Democrats and Republicans agree AI is biggest threat to US election

Just under 80% of registered voters believe that AI and deep fakes spreading misinformation will be the biggest threat to this year’s US Election, which is set to take place this November.

The numbers of Republican and Democrat voters who expressed concerns about AI-generated content derailing the electoral process was strikingly similar – with 79% of Democrats and 80% Republicans worried about this threat.

A One Poll survey of 2,000 registered US voters also found that citizens believe AI will have a negative effect on this year’s election outcomes: 42% Democrats and 49% Republicans.

The poll – which was commissioned by the Federal Election Commission-approved non profit Defending Digital Campaigns (DDC) and security key vendor Yubico – also found that 85% of people who engaged in political campaigns in the run up to the elections did not have confidence that their personal data was being protected effectively.

The survey found that over half of all respondents said that they had received an email and/or text message from a campaign that they suspected was a phishing attempt.

The survey found that these doubts and phishing attempts were likely to have an impact on future donations, with 42% saying they would be less likely to donate if the campaign was hacked. A further 30% reported that this would even change the likelihood of a candidate receiving their vote.

Campaigns under attack

“Campaigns are the heart of our democracy, and every campaign must adopt basic cybersecurity protections. This year is particularly risky for cyber attacks directed at candidates, staffers, and anyone associated with a campaign,” warned Michael Kaiser, president, and CEO of the DDC.

“Having the right cyber security in place is not an option — it’s essential for anyone running a political operation. Otherwise, campaigns risk not only losing valuable data, but losing voters,” he added.

The DDC’s survey found that 42% of voters would like to see campaigns and candidates take more precautions to prevent their websites from being hacked. A similar number (41%) said they would welcome strong security measures like multi-factor authentication on their accounts.

Having policies in place to protect personal data and offering cyber security training for staffers and key volunteers was also valued by a quarter of all respondents.

“Because campaigns are built on trust, potential hacks like fraudulent emails or messages sent out impersonating them via their social media accounts where they are directly interacting with their audience, could be detrimental to campaigns,” said David Treece, vice president of solutions architecture at Yubico Treece.

“Candidates need to take proper steps to protect their campaign and more importantly, to build trust with voters, by adopting modern cybersecurity practices like multi-factor authentication.”

The poll results follow news in January that voters in the state of New Hampshire received a call with a deepfake audio of Joe Biden advising them not to vote in the presidential primary elections this week.

With over two billion voters heading to the polls in over 50 countries. the World Economic Forum identified misinformation and disinformation as the most dominant short-term threat for this year.