The first primary of the 2018 midterm elections is barely two months away, and there are numerous ways that something could go wrong. Will Russia interfere and use “active measures” like they did in 2016? Will disinformation spread across social media nudge the results of a tight race in places like Virginia or Nevada? Will hackers infiltrate low-budget campaigns? The New Yorker think all this is likely. For several reasons, the election may prove to be as vulnerable or more so than the 2016 race that ended with Donald Trump in the White House. The 2018 midterms are already very competitive because the stakes have been higher than any midterm in memory. Voters could determine control of both the House and the Senate, and therefore, the fate of President Trump. In polls, three out of four Democrats already favor impeaching Trump. In December, 58 House Democrats, which is nearly a third of their caucus, voted to start debate on impeachment. The Democrats need to gain 24 seats to win control of the House. An attacker who wants to affect the national outcome could try targeting those races. And on a technical level, The New Yorker writes, the American election system is still almost as vulnerable as it was in 2016. A Russian interference could be “meaningful” even if they never touch the tallies directly. More and more Americans don’t trust the basic institutions of democracy, so an attacker could do “serious damage” by throwing election results into further doubt.
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