"Election security is a top priority for the United States Government. Building on our successful, whole-of-government approach to securing the 2018 elections, we have increased the level of support to state and local election officials in their efforts to protect elections. The federal government is prioritizing the sharing of threat intelligence and providing support and services that improve the security of election infrastructure across the nation," the joint statement reads.
Issued by the US Department of Justice, the statement was made in conjunction with the Director of National Intelligence and the heads of the sDepartment of Homeland Security and Defense, the FBI, US Cyber Command, National Security Agency (NSA) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
"In an unprecedented level of coordination, the US government is working with all 50 states and US territories, local officials, and private sector partners to identify threats, broadly share information, and protect the democratic process. We remain firm in our commitment to quickly share timely and actionable information, provide support and services, and to defend against any threats to our democracy," the statement continues.
"Our adversaries want to undermine our democratic institutions, influence public sentiment and affect government policies. Russia, China, Iran, and other foreign malicious actors all will seek to interfere in the voting process or influence voter perceptions," the DOJ said. "Adversaries may try to accomplish their goals through a variety of means, including social media campaigns, directing disinformation operations or conducting disruptive or destructive cyber-attacks on state and local infrastructure."
"While at this time we have no evidence of a compromise or disruption to election infrastructure that would enable adversaries to prevent voting, change vote counts or disrupt the ability to tally votes, we continue to vigilantly monitor any threats to US elections," the intelligence heads noted.
While the US intelligence community has maintained since the 2016 elections that evidence exists of attempted Russian interference, it has yet to be demonstrated and Moscow has denied the accusation, and comparable claims made about the 2018 elections yielded "surprisingly little on the hacking front," as Google's security chief Shane Huntley admitted at the time.
Last month, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov predicted that accusations of meddling in the 2020 elections would inevitably arise.
"Baseless and unsubstantiated accusations of so-called Russian interference in the US elections in 2016 created an atmosphere of deep suspicion and a fundamental distrust of Moscow’s policy. It’s very difficult for the US to get out of this state into which they plunged themselves, especially since that the so-called 'Russian card' turned out to be a convenient means of settling political accounts and is still used in the domestic political struggle," the deputy minister said on October 25.
