Elections are a hallmark of democracy, making them prime targets for foreign interference. Find ASD’s work on the foreign threats to election infrastructure and electoral processes, as well as steps democracies can take to secure them, on this page.
Information Manipulation in Germany’s Federal Election
Germany’s ongoing election campaign is an alluring target for foreign and domestic actors seeking to influence and undermine the democratic process. The Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) and the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund of the U [...]
Laura Thornton in Civil Georgia: Perilous Choice: Georgia’s COVID Elections
Georgia’s local elections scheduled for October represent more than choosing important mayoral and sakrebulo (local council) positions. The political stakes are higher, than what the local elections usually entail. Based on the EU-negotiated agreeme [...]
Maurice Turner Explains Why Hacking Voters Is Easier Than Hacking Ballots at Def Con
Vulnerabilities in U.S. election infrastructure not only expose the nation’s elections to hybrid physical and network attacks, but its voters to influence campaigns designed to cast doubt in the process itself. Authoritarian regimes such as Russia, [...]
Between Messaging and Manipulation: How Russia, China, Turkey, and Iran Engaged in German Political Discourses in June 2021
What We’re Seeing on the 2021 German Elections Dashboard In June, as in previous months, foreign state-backed media and diplomatic accounts actively engaged in online German political discourses, at times manipulating information. Russian actors con [...]
David Levine in NY Daily News: Don’t Use the Board of Elections’ Screwup to Undermine Confidence in Democracy
I don’t need to tell New Yorkers that the New York City Board of Elections badly bungled the release of preliminary ranked-choice results from the city’s recent mayoral primary. Between this serious mistake and many previous well-documented mishaps, [...]
David Levine Discusses Election Security Amid Threats to Ballot Access with GovExec
On Thursday morning, the Supreme Court overruled a previous federal appeals court decision that held that Arizona voting laws disproportionately affected voters of color, a violation of the Voting Rights Act. The Thursday ruling is another blow to v [...]
Enhancing the Security of Electronic Pollbooks is Essential for Election Integrity
ASD Elections Integrity Fellow David Levine and the Open Source Election Technology Institute’s Global Director of Technology Development and Open Standards Edward Perez lay out ways to bolster election integrity by strengthening the security of el [...]
Defending Democracies Against Autocratic Advances
Head of Policy and Research Jessica Brandt led a conversation on democratic competition with autocracies at GMF's Brussels Forum. She was joined by U.S. Senator Ben Cardin; National Institute for Civil Discourse Executive Director Carolyn J. Lukensm [...]
Investing in Resilience
Program Manager and Fellow Nad’a Kovalčíková led a discussion on how and why NATO member states can build up their democratic, societal, and economic resilience at NATO 2030 at Brussels Forum with U.S. Representative Gerald Connolly; Tania Latici, a [...]
How To Retain Election Officials To Secure Future Elections
Introduction The 2020 presidential election was called the most secure in U.S. history, largely due to efforts to protect the nation’s different physical and cyber infrastructure. This was a triumph considering the physical, cyber, and even human [...]
Maurice Turner Discusses Election Cybersecurity with USC
Security concerns about Arizona’s election audit. What keeps policymakers up at night about the Colonial Pipeline. Nevada’s latest take on election security. Listen to Adam Clayton Powell, III, Executive Director of the Election Cybersecurity Initi [...]
Q&A with David Levine: How Does Arizona’s ‘Audit’ Compare To What Audits Are Supposed To Be?
Last month—nearly five months after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election— Arizona Republicans began an “audit” of millions of ballots in Arizona’s largest county, which President Biden won by 45,109 votes. The state Senate hired a [...]