . . Perhaps this was the plan all along . . . disenfranchising enough voters has become key to his reelection strategy.” – Washington Post, November 1, 2020 (Ginsberg has practiced election law for 38 years.)
Karl Rove, Former Senior Adviser and Deputy Chief of Staff to George W. Bush
- “The president’s efforts are unlikely to move a single state from Mr. Biden’s column, and certainly they’re not enough to change the final outcome.” – Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2020
- “Mr. Trump must prove systemic fraud, with illegal votes in the tens of thousands. There is no evidence of that so far.” – Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2020
Letter from 31 Former Republican Members of Congress
- “As former Republican Members of Congress who swore an oath to the Constitution, we believe the statements by President Trump alleging fraud in the election are efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the election and are unacceptable.” – The Hill, November 9, 2020
Will Hurd (R), Representative of Texas’s 23rd District
- “A sitting president undermining our political process & questioning the legality of the voices of countless Americans without evidence is not only dangerous & wrong, it undermines the very foundation this nation was built upon. Every American should have his or her vote counted." – The Hill, November 5, 2020
Adam Kinzinger (R), Republican Representative of Illinois’s 16th District
- “STOP spreading debunked misinformation…This is getting insane” – Twitter, November 5, 2020
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R)
- “There is no defense for the president’s comments undermining our Democratic process . . . . No election or person is more important than our Democracy.” – Twitter, November 5, 2020
Iowa Senator Joni Ernst (R)
- “We believe in honesty. We believe in the integrity of our election system, which is why I do believe that if there is fraud out there, it should be brought to the court’s attention and the proof should be brought forward. I think all of us agree on that. But to insinuate that Republican and Democratic candidates paid to throw off this election I think is absolutely outrageous . . . to have that accusation just offhandedly thrown out there just to confuse our voters across the United States, I think that is absolutely wrong.” – Fox News Radio, November 19, 2020
Utah Senator Mitt Romney (R)
- “[The president] is wrong to say that the election was rigged, corrupt or stolen — doing so damages the cause of freedom here and around the world, weakens the institutions that lie at the foundation of the Republic, and recklessly inflames destruction and dangerous passions.” – Twitter, November 6, 2020
- “Having failed to make even a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law, the President has now resorted to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election. It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American President.” – Twitter, November 19, 2020
Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy (R)
- “President Trump’s legal team has not presented evidence of the massive fraud which would have had to be present to overturn the election. I voted for President Trump but Joe Biden won.” – Twitter, November 23, 2020
Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey (R)
- After it emerged that Trump called Pennsylvania’s Republican state House speaker seeking help to reverse his loss in the state, Sen. Toomey told the Philadelphia Inquirer: “It’s completely unacceptable and it’s not going to work and the president should give up trying to get legislatures to overturn the results of the elections in their respective states.”
- Trump’s frustration with Democrats “doesn’t change the obligation of the president’s campaign to acknowledge that they have not been able to demonstrate that there’s been fraud, not on any significant scale.” – Philadelphia Inquirer, December 8, 2020
- “That has been determined by election officials, that has been determined by federal judges, that’s been determined by appellate court judges. That’s the opinion of the attorney general, who is a Donald Trump appointee. So in my view the outcome of the election is clear and that is that Joe Biden won the election.” – Philadelphia Inquirer, December 8, 2020
