Presidential election ‘most secure’ in history, top security experts at DHS say
The 2020 presidential election was the “most secure in American history,” a group of top security and election officials at the Department of Homeland Security wrote Thursday, despite the White House’s ongoing unfounded claims about rampant voter fraud.
Members of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, released a joint statement days after Democrat Joe Biden was declared the president-elect but amid President Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to deny his electoral loss by sowing doubt about the results.
As Axios notes, CISA’s overt rejection of the president’s baseless fraud claims is likely to infuriate Trump and those in his administration, who have already vowed to punish government officials seeking new jobs outside the White House.
“While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too,” the group wrote. “When you have questions, turn to elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections.”
The statement follows the resignation of Bryan Ware, the assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA, on Thursday. The Trump administration asked Ware to step down, Reuters reported, after CISA refused to echo the president’s accusations of voter fraud.
The head of the CISA, Christopher Krebs, has also told associates he expects to be fired, Reuters reported.
Biden was declared the winner of the election last week, but Trump has refused to concede. His campaign has filed a bevy of legal challenges in battleground states, claiming, without evidence, that there was widespread voter fraud around the nation that deprived Trump of a second term in office.
Many top Republicans have supported the president’s efforts and refused to acknowledge Biden as president-elect, but election officials have issued statement after statement rejecting the fraud claims while noting that the election went relatively smoothly even amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
“All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary,” the group wrote on Thursday. “This is an added benefit for security and resilience. This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history,” the group added.
Trump’s refusal to accept defeat is already hampering Biden’s transition to the White House. The General Services Administration, the agency tasked with releasing funds so the president-elect and his staff can prepare the new administration, has refused to sign off on Biden’s electoral victory, a move that will likely impede a smooth transfer of power.
Read the full CISA statement here.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
