• Home
  • Independent Voter News
  • Quizzes
  • Election Dissection
  • Sections
  • Events
  • Directory
  • About Us
  • Glossary
  • Opinion
  • Campaign Finance
  • Redistricting
  • Civic Ed
  • Voting
  • Fact Check
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Voting>
  3. election security>

Record turnout could rival hackers as top threat to elections

Bill Theobald
January 14, 2020
Voters in line

Election experts say there may be record turnout in this fall's election. That could cause long lines and long waits — adding another level of concern on top of worries about cyberattacks from foreign countries.

Getty Images/Bill Pugliano

While most anxiety about administering the 2020 election is focused on potential hackers, officials at a conference Tuesday brought up another growing concern: huge turnout, with perhaps a record-breaking number of voters overwhelming the nation's polling sites.

Tammy Patrick, who studied the long lines for voting in 2012 on a commission named by President Barack Obama, pointed to a CNN poll last fall in which nearly half of voters said they were "extremely excited" about voting this November. That total was the highest by far for a presidential election since the network began asking the question in 2003.

If millions more than are expected cast ballots ahead of time and millions more pour into the nation's school cafeterias and firehouses on Nov. 3 — and the voting equipment and poll workers are insufficient to handle the crowds — the reliability of the presidential and other elections could be cast in doubt by waves of angry people who give up, potentially delayed tabulations and suspicions about reporting accuracy.


Patrick, now a senior adviser on voting for the philanthropic Democracy Fund, was among the panelists at a summit convened by the Election Assistance Commission, the agency that provides federal support to the several thousand state and local offices that conduct elections.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Between sessions, she said election officials are predicting an 18 percentage point increase in turnout from 2016, when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton after a particularly polarizing campaign. That would put turnout at nearly 80 percent of eligible citizens, a level not reached since late in the 19th century, when women did not yet have the vote and many African-Americans were shut out of the process.

Ben Hovland, an EAC member, labeled this fall's turnout as "potentially record breaking."

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said she hopes that changes in the law of her bellwether state, which will permit people to vote through no-excuse absentee balloting, will ease the numbers at the polls on Election Day.

But that in turn creates other potential problems, the Democratic official said, such as whether the Postal Service is prepared to handle the increased number of mailed ballots in a timely manner.

Benson also has been pushing for a change in state law to allow election officials to begin counting absentee ballots four days before the election so that final results can be reported in a timely manner on election night. Michigan's presidential race was one of the closest in the country last time, with Trump carrying the state by fewer than 11,000 votes, and another pitched battle for the state's 16 electoral votes is assured this time.

Patrick said there will likely be long lines at some polling places and the key is whether the people can be processed and get into the booth quickly. She said concerns about security may cause people to overreact at the first instance of delay or other problems at the polls.

"We have to be sure that we all keep level heads," Patrick said.

The other hot topic at the gathering was election security.

Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos, a Democrat, and Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, a Republican, said that the more than $800 million in funds Congress has approved in the past two years for election security grants to states has been helpful but that what states need is a regular stream of federal funding. "Cybersecurity is a race without a finish line," Condos said.

Shelby Pierson, an advisor on election threats to the director of national intelligence, said the intelligence community is committed to doing a better job of sharing information about cybersecurity attacks on state and local voting and registration systems. Federal officials faced criticism in 2016, accused of withholding information about possible attacks. In Florida, for example, GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis was sworn to secrecy by federal investigators about where in the state cyberattacks occurred.

From Your Site Articles
  • What 1860 and 1968 can teach America about the 2020 election ... ›
  • Indiana Citizen aims to boost voter turnout in Hoosier State - The ... ›
  • Blockchain voting might boost turnout — but it threatens election ... ›
  • It's time to engage Americans who are not voters - The Fulcrum ›
  • Turnout lessons from a local election held 57 years ago - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • We could have record turnout in the 2020 election. We're not ready ... ›
  • States brace for massive voter turnout in 2020 | TheHill ›
  • Why 2020 is poised to bust all turnout records - CNNPolitics ›
  • Behind the 2018 U.S. Midterm Election Turnout ›
election security
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

The ‘great replacement theory’ is nonsense

Debilyn Molineaux

Caught in a draft

Lawrence Goldstone

Congress shows signs of bipartisanship with retirement benefits bill

Mario H. Lopez

Fair representation: More Black people needed in STEM today

Jennifer Stimpson

First instincts, second thoughts

Debilyn Molineaux

It’s time to build a global pro-democracy movement

Yordanos Eyoel
Hahrie Han
latest News

Elections require more consistent federal funding, per report

Reya Kumar
10h

Podcast: A new understanding of the right

Our Staff
18h

Supreme Court continues to chip away at campaign finance laws

David Meyers
17 May

Podcast: Depolarizing America

Our Staff
17 May

Inflation will hit health of low-income Americans hardest

Robert Pearl
17 May

Voters head to the polls in five states, with GOP nominating battles dominating headlines

David Meyers
16 May
Videos

Video: Helping loved ones divided by politics

Our Staff

Video: What happened in Virginia?

Our Staff

Video: Infrastructure past, present, and future

Our Staff

Video: Beyond the headlines SCOTUS 2021 - 2022

Our Staff

Video: Should we even have a debt limit

Our Staff

Video: #ListenFirstFriday Yap Politics

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Did economists move the Democrats to the right?

Our Staff
02 May

Podcast: The future of depolarization

Our Staff
11 February

Podcast: Sore losers are bad for democracy

Our Staff
20 January

Deconstructed Podcast from IVN

Our Staff
08 November 2021
Recommended
North Carolina primary election workers

Elections require more consistent federal funding, per report

Podcast: A new understanding of the right

Podcast: A new understanding of the right

Leveraging big ideas
Memorial for victims of Buffalo shooting

The ‘great replacement theory’ is nonsense

Media
Sen. Ted Cruz and Judge Amy Coney Barrett

Supreme Court continues to chip away at campaign finance laws

Podcast: Depolarizing America

Podcast: Depolarizing America

Leadership
medical expenses

Inflation will hit health of low-income Americans hardest

Leveraging big ideas