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A coalition of US federal and state officials has said they have no evidence that votes were compromised or altered in last week’s presidential election, rejecting unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud made by Donald Trump and many. of his supporters.
The statement by cybersecurity experts, which proclaimed the Nov. 3 election as the safest in U.S. history, represented the most direct repudiation to date of the outgoing president’s efforts to undermine the integrity of the race.
He echoed repeated assertions by election experts and state officials over the past week that the election went smoothly and without major irregularities.
“While we know that there are many unsubstantiated claims and opportunities for misinformation about our election process, we can assure you that we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and so should you,” the statement said. “When you have questions, turn to election officials as trusted voices as they administer elections.”
The statement was distributed by the Infrastructure and Cybersecurity Security Agency, which spearheaded federal election protection efforts. It was tweeted by the agency’s director, Chris Krebs, who just hours earlier had been the subject of a Reuters story saying he had told associates that he expected to be fired by Trump. Krebs has spoken out on Twitter repeatedly assuring Americans that the elections were safe and that their votes would be counted.
“United States, we are confident in the security of your vote, you should too,” he wrote.
Officials who signed the statement said they had no evidence that any voting system removed or lost votes, changed votes, or was compromised in any way.
They said that all states with close results have paper records, allowing the counting of each ballot, if necessary, and for “the identification and correction of any errors or errors.”
“The election was the safest in the history of the United States. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and reviewing the entire electoral process before finalizing the result, ”the statement said.
The message stands in stark contrast to Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of fraud and widespread trouble that he says could affect vote totals.
The problems that the Trump campaign and its allies have pointed out are typical of every election: problems with signatures, secret envelopes, and postmarks on mailed ballots, as well as the possibility of a small number of ballots being lost or lost. emitted incorrectly.
Given that the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, leads Trump by wide margins in key states on the battlefield, neither of those issues would have any impact on the election outcome.
The Trump campaign has also launched legal challenges complaining that its election observers were unable to examine the voting process.
Many of those challenges have been dismissed by the judges, a few hours after their presentation. Again, none of the complaints showed evidence that the election outcome was affected.
The authors of the statement include the presidents of the National Association of State Electoral Directors and the National Association of State Secretaries, who conduct elections at the state level, and the executive committee of the government-industry coordinating council that includes all major voting equipment providers. .
