It’s been a question many of us have asked as of late: with the midterms approaching, how will we know that the election process hasn’t been tampered with and that our votes are actually being counted?
And it’s a good question to ask, particularly following an election year like 2020, during which there have been more than a few allegations of election fraud and abuse.
We all watched anxiously on that fateful November night as votes were counted. What we saw indicated that Donald Trump would win the election and keep his seat in the Oval Office. But when we all woke up the next morning, we were met with quite a surprise. Sometime in the middle of the night, apparently, millions of votes were found and counted, and remarkably, they were all for Joe Biden, slimming the chances of Trump winning.
Even if we didn’t want Trump to win, it was only natural to question it. To question what election officials said had happened or what the results were days later.
Then, right before Biden was sworn into office in January, another election with equally questionable results occurred, this time in Georgia. And again, it was the Democratic Party who came out on top.
Naturally, the situation led many to believe that somehow someone was cheating those elections, faking numbers, or making up votes somewhere. And so, a whole bevy of post-election challenges arose. Most of those took place in states where the vote had been rather close for the 2020 election. These states included Arizona, Georgia, Colorado, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
It was in those states where a number of politically motivated and criminal threats took place involving election workers.
According to the Federal Elections Threat Task Force, over 1000 cases have come in since June 2021. And about 11 percent of those have met the threshold for federal investigations. So far, four arrests have been made.
So much for nothing being amiss, huh?
But I digress. The point is that the Federal Bureau of Investigations had to get involved and is still in the picture, trying to ascertain if the next elections will have any similar results.
So far, their answer is no.
According to a statement made by senior FBI officials on Monday, “no credible threats” have been found, either domestically or from nations that are notorious for trying to influence our elections. Of course, that doesn’t mean they haven’t tried.
As officials have noted, Russia, Iran, and China have all tried to get into our voting systems and have made no small amount of effort in pushing disinformation about either the processes involved in voting and/or voter fraud and election integrity. But so far, all have failed to make any significant effect.
Naturally, with only a month left before the upcoming midterm elections, the FBI and other election officials are on high alert about such threats and, as such, are constantly monitoring all possible ways in which someone could adversely affect the vote.
So far, Russia is the closest to causing any damage. As you may know, they have taken enormous strides to amplify the message of what is being called “election deniers,” such as Donald Trump, who claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
And while that message very well might be being heard, there is no evidence thus far that the 2022 midterms will be conducted fraudulently or without integrity as a result. As FBI officials said on Monday, finding a way to compromise our country’s decentralized local election systems would be “very difficult” to achieve by far.
According to officials, no evidence of tampering or even that our election systems have been targeted by cyber campaigns, or the like exists.
Of course, that doesn’t mean individual cases can’t arise, such as they did during the 2020 election, with people changing votes, harassing voters, or even abusing poll workers.
Thankfully, many states have changed a few of their voting laws since 2020, hopefully making it more difficult for fraudulent voting activity to occur. So while the FBI says no threats exist, should one arise, maybe these new laws will keep the votes as secure as possible.
