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Election security fears doused with reality: Top officials say Nov 3 'was the most secure in American history.' The end
'No evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised'
After months of fretting about the possibility that the 2020 US election might be derailed by tampering or foreign interference, nothing notable happened.
Despite ongoing unsubstantiated claims of fraud from the outgoing Trump administration, senior election officials charged with securing the 2020 vote on Thursday said they had done so successfully. In effect, a coalition of federal and state bodies have openly pushed back on the President's empty allegations today.
"The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history," said the Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council Executive Committees in a joint statement, along with the US government's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and other organizations.
"Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result."
The officials credited security measures, such as pre-election testing and state certification of voting machines and the US Election Assistance Commission’s certification of voting equipment, for building confidence in the voting process. And they said recounts are to be expected.
"When states have close elections, many will recount ballots," the officials said. "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 process, they said, improves election security and resilience, allowing for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors.
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READ MORE"There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised," they said.
Others recently have said as much. On Wednesday, Matt Blaze, a professor of computer science and law at Georgetown University, said via Twitter, "To my knowledge (and this is my field of expertise), no serious evidence has yet been found or presented that suggests that the 2020 election outcome in any state has been altered through technical exploitation. Period."
Democrat Joe Biden is projected to win this year's presidential election. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg has, incidentally, come to the conclusion Biden has won even though the social network continues to be used to spread misinformation about the election. President Trump has not conceded. ®