U.S. election officials say no evidence voting systems deleted, changed votes

Election security officials with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Thursday there is no evidence that voting systems changed or deleted votes in last week’s election, dismissing another false claim being pushed by President Donald Trump and his supporters.

“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” reads the joint statement from two security groups. The sentence was bolded for emphasis.

The Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council Executive Committee and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council also said the Nov. 3 election “was the most secure in American history” in the statement, which was released by the DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

Former vice-president Joe Biden has been declared the winner of the election, but Trump has refused to concede, pushing unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud. Efforts to prove such fraud in court have been unsuccessful.

On Thursday, Trump tweeted or retweeted false claims that Dominion voting software used in some states switched millions of votes for Trump to Biden, while hundreds of thousands more votes for Trump were deleted outright. The claims have been flagged by Twitter for containing disputed information.

Dominion itself has denied the claims. Officials in states that use the software, like Michigan, have explained any mistakes that were made in counting votes were due to human error, not the machines or software, and were quickly corrected.

The election security groups said states with close results have paper records of each vote, allowing election officials to go back and count each vote manually if necessary to root out any mistakes or errors.

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“While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too,” the statement reads.

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The groups said Americans should listen to state election officials for trusted information about the integrity of the vote counting process.

Reuters reported Thursday, citing government officials, that the CISA has drawn the ire of the Trump White House over a website it runs dubbed “Rumor Control” which debunks misinformation about the election.

The agency’s director and top U.S. cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs, who worked on protecting the election from hackers, has told associates he expects to be fired, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

White House officials have asked for content to be edited or removed that pushed back against numerous false claims about the election, the sources said, including that Democrats are behind a mass election fraud scheme. CISA officials have chosen not to delete accurate information.

— With files from Reuters