At the Sulzer Regional Library on a recent Wednesday night, an informational video and hands-on demonstration tried to ease voters’ concerns with a blunt message: “You can trust the voting machines.”
But the less than a dozen attendees, huddled in a semicircle around a voting machine, still had plenty of questions about what would come next on Election Day.
They wondered: How are election judges vetted? Is there any way an election judge could sabotage somebody’s vote? How protected are city servers from being hacked? Are governments like Russia and China accessing voting records?
It was the first of three voting machine demonstrations the Chicago Board of Elections is hosting in the run-up to the Nov. 5 election, where election security is at the forefront of voters’ minds.
Russian influence and false claims of a rigged election plagued the last two presidential elections. This time, Illinois election officials said disinformation poses the biggest threat to the integrity of the vote.
Bad actors both domestically and abroad “[a]re trying to get into the minds of voters, and they’re trying to pit voters against each other,” said Matt Dietrich, spokesman for the Illinois State Board of Elections.
Through The Democracy Solutions Project, WBEZ, the Chicago Sun-Times and the University of Chicago’s Center for Effective Government at the Harris School of Public Policy are examining the challenges to our democracy and potential solutions in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election.
Illinois, a reliably blue state that has voted for the Democratic nominee in the last eight presidential elections, hasn’t seen the same specters of conspiracy theories and allegations of fraud that have taken root in states like Arizona and Georgia.
Case in point: A state-commissioned task force was created in 2022 to issue recommendations to combat foreign interference and cyberattacks in the run-up to the November election. It never even saw members appointed.
Finding available experts who weren’t already involved in similar efforts “proved to be difficult,” said John Patterson, spokesman for Illinois Senate President Don Harmon, and lawmakers didn’t want to get in the way of the State Board of Elections’ own security efforts.
“So the decision was made to shift gears and work directly with state elections officials and the Illinois Attorney General’s office to identify issues and concerns as they pop up and address them through the legislative process,” Patterson said in a statement, pointing to a recent state law that addressed publication of voters’ personal information.
Security of the vote
In parts of the country, election authorities are adding bulletproof glass and panic buttons. Illinois officials say they’re taking precautions — though less extreme ones, from having Narcan on hand in case of fentanyl-laced suspicious packages to adding security officers for election sites and giving election workers more protections, like leaving their names off IDs. The FBI is investigating suspicious packages received by the Illinois State Board of Elections and officials across the country, although Chicago and Cook County said they had not received similar threats.
“We do have to prepare for the worst,” Chicago Board of Elections spokesman Max Bever said. “No matter what.”
In addition to election judges and poll watchers, over 400 polling place investigators, who are often off-duty or retired law enforcement, are hired for early voting and Election Day in Chicago, Bever said. The Cook County clerk’s office has increased physical security for early voting sites, mail ballot deliveries and pickups and at the operations center and main office, said Edmund Michalowski, the Cook County deputy clerk of elections. Security will be provided through the Cook County Sheriff’s Office and a private security firm.
“We doubled it for this 2024 November for two reasons,” Michalowski said. “One, that obviously the election is a really hot topic around the country. But also, it’s going to probably be close to 70% turnout, so it’s nice to have more people … that we can make sure that we have enough people on site to take care of the needs of the voters.”
A new provision in state law went into effect in July that no longer requires election judges to have their name displayed on ID badges, in an attempt to shield workers from personal retribution, Dietrich said.
Illinois voters will also be weighing whether to give election workers more protections through an advisory referendum on the November ballot. It asks whether candidates should be subject to civil penalties for attempting to interfere with an election worker’s duties. State Rep. Jay Hoffman, who sponsored the legislation putting the question before voters, said that could encompass anything from threats to acts of violence against workers.
“It’s one thing to allege fraud. It’s another thing to threaten an election worker,” Hoffman said. “First of all, it’s against every democratic principle we have ever, as a country, stood for. But secondly, it’s going to have a chilling effect.”
Voting equipment is also getting more enhancements. Each of the more than 1,400 large metal cabinets which house voting equipment to be sent to each precinct across the suburbs is now equipped with a GPS tracking device, “so we know exactly where it is,” Michalowski said.
After Russian hackers infiltrated Illinois’ voter registration database in 2016, the Illinois State Board of Elections has created a division of information security, partnered with the Illinois National Guard to tap its cybersecurity experts and bolstered resources and training for election authorities throughout the state.
At the voting demonstration, Bever ticked through the many layers of safeguards that are already in place.
Each election machine undergoes tests. They are never connected to the internet. Officials keep a strict chain of custody, documenting each person who has inspected a machine. Voting equipment and ballots are secured and transported under video surveillance. Chicago has no drive-through drop boxes. Paper ballots are only printed by approved shops to ensure they meet specifications and can be read by scanners.
“Illinois is still an all-paper-ballot state, so no matter which way you vote, either on a touch screen or by paper ballot, there’s always going to be a paper trail,” Bever said. “And that’s important, because paper ballots can be reviewed for audits and recounts as necessary, and the voter can always review their choices on the ballots.”
But Bever called for more funding to safeguard ballots, arguing that it’s getting more expensive to keep up with sophisticated threats.
Misinformation and disinformation
During the COVID-19 pandemic, West Ridge resident Mary Dudek witnessed misinformation around the coronavirus and vaccines unfold in real time at the federally qualified health center where she worked. It was staggering and disappointing, she said. Now she fears it’s happening again — this time with the election.
“I was shocked by how impacted we all were from that misinformation, and now I’m seeing that same kind of process unfolding again,” Dudek said. “So it’s very worrisome.”
A recent poll by the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that a majority surveyed (78%) feel the spread of misinformation about the government is a major problem. Of those surveyed, 39% found it very or somewhat difficult to know if what candidates are saying is true or not.
At the voting machine demonstration at Sulzer library, Dudek was hoping to learn more strategies to help the average person sift through the noise.
“It’s just one thing after another. And if you are trying to stay on top of things, these are challenging times, because there’s so much that is painful going on,” she said.
Nonpartisan voting groups and election authorities are launching new concerted efforts to help voters discern for themselves. The Illinois Attorney General’s Office offers tips on how to spot artificially generated images. Public service announcements sponsored by the Illinois State Board of Elections are airing across hundreds of radio and television stations in Illinois; they encourage voters to turn to their election authorities for the most trusted info.
“We do not want to alienate them or create this ‘us against you’ environment where they feel like they’re being insulted,” Dietrich said, noting he avoids using terms like “election denier.” “We want to get them back to where they always were before, where inherently, they trusted elections — that elections in the United States are secure.”
The League of Women Voters of Illinois has marshaled its members to debunk common myths and teach media literacy through its new Mis/Disinformation Task Force. Its website features a toolkit and talks from experts on everything from protecting democracy in the age of social media and artificial intelligence to talking with people who disagree with you.
“If you argue with people, that doesn’t work. What works is listening to them, asking questions, asking them to start questioning on their own,” said Anne Sullivan, co-chair of the Mis/Disinformation Task Force.
Barb Laimins, co-chair of the task force, has a new motto that is an old adage of journalists: If your mother says she loves you, check it out. If people have questions about election security, Laimins said there’s no better way to get answers than signing up to work as an election judge.
“When you become an election judge, you become the perfect purveyor of accurate information and support of our election systems,” Laimins said.
Tessa Weinberg covers Chicago government and politics for WBEZ.