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THREAD: There has been a lot fretting and anxiety over recent weeks about this year's election—and there are real threats and real reasons to be anxious—but based on my reporting ... [[DEEP BREATH!]] ... let me also offer five big reasons for optimism that tomorrow will be okay:
1) In many ways, Tuesday will be the most secure and safe election in US history. Local and state election administrators have been rushing since '16 to secure systems, ensure paper backups, and otherwise prep to ensure the day's voting and counting goes smoothly as possible.
2) It will surely be the most resilient election in US history — potentially 2/3 of all votes will have already been cast, which means there will be fewer crowds, fewer opportunities for things to go wrong, and fewer people affected if/when things do go inevitably wrong.
(And many things will go wrong! But things normally go wrong in elections! There are upward of 200,000 voting places in the US, so even when 99.9% work fine, hundreds lose power, see pollworkers oversleep, or fire alarms go off. But that doesn't undermine the whole election.)
3) The government's major defenders — @USCYBERCOM , @CISAgov, and @FBI are all closely tuned in. And @CYBERCOM has already shown in 2018 it will act preemptively to defend US elections. They know they missed 2016. They're committed to not missing again. https://www.wired.com/story/general-paul-nakasone-cyber-command-nsa/
4) America's adversaries are on notice too. Iran's "Proud Boys" scheme was swatted down & it got a "brush-back pass." Russian hackers were indicted by name last week. All of that is meant to say: Leave us alone tomorrow. We're watching. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/20/proud-boys-emails-florida/
5) The media and tech platforms are as prepped as ever; news orgs have been running simulations and table-tops. They've thought thorough various scenarios. The tech platforms are tuned in this year in ways they never were in 2016. Everyone knows the stakes.
None of this is to say there won't be problems—maybe even big ones—but our country, our government, and your local election administrators have done a lot to ensure tomorrow goes as smoothly as it can, even if there are problems. So start off trusting the system tomorrow.
