‘Congress must act promptly to protect elections and election workers,’ Issue One says following Senate Intel Committee hearing on threats to elections

Following today’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on threats facing U.S. elections, with testimony from Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft executives on their efforts to combat foreign malign influence operations during the 2024 election, Issue One election and tech experts released the following statement:

“Bad actors and foreign adversaries are more determined than ever to undermine Americans’ confidence in our democracy and promote inflammatory, false information about our elections,” said Alix Fraser, director of Issue One’s Council for Responsible Social Media. “With today’s broken information environment and the lack of oversight and accountability for the entire tech sector, these actors are flooding our social media feeds with bad information and making it exponentially harder for the average voter to determine fact from fiction. This poses a serious threat to both U.S. national security and democracy.

“Election security cannot be discussed without addressing the role these tech platforms play,” Fraser continued. “It is crucial that our elected leaders take every possible step to safeguard our electoral systems from any threats — foreign and domestic — designed to erode the public’s trust in our democratic institutions. Congress needs to mitigate the ability for bad actors to use social media to sow distrust in American institutions, by passing legislation to hold the tech companies accountable for their actions. Until a new legal regime is established, technology companies must put the safety of our elections over their profits and adopt safeguards to prioritize fact-based information and stop our adversaries from spreading false or misleading information.”

Issue One’s Director of Election Protection, Dr. Carah Ong Whaley, added the following:

“Election officials across the country are bearing the brunt of a toxic and fragmented information environment, all while confronting serious threats to their own safety that are a direct result of the unchecked spread of election-related disinformation. Election officials cannot face these challenges alone. Instead of helping election officials, social media companies have actively reduced the capacity of public servants on the frontlines of democracy by failing to act on their own policies. The lack of transparency and accountability poses a direct threat to election integrity.

“We commend the Senate Intelligence Committee for their efforts to address these grave challenges, and urge them to act promptly to protect elections and election workers.”

In advance of the hearing, Issue One submitted written testimony to the committee highlighting the importance of public trust in U.S. elections, how the spread of false information has led to increasing threats against election officials, and the need for greater tech accountability.