How Secure is the U.S. Election System?

WSJ Opinion: Free Expression

Gerard Baker, Editor at Large, The Wall Street Journal

Society & Culture, News

4.6 • 591 Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2024

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

U.S. elections now seem routinely dogged by allegations of fraud and outside interference. Not just in 2020, but in several of the most recent presidential contests the losing candidates had cried foul. And so the security of this year’s contest may be more controversial than ever. Are our electoral systems safe - and what about the threat of “misinformation”? On this episode of the Free Expression podcast, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince explains how his company is trying to "build a better internet," how tech companies are trying to fight both hackers and widespread organized attacks and responds to criticism of the company’s internal management processes after a video of an employee being fired went viral. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Boardrooms love buzzwords.
0:01.9	AI, climate, resilience.
0:03.7	But what do they actually mean for CFOs and execs trying to survive the next earnings call?
0:08.3	That's where the pre-read comes in.
0:09.8	Real experts and real talk.
0:11.6	Subscribe to the pre-read, presented by Workiba.
0:17.1	From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.
0:24.5	Hello and welcome to Free Expression from the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal.
0:28.5	I'm Jerry Baker, editor-at-large of the journal.
0:31.1	If you're not already subscribing to Free Expression, please do sign up at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you do you're listening.
0:39.3	This week, with voting finally underway in the 2024 presidential election, it seems a good moment to ask, how safe
0:45.1	are our elections? Allegations of electoral skullduggery have been commonplace throughout American
0:50.9	history. But in the last few election cycles, claims of fraud have grown louder and more insistent.
0:57.2	In 2020, of course, Donald Trump claimed the election was stolen by his Democratic opponent.
1:02.1	But he was far from the first losing candidate to make that claim.
1:05.5	Hillary Clinton blamed her defeat in 2016 on Russian interference in social media and other platforms.
1:11.6	And in 2004, John Kerry's supporters alleged malfeasance involving voting machines in the swing
1:17.6	state of Ohio. In 2024, the stakes seem especially high. We can expect all kinds of claims
1:23.6	of fraud from all sides. But how much trust can we actually place in our electoral processes?
1:29.8	How secure are the voting machines that we use? What about disinformation and misinformation
1:34.8	on the internet, swaying voters? And of course, this pivotal year is starting as wars rage
1:40.2	in the Middle East and Europe, and threats to the security of the US and its allies are growing
	...

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