WASHINGTON — An obscure government agency President Donald Trump created is working behind the scenes to inspire confidence in the vote amid unprecedented challenges.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, CISA, which Trump signed into existence in 2018, is working with other parts of the government to safeguard an election in the middle of a pandemic.
Trump hasn’t made it easy by predicting that voting at a time of COVID-19 will be a “disaster,” insisting mail-in balloting is a recipe for fraud and dismissing reports of Russian interference.
CISA quietly offers a counternarrative on these issues and more, and its director projects optimism about the election.
CISA started a website, CISA.Gov/RumorControl, to help answer frequent questions about election and voting safety, offer a “risk profile tool,” and provide information to combat misinformation online.
Last week, the FBI and CISA released two alerts.
One alertwarned Iranian hackers are creating fictitious media sites and spoofing media sites to spread voter registration data, anti-American propaganda and misinformation about voter suppression, voter fraud and ballot fraud.
The other alertsaid since at least September, Russian hackers have conducted a campaign against a wide variety of US targets and taken data from at least two servers.
Voters are encouraged to contact their local and state election officials for information on voting.