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No major signs of US foreign interference in elections: official
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No major signs of US foreign interference in elections: official

WASHINGTON-

A top U.S. cybersecurity official said Tuesday that his agency has not seen any major incidents reflecting foreign interference in Tuesday’s presidential election, despite a steady stream of disinformation aimed at disrupting voting throughout Election Day .

By early evening, there was little evidence of significant disruption to election infrastructure, Cait Conley, a senior official with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told reporters.

“At this point, we are not currently tracking any nationally significant incidents impacting the security of our election infrastructure,” said Conley, whose agency is responsible for protecting critical U.S. infrastructure, including election infrastructure. , which may include election databases, tabulators and voting systems. counting software.

Earlier Tuesday, the FBI warned Americans about three new fake videos using its name and badge to promote false information about voting, the latest in a series of misinformation that officials say will intensify, especially if uncertainty about the winner persists after election day.

A fabricated video claiming to be from the federal law enforcement agency falsely discussed a high terrorist threat and urged Americans to “vote remotely,” while another video includes a fake press release claiming to be from of the agency and claiming rigged voting among inmates at five prisons. . The third fake video claimed that the FBI had received 9,000 complaints about voting machine malfunctions.

All are inauthentic, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.

False bomb threats also hit a series of polling places in three battleground states, the bureau said later Tuesday.

“None of the threats have been deemed credible to date,” the FBI said. At least two voting sites targeted by fake bomb threats in Georgia were briefly evacuated Tuesday. Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger blamed Russian interference for Election Day bomb hoaxes.

“They’re doing something stupid, it seems. They don’t want us to have smooth, fair and accurate elections, and if they can get us to fight among ourselves, they can count that as a victory,” Raffensperger told reporters. .

The Russian Embassy in Washington said the allegations were “baseless” and that Russia does not “interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.”

US intelligence services last week accused Russia of releasing a fake video showing a Haitian immigrant claiming to have voted multiple times in the US state of Georgia. Over the weekend, the FBI warned of several more fake videos.

Later Tuesday, a video posted to the social media platform a teacher who followed the activity. said. It has been viewed more than 30,000 times.

X has since restricted the account that posted the video, warning users of unusual account activity, but the video remains online.

Most of the obstacles voters faced were rather mundane: long lines, paper jams and power outages.

Slow computer software updates delayed voters in Louisville, Kentucky, a local official told Reuters. In rural Pennsylvania, a computer glitch prevented some ballots from being immediately tabulated, officials said.

In St. Clair County, Alabama, some ballots had to be reprinted after officials discovered that some local and state amendment questions were missing, the county said on its website.

Conley urged Americans to remain on guard as vote counting began.

“We do have foreign adversaries with two goals, one to undermine the American people’s confidence in our democratic institutions and the second to sow partisan discord,” Conley said. “So we should expect to continue to see narratives around these types of goals, both today and in the days and weeks to come.”


(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Christopher Bing, Raphael Satter, James Pearson and AJ Vicens; editing by Andrea Ricci, Alistair Bell, Deepa Babington and Jonathan Oatis)