Understanding the Threats to U.S. Election Security in 2024

Kat Duffy is a senior fellow for digital and cyberspace policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Jacob Ware is a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

With less than a week before the 2024 presidential election, physical and digital threats to U.S. election infrastructure remain a risk. Already, actors hostile to the functioning of liberal democracy have worked to disrupt the free exercise of the United States’ upcoming election, perhaps never more evidently than an assassination attempt that narrowly avoided killing former President and Republican candidate Donald Trump. However, it is vital that such threats are properly contextualized to avoid either exaggerating or downplaying the challenges U.S. democracy faces. 

Are there security concerns heading into Election Day on November 5? 

The United States is in a heightened threat environment heading into Election Day, with multiple extremist factions threatening to disrupt the electoral process. Two prominent assassination attempts on former President Trump have occurred against a backdrop of myriad disrupted plots and a record high number of threats to public officials, as violent political rhetoric raises the stakes. Both foreign adversaries and Salafi-jihadist extremists have sought to take advantage of this fractious moment by inspiring or launching acts of violence in the United States.  

The days (or weeks) following the election could prove the most consequential, particularly if a clear winner has not emerged for the presidency. Such uncertainty gives conspiracy theories greater space to develop and circulate and can significantly increase political unrest or even violence within local communities. In 2020, for instance, vote-tallying centers in swing counties and cities—including Maricopa County in Arizona, Philadelphia, and Detroit—were targeted by extremist protests or terrorist plots. 

This year, violent far-right extremists likely pose the greatest threat, given the January 6, 2021, precedent of violence within a political transition, as well as violent rhetoric repeatedly issued by the Republican Party’s candidate. The Department of Homeland Security has even warned that the “heightened risk” of violence might include extremists attempting to sabotage ballots—a step that, if successful, could launch the country into a constitutional crisis. Recent arson attacks on ballot boxes in Vancouver, Washington, and Portland, Oregon, remain unsolved. Meanwhile, anti-government militia groups remain active on Facebook—the social media platform appears to have allowed its artificial intelligence (AI) systems to auto-generate pages for the groups—and continue to coordinate over the platform to conduct vigilante monitoring of ballot boxes to prevent “ballot stuffing,” a move better suited to intimidating voters than illuminating electoral irregularities.

The unrest could continue up to Inauguration Day on January 20, 2025, and even beyond.

How serious has outside interference been in this year’s election cycle? 

Despite reports of attempted interference [PDF] by China, Iran, and Russia, evidence indicates that the electoral process itself remains safe and secure from foreign interference as the election nears. Intelligence officials continue to provide regular public briefings to clarify threats, maintaining a trend of rapid declassification in the interest of filling information vacuums susceptible to conspiracy theories with credible, vetted information. 

Although concern about a possible cyberattack on or near Election Day continues to loom large for state and local officials, domestic extremists seeking to undermine the election by intimidating electoral workers, engaging in political violence, or disrupting the voting process likely pose a more significant immediate threat than foreign interference. The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has repeatedly emphasized the cybersecurity benefits of the United States’ decentralized elections infrastructure; the lack of any single point of attack makes a comprehensive cyberattack on U.S. elections much harder to achieve.  

2024 has been the year of elections. What lessons can the United States take from other countries about how threats to the information environment have evolved? 

As predicted, the super-cycle of global elections has provided valuable insights into how the U.S. electoral environment would evolve in 2024. Disinformation campaigns in Bangladesh, Serbia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe in 2023 and 2024 sought to undermine electoral trust in those countries by attacking institutions, intimidating officials, and fueling narratives of foreign interference or fraud. These campaigns particularly targeted women in prominent political roles.  

The rise of generative AI has added a new tool to these operations, which often involve bots, fake news sites, and collaboration with state-controlled media to distort the information landscape. Despite that, the impact on electoral outcomes appears to have remained minimal.  

The United States has experienced similar tactics, both through (seemingly) domestic campaigns of pro-Trump bots operating on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, and through foreign influence operations, such as the creation of fake news sites by Russia. Meanwhile, the U.S. public’s faith in the integrity of the 2024 election not only continues to split across party lines, but also demonstrates a concerningly low lack of trust overall in the electoral process. In one poll, only 1 in 5 Trump supporters say that they will strongly trust the electoral results if he loses, whereas 3 in 5 supporters of Democratic candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris say that they will trust the results regardless of outcome.  

What did authorities learn four years ago, and what still needs to be done? 

The main lesson drawn by the January 6 Committee report [PDF] was that U.S. law enforcement agencies, chiefly the U.S. Capitol Police, underestimated the extent to which Trump might aggravate his supporters and mobilize them to march on the U.S. Capitol. Given that Trump has repeatedly denigrated the integrity of both U.S. elections and law enforcement agencies, security services need to prepare for the Republican candidate to incite unrest once again should he fail to win the election. A recent Pew survey found that only 24 percent of U.S. citizens believe Trump would publicly acknowledge an electoral defeat—he has still not acknowledged his 2020 defeat. 

After the catastrophic security failures displayed on January 6, it is unlikely that law enforcement and intelligence agencies will once again be caught unprepared. The Department of Homeland Security recently designated January 6 as a National Special Security Event, establishing the U.S. Secret Service as lead agency and providing a range of new resources. Although this step will ensure security services put in place a more robust deterrent posture on that day, it will not deter violence on other important ceremonial dates connected to the electoral cycle, nor will it support local partners facing low-level unrest. Moreover, the Secret Service’s continued organizational challenges and protection failure earlier this year may have diminished its credibility to lead a strong response.  

Political leaders, in tandem with their counterparts in civil society, need to take a responsible approach to acknowledging the trust deficits and credibility gaps that continue to define this election and voters’ view of the integrity of the electoral process. Educating the American people about the integrity and resilience of electoral infrastructure to “pre-bunk” conspiracy theories about the vote and pushing back against any narratives that would support political violence or the intimidation of electoral workers, candidates, and voters, will be mission critical for both parties in the days directly leading up to and after the election. Safe and secure elections need to be defended from foreign interference this year, but not nearly as much as they will need to be protected from domestic actions.   

This work represents the views and opinions solely of the authors. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

This publication is part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Project on the Future of Democracy.