2016: The attack on America’s election infrastructure
By Jennifer Cohn, 5/5/22
Russia’s attack on America’s election infrastructure in 2016 has been largely forgotten amidst the many other legitimate concerns about that election and later events. Those other concerns and events warrant our attention and include the far right’s coordinated amplification of disinformation through bots and fake news outlets (like OANN and Newsmax), as well as Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election with lies, propaganda, and physical intimidation via right wing extremist groups.
But Russia’s attack on America’s election infrastructure in 2016 warrants our attention too. In my opinion, Trump would have had a much more difficult time hijacking the election-security narrative in 2020 if the federal government had leveled with the American people about the severity of the 2016 attack and the vulerabilities that existed and if the Democratic party had made election security a key element of its platform and messaging in the aftermath of that attack. Moreover, the country still has not addressed some of the election-system vulnerabilities that left us open to attack in 2016. Because the federal government has unwisely (in my opinion) “moved on” from that attack, all urgency for passing federal election-security legislation seems to have vanished.
