 Hi and welcome everyone to today's panel. My name is Bridget Chan. I use she her pronouns, and I am the program manager for the share the Mike and cyber fellowship at New America, and I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to moderate today's discussion on information security, minority communities and the 2022 election. So this discussion is hosted by the share the Mike and cyber fellowship program, which aims to highlight the diverse next generation of cybersecurity researchers and professionals through supporting their independent research and work. Our panelists Hope Goins, Nicole Tisdale and Ron Ford are examples of individuals who have paved the way for these fellows and have established themselves as experts in their field in their fields. And I'm extremely excited for them to be here this morning to discuss the issue of information security and operations on us elections. All of them are incredibly accomplished individuals with experience in government and the private sector and I know each will bring their own unique perspectives and expertise to today's topic. So I'd like to start by briefly framing today's discussion. Since the revelation that Russia interfered in the presidential election through coordinated miss dis malinformation or MDM campaigns, the role of information security and operations within the context of us democratic processes has been more frequently discussed. Even more than that there has also been a lack of discussion about how MDM can affect communities differently depending on a number of different factors, such as internet access or platform moderation capabilities in different languages. So to kick us off for this discussion, I'd like to ask each of the panelists our first question starting with Hope and then Ron and then Nicole. So what do you consider are the major shifts and milestones that we've seen since the 2016 presidential election when it comes to information security, specifically MDM? If you could also take this time to briefly introduce yourself to the audience and define what you think MDM means to you, that would also be great so we can understand the context from which you're speaking. So on to Hope. Hi there. Yes, good morning. I'm Hope Gohans. I'm the staff director for the House Committee on Homeland Security. That committee actually has oversight jurisdiction over DHS CISA. I would say that in 2016, after the 2016 elections leading into 2017, at the direction of House Democratic leadership, our committee actually stood up an election security task force in to investigate what happened when it came to MDM in the 2016 election. We worked on that. My colleague who was also on this panel, Nicole Tisdale, actually led that effort. One thing I would say is in 2016, prior to the election, then Secretary Johnson at DHS labeled election security as critical infrastructure. Going into the election and after the election, the intelligence community, the US intelligence community, noted that Russia meddled into the election to try to sway the election in favor of Donald Trump. Now, when it came to the election meddling, that's where the MDM came into play and it was targeted at Hispanic communities and Black communities. What I would say is some of the major shifts since then have been because now we know Russia meddled in the 2016 elections. Russia also meddled in the 2020 elections, but what has been the shift? The shift on the positive note, major investments, major investments into the Department of Homeland Security, major investments in the intelligence community, all these authorized and appropriated by Congress. Congress knowing social media platforms changing the way they promote, will they allow candidates to promote on their platforms? Also, social media companies flagging when something is untrue or even allowing the public to flag when things are untrue. So looking at more content and also pro-democracy groups knowing what has happened. However, what also has changed on a negative note, MDM has evolved in the way our society has evolved. So MDM evolved in 2020 with COVID, with voting restrictions, with changes in voting laws in the states. So then they're still targeted MDM, targeted MDM at Black Americans, at Hispanic Americans, at people that have been historically disenfranchised. And the thing about it is what has really been a major shift is now we have candidates, candidates that promote MDM, candidates that are election deniers. One of the main candidates, well he's not a candidate right now, but one, a previous candidate, which is our former president, is one of the main, one of the main embracers of election misinformation. And it has trickled down to candidates on the state and on the state and local level to promote some of these false election claims. And it has actually made a difference in how elections are administered. And it has made a chilling effect on certain parts of the election. So in 2020 and 2022, you didn't necessarily see the false election claims come from as many candidates as you did in 2016. And I would say that has one of the game changers in MDM and elections. Awesome. Passing it over to Ron. Wow. I'm not sure if I can follow that up. So my experience comes from both working internally within CISA. I spent 12 years within CISA before it became CISA when it was underneath the DHS headquarters umbrella. I will say that in 2015 around when Hope was noting when then Secretary Johnson established that elections infrastructure was going to be a critical infrastructure subsector. It really did highlight that we needed to focus a lot more energy, a lot more effort, both from the federal and from the state level in terms of trying to mitigate MDM. One of the key things that I experienced as an employee and as an advisor outside of DC was us engaging with state and local election officials. For example, I reside here in Massachusetts and part of my job at CISA was to engage directly with local election officials with the Commonwealth's Secretary of State and the Director of Elections to offer assistance, to offer support, even if it's just being in the same room. For example, we're going to get into tabletop the vote, establishing those types of relationships early on, even five years ago when really it wasn't, it was just hitting this precipice of what does MDM really look like in real life and we really did see it explode and become really kinetic in nature, ultimately leading up to January 6th. That's the impact that MDM has caused in this country. Now that I'm a former CISA employee, I really do have a greater perspective and appreciation for the capacity in which DHS and CISA and the federal government really did take to organize and collect themselves from the FBI to CISA to Secret Service. There was a collection and an organization of resources around the country. We learned a great deal in 2016 that helped to prep us for 2018 for the midterm and ultimately for 2020. We took a lot of lessons, learned from those events, stood up virtual war rooms on the days of the election. We also did a lot of prep work and a lot of tabletop exercises as well with the election officials. That was a part of building up the resilience and giving and providing those partners, those stakeholders with the resources to understand that they're not alone in this, but also it's a collective effort to help to mitigate MDM because, as we know, it's pretty prevalent and when you have state officials and legislators who are using this to call a lot of divisiveness across communities, it's doing the entire country a disservice. Thank you, Ron and Nicole. Sure. Hey, y'all. I'm happy to be here and thanks to New America for holding this event today. I'm going to jump into the question a little bit about my background. I worked on the House Homeland Security Committee for 10 years, hope was my boss. On the committee, I handle what I call the three C's, so counterterrorism, cyber security, and counterintelligence issues. I left the Hill in 2019 and started an advocacy business where I focus on teaching people how to interact with Congress and their lawmakers. In 2021, I joined the White House on the National Security Council where I was director of legislative affairs and I worked on the three C's again, cyber security, counterintelligence, and counterterrorism. And so just to follow up to some of the things that hope and run have said in terms of how MDM has changed since 2016, I would add to the things that they've already said in terms of the congressional oversight, but also what you see in terms of coordination as a whole. So I think before 2016, a lot of people were operating in silos as to their response and how they handle and communicate about MDM. But one of the things, I was actually the staffer that was staffed in Chairman Thompson in 2016 when the executive branch came to Congress to notify us that they found out that the Russians were interfering in our election. And I want to tell you all, we all immediately jumped to action, but it was like three hours of mass confusion and just trying to figure out what is going to be our coordinated response to this, because there were a lot of silos. And while it's very different to the silos that existed in 9-11 in terms of how you're thinking about this, just think if everybody is operating in their own spaces and you have people that are in the national security space that aren't necessarily talking to folks that are on the election admin side. And that's where we were in 2016. And so I think adding what you saw is the immediate need to not only coordinate, but to know what each other's roles and responsibilities were. And Congress was absolutely instrumental in putting those mandates in place to make the agency start to coordinate. But also the agencies themselves, like these are the people that have the relationships, as Ron mentioned, going out to the communities, making sure that they know not only is the federal government creating a coordinated approach, we are also trying to have a coordinated approach with state and locals. And I think a lot of the issues that we were dealing with in 2016, we just don't have to deal with anymore. Like in 2016, and I see Ron and Hope are nodding, in 2016 we had a lot of elections, state and local election officials that didn't even have security clearances. And we weren't pushing out information as the federal government when you see state actors in some of the disinformation campaigns that they're running, that stuff was never making it to the people that actually have to deal with it on the ground. And what you saw going into the 2018 and the 2020 election is the rapid push out of information. Like as things are happening, it's not real time because it's coming from the intelligence community. And so you have to be careful with that. But it was not in hindsight, which is what we did for 2016. Most of the information that people got publicly, those reports came out years and months after the campaigns had actually started and started impacting communities. What I also think that has changed is really, really important too is the connection and the integration of our press and our media. The media does such a good job. Like we, all of us have worked in government, but we can't push out information at scale and we can't make it accessible to people in the way that the media and the press can. And so what I think you saw, especially after you have Congress putting out these congressional reports, including the House Homeland Security Report on Election Security, you also had Senate intel saying, look, we've done a very deep investigation as well, and we see the communities that are targeted. And I always say, we were having those conversations in Congress, but it mattered for Senate intel and for House Homeland to come together and say, look, we have intelligence that minority communities, very specifically black communities, are being disproportionately targeted. And then the media helped us to get that out at scale. And so I want to make sure we always highlight that there's a government response in all of this, but there's also a very important response of our civil society and also our press. Thank you, Nicole. And that's actually a great segue into my next question. And so as Ron kind of mentioned in his response, he talked about voting village, which Nicole was a part of during DEF CON this year. And then there was CISA's table top the vote in August. And both of those events focused on kind of the hard like cybersecurity, the technical security of physical assets, such as the voting machines. But I'm interested in kind of learning what steps both that private sector and public sector and civil society have taken to tackle information security side of election security. So Nicole talked about, or in all of your responses, you alluded to the fact that this is not just a federally led response, but this is a whole society, a whole government approach. And so I just wanted to see, is there a certain aspect of coordination? How does that relate? How do the relationships work when it comes to tackling MDM? Anyone can go ahead and get started with that response. I can take that. To extend what Nicole just highlighted, the coordination piece was absolutely key. So the table top the vote exercise, I believe it's in its fourth or fifth year. And it really helped to codify those relationships from CISA, from the federal government, from the federal government, so that we could actually run through and work through the what ifs scenarios and exchange information in a much more efficient manner than what we experienced in 2016 to Nicole's point. Again, understanding that there will be challenges and trying to relate information, because some of it may be classified. And part of the experience that I was a part of was understanding what the obstacles are for state election officials. If they don't have the proper clearances, how can DHS and CISA and FBI help to declassify information that is actionable for state and local election officials? Meaning that it might take some time to process that information. So those were big lessons that we learned over the years. And I say we because I feel that since I grew up in CISA, so seeing the transformation and the prioritization of getting out into the field, getting out into outside of DC, getting into New England, getting out into the communities that are much less represented was a huge deal. And one of the ways that I saw CISA really try to engage that was holding events specifically for example, for HBCU. They're the HBCU summit last year. CISA also would put on road shows for election events. I was a part of one up here in New England in Vermont where it was a whole summit just for local town election officials to voice their opinions, to voice their concerns, also to understand that they aren't alone in this. I will say that probably the main challenge that I feel still needs that continues to need to be addressed is the weaponization of MDM that has happened over and that has evolved and matured into what it is now, that you have state election officials who are using this to drive that device that I talked about earlier. But for the general public for them to really understand and I think this gets to Nicole's point earlier about using media to help me that force multiplier was critical, was key. So I'll use another example in the Commonwealth here in Massachusetts was they really tried to partner with local television, local media, newspaper outlets so that if and when there was some divisive promotion that would impact the integrity of the election process, they worked with those outlets to demystify that. And I'll speak a little bit about about CISA in that also where CISA stood up the rumor control subpage on the website a few years back, which ultimately because we had an administration, previous administration that really weaponized MDM to the point where CISA had to do something to correct that, ultimately showed that MDM really was toxic. It really showed how toxic that this could get. And unfortunately it led to the termination of my former director Chris Krebs, but it's also signified that we do have people, we do have champions across the federal government and at the state, state and local levels, who are really focused and invested on driving home the narrative of the free equal elections and the process as well. So this was really, I guess a an amalgamation of the weaponization of MDM as well as now we have people in in decision making authority positions who are continue to drive this narrative even today. And we focus on MDM for election security, but it's just one slight of this systematic problem set. If you look at it, it's always cut down by either by race, ethnic background, socioeconomic status, those are continuing to be the underserved, unrepresented communities that MDM, and it was pointed out earlier that MDM has really tried to focus on. So tabletop to vote has matured over the years. And when I was out in the field here, I was a cybersecurity advisor for CISA. And one of our key priorities was working with state and local election officials over the course of the last few years. So I know that's kind of a long drawn out explanation and description, but it's one of the ways that I saw CISA and our federal partners really try to tackle this at the local level, when we call that the last mile. And I'll jump in and add to, I think Ron has done like a really good job of kind of like laying out who all the players are. I will say in terms of similarities and differences between the private sector and government, the similarities I think is complete transparency. So making sure like I think everybody is clear on the understanding of we actually need government to tell us what they're seeing as they're seeing it and close to real time as possible. But also the transparency when we talk about some of the social media companies in 2016, there was so much information that we didn't have in terms of to that, not just the algorithms that people continue to talk about, but we didn't know until you had these congressional investigations that people were buying ads for election and paying with ruffles. Like there was this whole idea that government needs to be more transparent, but also we need the private sector to be more transparent, too. And as we talk about some of the difference, I really, I feel very strongly that we need to be really clear about the roles and responsibilities that everyone in the circle has to play. And so when I think about the kind of like the differences, I think what we want to see from government and very specific NATSEC professionals or national security professionals and agencies are the sources and methods like we need these are full campaigns. And so I don't think the government is best suited to start playing whack-a-mole and trying to tell us every time something is going on. But the campaigns are broad, right? Like these are very broad concepts. And you can talk to us about the campaigns that you all are seeing. I think we rely on our judicial process for the investigations and the prosecutions. That stuff has to start happening because people need to know that you're going to be held accountable. We have a very bright line about our elections and our democracy. And so focus in the national security sector on really the transparency role of getting this information out, make it unclassified, push it out. And then I would separate the government elected officials at the state and local level, but also at the federal level. I think their role, I think, is actually unfortunate that a lot of them have had to get into the law enforcement space and the national security space because I think where their role is best concentrated is on transparency about the electoral process and education about the electoral process. And we are in such a state now to some of the things that Hope mentioned, where you have political officials that have actually made them the targets what now they have had to become law enforcement experts. They've had to become lawyers. They've had to become all of these things that they're not supposed to be focused on, which takes away their attention from the election security. I will also break down, I think, a little bit in terms of the business and the philanthropic efforts. Because I want to make sure when we talk about private sector, we're separating that. I thought with a lot of businesses and philanthropic funders did in 2020 in terms of making sure people can scale the information. Because when we talk about civil society, they don't have the money that a Microsoft or that honestly, even like a Facebook has to make sure people know where to go register to vote. And these are, you can't vote in text by mail. I don't know how many followers run and Hope have on Twitter, but collectively, I think I have 100. And so me talking about that kind of stuff is not going to do the same thing as if you have a major corporation putting a PR campaign, allowing their workers to be off of work, to all encouraging them to be poll workers. And so I think the business and the philanthropist sector really kind of help us scale getting out the proper and the accurate information. And then of course, civil society, because we talk about this and run, you hit on this a little bit, you have to address these underlying grievances and issues that are allowing this disinformation to spread. And so it's not enough to just say it's false or misleading. Well, no, some of it is not false and some of it is not misleading, but it matters who says it and why they are saying it. And then it matters what we're doing to address those underlying issues and grievances, especially as they relate to race and class and societal issues. Awesome. Thank you so much for the response. And so I think that that's actually a great segue into something that I think is really that I really want to highlight through this conversation is that one part of kind of the information security and the MDM operations discussion that is generally under discussed is that they don't impact people the same way and they don't impact communities the same way. Hope all three of you talked about how Black and Hispanic communities were targeted specifically in the 2016 election. And I think that that kind of alludes to this ability for these operations to kind of narrow down on specific targets on specific communities that they want to influence. And so can each of you explain the different ways where information operations like MDM have influence like have influenced democratic engagement? Yeah, so yeah, go ahead, Hope. I think that MDM operations, MDM by design is designed to impact the outcome of an election, but even at times now, especially now and especially within the 2020 elections when certain voting laws have changed and even in 22 when voting laws have changed and then how we voted in 2020 change with regard to COVID, it's designed to even impede people from getting to the ballot box. So by doing that, certain MDM tactics go back to some of the tactics of the civil rights movement to keep people disenfranchised, to keep people from even wanting to come to the polls or even keep people from even believing they're eligible to vote. That goes to not get not that's targeted at communities that have been historically disenfranchised. Then you have MDM campaigns targeted at women that go to the information and it is targeted at women and you have MDM campaigns that are that are targeted at different communities throughout the nation. So now when you have MDM campaigns, but going back to the campaigns that actually keep people disenfranchised or trying to look at historically disenfranchised groups, they also go to intense voter intimidation. Now MDM has impacted the public servants that give up their time to actually administer elections. You have data that says that there are going to be fewer election judges, people not signing up to be election administrators in their communities because of things that have happened, especially things that have happened as consequence of the 2020 elections. So saying that to say MDM is actually a threat to our entire election apparatus. Not only campaigns that go on throughout the the cycles, but to the actual apparatus, how we vote, when we register, how we get the information out. And now we're going to have to Nicole spoke about the philanthropic efforts, the efforts that with people who actually have funding to put advertisements on television and on social media. But we do have to go back to our community and faith based organizations and service organizations, organizations that are nonpartisan that can actually get out accurate and complete and thorough information, not about candidates, but about how to even register to vote and what actually cannot and can and cannot be done on election day. And I would say this, a lot of this, we set up information here, we cut down the silos within the federal government after 2016. But a lot of this MDM that we're now having to combat then MDM that we're that is changing our apparatus goes to some of the candidates, some of this is the owners of the candidates that have put this in, put MDM out throughout their campaign speeches or throughout their campaign literature. Yeah, I'll jump in to add to what Hope said. So I think, yeah, like everything that Hope is saying, and I totally agree with because I want people to start understanding and we can't keep separating what happens with MDM from traditional or what people think are traditional voter suppression. Voter depression is a form of voter suppression. And just like a voter suppression is telling people the wrong or sorry, not allowing people to register to vote or putting in restrictions that make it harder for minority groups to vote, telling people that their vote does not count or that they shouldn't participate in civil society and in a democracy is just as dangerous. Right. And so I think what you've seen over time is minority communities are just getting inundated with this information and it doesn't start the week before an election. It doesn't start the month before election. You see it over and over again. And you see cyber enabled Milan influence campaigns where like you see the hack in the leaks and the hacking like when when a cyber hack happens or a cyber attack happens and then data and information is leaked. You see the immediate campaign coming in to historically disenfranchised communities to be like see we told you so this democracy thing doesn't work. They don't actually want you to vote. They don't want you to participate and the way that starts to show up in our disinformation is your vote is not going to count. It doesn't matter anyway. And then you see because we the media but also there's been a ton of research on this. You see disinformation that targets more conservative right wing libertarian groups that are like go take back your government. Go do like you need to get this person out and then like in the minority communities it's the exact opposite is like just don't even go vote. Don't even participate. You can't trust there's always a lot of disinformation about how corrupt the public officials are. And that is what gets targeted at that community. And if someone if a group is going to be targeted with that for over a year they're not going to register to vote. They're not even going to attempt to register to vote. And I think there has to be a bigger and a larger conversation that shows minority groups are targeted in a very different way. And there has to be short term solutions mid term solution and long term solutions and get into a place where you start to really distinguish if the attacks look different for different groups should we be doing the same thing in every community. And the answer is no. Like I think we're going to have to have some things that look very different and also start to discuss like who are going to be the players that are going to talk to these communities and that are going law enforcement may not be the best places right like a lot of minority communities are dealing with a lot of societal classes racist issues that talking to law enforcement officials about this kind of stuff is just never they're not going to feel comfortable with it. And also I don't know that we want to advise them to start having these conversations right because the law enforcement officials are not best suited to answer the questions that are going to come up about the disinformation and the context of the disinformation. So I think what we're talking about and I think we do have to kind of change the beast of like voter suppression so that every time we're talking about voter suppression we're also talking about the MDM that comes along with it and how that form of voter depression is the same. I think hope as she pointed out it with these public officials like you can't have public officials that are thanking people for not going to vote because that was a vote that they didn't cast for their opponent like no like at a baseline we want everybody to vote and the thing about disinformation and MDM it stops the conversation like we can I can have a conversation with someone that I disagree with hoping that we did this all the time we the House Homeland Security Committee is actually pretty bipartisan and it's because we were able to have conversations with people across the aisle about things that we disagree and figure out how to get to a place of public policy disinformation stops you from even being able to sit down at the table and have the discussion and we have to start being more proactive with telling people it's not about if I agree with you it's about like I need to be able to have a conversation with you and when you have political officials that are thanking people for just not even participating in the conversation that's absolutely dangerous to our democracy. Yeah go ahead Ron. Yeah I was just going to add just a little bit I think you know hope and Nicole said it very perfectly and eloquently about you know this is this is something that is systematic has it's not I'll say this they're new tactics but it's kind of the same same MO you know with the persistent consistent devaluation of you know disenfranchised community you have to unpack decades and decades of mistrust of systematic denigration within these disenfranchised communities so that I preface I say that because we can't just start met new we have to address you know at the state level at the local level even you know at the federal level we have to continue to address this comprehensively and not divorce it from you know the caveats that we've highlighted you know throughout this conversation you have to consider how do you grow a voting population if there aren't educational resources in place at the local level you know how can we better utilize you know smaller organizations that can reach out and touch these communities that's where you know the private sector and non-governmental organizations really can help to play a key role you know my company you know we are relatively small we're a few thousand people but one of the things that that they have started or have since I've come on in February is ensuring that you know wherever you are that you know where you know your where the resources are for example you know the website you know I this is my first private company but I've not you know known for the private sector to to be this forward leaning in terms of making sure you know your civil rights you know wherever you are what state you're in so that is completely new but it goes to show you that this is critically important you know not just for the majority of voters but the real impact is with disenfranchised communities and you know I really do hope that we can continue on this path of awareness of demystifying the process um hopefully educating the the community that really attaches itself to MDM I think that's the other part of this is it it's our fight to address it but it's also on the other side to be open to understanding and not living within I'll say this fear of change to put it you know pretty pretty politely yeah and I think both so I think Ron and Nicole had both alluded to kind of what I wanted to dig into is that you've talked about how there's increased coordination across federal government there's more power and more appropriations to agencies and there's more coordination with private sector with civil society but Nicole mentioned how um there might be some solutions that might not be great for certain communities such as should law enforcement actually be the voice to be able to kind of do this kind of MDM combating MDM in certain communities um and so I'm just interested in knowing if you have any thoughts about whether or not any policies or solutions that were proposed do they adequately recognize how MDM occurs in different communities have and have solutions kind of been right-sized according to kind of minority communities and their needs and their histories and why are why not I promise y'all I'm not gonna get on my soapbox on this but I would say yes and no um so I want to talk about specifically what we've seen as like the the response in terms of building resilience to MDM because I think we we know from like previous examples like I said earlier whack-a-mole is not going to work and so you do need to be a resilience in these communities so that when they are being bombarded with MDM they have an adequate knowledge about what it is and a response one of the things that I've seen as really just this drive and this push toward everything needs to be about media literacy and I always warn people about this I'm like you know when you're launching these media literacy campaigns you need to like take a step back and make sure this these campaigns are not reinforcing racist tropes to minority communities and so showing up to communities and saying like you don't know how to fact check and you don't know the difference between right or wrong and we're going to teach you is reinforcing these stereotypes that we are less educated or we have a lesser understanding or our critical thinking skills aren't the same that is not the truth these are a lot of this stuff is domestic and foreign state actors like these are elected officials these are state governments that are attacking them we would never show up to a small business that has had a Russian-enabled cyber attack and say look you should know better like you should know how to do this no we come in and we say this is much bigger this is a coordinated campaign and you were targeted and we're going to be helpful on this and so I think when we are talking about especially in terms of like going into the communities of and doing media literacy start distinguishing who that works for and who that doesn't work for I actually think it's really good that we're doing that with young kids and we're doing that with younger people but I think it's very overwhelming to start in expecting these communities especially if you have mid to older age populations to become fact checkers because that's not what we do we also know that that's not going to work at scale and it overwhelms them and it scares them I think it's much more important to really kind of start to contextualize the disinformation and then expose people to the the methods the sources and methods that may be used because that's what resilience is about resilience is not saying this time they did x resilience is saying this is what this looks like and in five years it could look different it may look different in the 2024 election than it does in a midterm in 2025 but showing people to one of the points that run said like there is a context for all of this and there's been a really good group out of the university at North Carolina that they talk about putting putting in for disinformation in a historical societal political and a civic context and what that means historically is this has happened before not only did this happen in 2016 we've seen at Russian active measures in black communities in the 80s we've seen it in the 60s we've seen in the 40s we've literally seen them since 1922 and so showing people that like in the concerted effort the underlying theme of all these campaigns has been to prohibit your civic participation in your belief in a democratic system also putting it in the political context like hope has mentioned you have a lot of these candidates that are using this stuff to advance their political agendas someone needs to say that like put that in context for people and then also the societal issues like you can't just keep saying false or misleading talk to people about like this part this is a societal issue there's a psychology between why they are targeting you with this information because they know you're going to be responsive to it because it's a grievance that you are you and your community are experiencing directly and then the I think one of the pieces that people have to tie together is like and how your civic participation dismantles all of that so like the goal is you know this has happened before you know this is trying to advance a political agenda you know why this is targeting you as an oppressed class or a minority group and this is how you change it and you change it through civic participation and just making sure we have that thread continuously when we talk about when we talk about disinformation and minority communities get that like it's not you like because they cannot become fact checkers does not mean that they don't have the critical thinking skills to put it through but there has to be transparency there has to be coordination because most people aren't going to be like us and like read the weird parts of the internet and start putting this stuff together ourselves that is a place where we can have civil society we can have the business community we can have a whole of government approach where we start to identify those underlying themes to the disinformation and I'm talking with my hands way too much I don't know why it's all good be fully yourself here Ron hope do you have any thoughts before I go to my next and last question no I think you can go ahead because that it's almost time to hear from the audience yeah all right sounds good so my last question is yeah before we move on to audience Q&A what more needs to be done or feasibly can be done before the November 8 midterm election rolls around are there any efforts that you would like to highlight or what can what can individuals do in their communities to work to like address these issues before midterms roll around I think that I mean I am of the mindset that we campaign and continue on up until election day I think we've seen within the past few days and over the next few days non-partisan organizations getting out the information about voting about voting not about any particular issue but about voting how to vote where to vote how to make an election plan how to register to vote and when the polls open and close I think those things they may sound very very minuscule to some people but MDM has infiltrated that and having organizations civic organizations that are well funded for even service organizations or even how these civic organizations they look could you call 10 of your friends those things are going to be very very helpful going into the midterm elections I would also say yes we still have CISA and their room of control in the war room and there are states that are getting technical assistance from CISA and we'll get technical assistance from CISA on up to election day but we still have we still have to combat that with the misinformation MDM that is going on outside of outside of the communities I mean outside excuse me of the federal government so I would say that right now one of our main main resources is the community community faith and social organizations amplified by their campaigns that they do that they put on television that they put on social media that tell people where to vote and how to vote and that they can vote when it comes down to voting initiatives not everyone is honest because MDM is being weaponized in that way but the one of the pieces of our democracy is to get people to vote and to get and even the training right now that will be going on of volunteers poll workers election officials getting election officials in comfort and knowing the election laws across the states across the communities because those have changed but I would say right now we're we're back we are we're where we have been for decades and relying on our civic organizations and social community our community to make sure that we get that we get the vote out and that people realize that it is their right awesome thank you so much for that response hope so now we're going to transition to audience Q&A I have a question from the audience so they ask it seems like our post-modernist world that no matter how transparent and honest officials are about our elections deniers don't want to acknowledge the facts so what are your suggestions for public messaging for election deniers that's a good question I'm happy to hop in it's a it's a hard it's a difficult question I would say I think you you almost have to flood the zone with the accurate messaging and the the positive reinforcement messaging I the listener is accurate to call out that you're going to continue to see this stuff but also it's just historic like I was listening to a podcast last night about some disinformation around Thomas Jefferson's election as president there was disinformation that he was dead that he had health issues and he died and I'm like yes so like this whole because we still see disinformation related to like the health of our current president and like his ability to govern and all these things I think we have to get to a place where we understand that this is going to be a part of our society and we're not going to be able to read it but it doesn't have to be the most prevailing part of our democratic process and that's what it feels like now where it's like there have always been people and there will always be people that will call into question the legitimacy of our elections and our electoral process and our democracy as a whole but they cannot be the most powerful voices and they cannot overwhelm the majority of the of the people yeah is there anyone else who has any thoughts on that before I move on to the next question oh go ahead run yeah I was just gonna yeah add to that you know look at for example and I use the example of the national basketball association that has taken a more civil minded approach especially over the last I would say five or five years where they explicitly and I know this is not necessarily touching on the question but it goes to show that you have an organization a company a conglomerate that has majority you know black players both internationally and nationally here that are focused on ensuring that the watchers myself included because I'm a big basketball fan they heavily promote voting you know look at LeBron James and I know I'm using these big stars but if you look at each basketball team and their civil focus those are one of the ways that you you can collectively really start to reach out and touch people you know from these big organizations down to the local level where you know they're hosting you know voter registration events and they're working with you know some of the grassroots organizations that are continuing to put out the accurate message that Nicole's highlighted those are some of the ways that you can continue to to I like the I like I'll use this later on to flood you know flood the information out flood the accurate information out because once you start to drown out that information and that and that effort they start to lose value they start to lose steam and what happens they start to focus refocus on their core group instead of expanding out. Awesome thanks so much so I think we have what time for one more question so this last question from the audience is if elections are in some way certified then why aren't systems that manage the election process also certified prior to use? Oh go ahead Ron seems like this. I think we all have something to say about that so that is a great question and all election systems are certified all state election systems are certified the federal government does not own or facilitate the election process it is the states who are tied into the election process that they facilitate so each state certifies their own systems they go through and work with the election assistant committee and this is just coming from my experience that those systems are verified certified I would say at least quarter you know 90 days before 30 you know there's a time that these systems are certified that you know they cannot be changed they are secure they are each state is mandated to to comply with it so hope the watcher listener understands that all election systems are certified that is clear across every state. Now there are candidates that will use MDM and tell you that there are problems with voting machines one in particular in 2020 ran for president he stated that there were problems with voting machines there are candidates that will use MDM and say that there are problems within election the election apparatus so they will say things about poll workers about election judges about the machines about secretaries of state to mislead communities and mislead voters into thinking that elections are not certified or that election or that the apparatus that they're using isn't certified elections as Ron stated an entire apparatus which goes back to state law which goes to the machines that are using which goes to what's certified by the secretary of state in each state down to the community and the the election sort of the elections officials in each county and in each city within those states so yes elections are certified however we do have candidates that use MDM to mislead the public that there is something improper in the voting process and that is something that community organizations are having to do is Nicole and Ron said we're having to flood flood the public with information that elections are really safe and they're fair and they're just and they're the underpinnings of our democracy add to to the listener that asked that question everything that run and hope said is true and the way you verify this is not to go to any website that ends in a dot com or dot org is to go to a website that ends in a dot gov go to your secretary of states website a lot of they've had to start doing this but a lot of elected officials have started actually putting up youtube videos now don't start on youtube start at the dot gov start at the dot gov and they're walking people through this is what happens from the moment that you register to you cash your vote to we count your vote to we certify that if you really are concerned about the certification process it is very helpful for people to understand this stuff and to start seeing it and there aren't a lot of positives that have come from this this disinformation that has like started since 2016 but that is something that has that's a level of transparency before 2016 there were not secretaries of states there were not state and local county officials walking people through this is actually what happens and so I would encourage folks if you are having questions or concerns about the certification of the voting machines the voting rolls start with the dot gov and go from there use the links that they are suggested and if you can't find anything online a lot of offices are allowing you don't call and harass them but you can call and ask them like where is there any place online where I can see or I can find out exactly what happens from the data I register to the date my vote is counted and on that great actionable no I love ending with some action items that concludes our panel today thank you everyone in the audience for joining today's discussion thank you so much for the panel for carving out some time today to talk about this really important topic and the share the mic and cyber fellowship program hopes to continue to host more of these really important discussions if you in the audience would like to stay up to date with our events and major announcements including the announcement of the share the mic and cyber fellowship's inaugural cohort you can subscribe to new america's various newsletters which you can find on new america's website