Jeremi Suri*
3 Fordham L. Voting Rts. & Democracy F. 173
Jeremi Suri:
First of all, thank you for organizing this wonderful and important conference. I feel like we’ve been going from one of these discussions to another, but it’s so valuable that we’re doing this. And I am somewhat shocked we’ve made it this far in the discussion and this is the first time foreign intervention and foreign interference has been raised. It’s a major concern, and it makes this election, and really the last two elections before this, really significant and different from other elections in our history.
Our electoral system is built in some way to address domestic cheating.1See, e.g., Georgy Egorov, How the Electoral College May Curb Election Fraud, Kellogg Insight (Oct. 2, 2023), https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/how-electoral-college-may-curb-election-fraud [https://perma.cc/VFG7-3E72] There were cheaters in the 18th century, as there are today.2See Michael Cecere, Election Fraud and Voter Suppression: 18th-Century Style, All Things Liberty (Oct. 20, 2016), https://allthingsliberty.com/2016/10/election-fraud-voter-suppression-18th-century-style [https://perma.cc/P8K3-NSCN]. Maybe not as bad as Donald Trump,3See generally Richard L. Hasen, Identifying and Minimizing the Risk of Election Subversion and Stolen Elections in the Contemporary United States, 135 Harv. L. Rev. F. 265 (2022) (discussing the efforts of President Trump to subvert the 2020 election). but there were cheaters in the 18th century. Aaron Burr was one of them.4Thomas N. Baker, “An Attack Well Directed” Aaron Burr Intrigues for the Presidency, 31 J. Early Republic 553, 556 (2011). But our system was not designed for massive foreign interference in our elections.5Jeremi Suri, The History of Foreign Election Interference and an Alternative Future, in Our Nation at Risk 55–57 (Julian E. Zelier & Karen J. Greenberg eds., 2024). In fact, as I point out in the chapter in your book, Karen, our election system was built with the presumption that the rest of the world wouldn’t care, for the most part.6Id. And so we haven’t put a lot of thought into this, and the decentralized nature of our system poses a lot of problems in terms of securing our system.
You would never set up your national defense system to look like our election system. But yet our election system is at least as important as our national defense system. The way I envision it is we have a vast, decentralized, messy edifice, and we’re constantly plugging holes. But the problem that has arisen in the last decade or so is now there are more and more holes being punched in that edifice, not by internal actors who we might be familiar with, but now with international actors.
I made a list of the actors who we know of, and this is using non-confidential government information in the public record. Actors we now know of are actively trying to interfere in our election through cyber and other methods. I’m just going to list some of them now. Russia,7See, e.g., Jedidiah Blake II, Russian Interference in U.S. Elections: How to Protect Critical Election Infrastructure from Foreign Participation, 49 Pub. Contract L.J. 709, 723–26 (2020) (discussing Russian interference in the 2016 and 2018 elections). China,8See, e.g., Tiffany Hsu & Steven Lee Myers, China’s Advancing Efforts to Influence the U.S. Election Raise Alarms, N.Y. Times (last updated April 2, 2024), https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/01/business/media/china-online-disinformation-us-election.html [https://perma.cc/MX3N-BCXH] (discussing Chinese interference in 2022 and 2024 elections). Iran,9See, e.g., Kevin Collier, Iran’s History of Elaborate Election Interference Efforts Before the Trump Campaign Hack, NBC News (Sept. 30, 2024, 5:28 PM), https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/irans-history-elaborate-election-interference-efforts-trump-campaign-h-rcna171312 [https://perma.cc/X74K-B23U] (discussing Iranian influence in 2020 election). North Korea,10 Kim Tong-Hyung, Hyung-Jin Kim and Mari Yamaguchi, North Korea Fires a Barrage of Ballistic Missiles Toward the Sea Ahead of US election, Associated Press (last updated Nov. 4, 2024, 9:58 PM), https://apnews.com/article/north-korea-missile-launch-sea-us-elections-3c00eaae880d1cdeb79f7c9aa0aded9d [https://perma.cc/MKH9-K6AA] (discussing North Korean influence in 2024 election). Turkey,11See, e.g., Brett Forrest, Alan Cullison & Thomas Grove, How Mayor Eric Adams Became So Entangled with Turkey, Wall Street J. (last updated Sept. 28, 2024, 12:07 AM), https://www.wsj.com/us-news/how-mayor-adams-became-so-entangled-with-turkey-71af3c61 [https://perma.cc/972J-2FVE] (discussing Turkey’s influence over New York Mayor Eric Adams). and Israel.12See, e.g., Sheera Frenkel, Israel Secretly Targets U.S. Lawmakers with Influence Campaign on Gaza War, N.Y. Times (last updated June 6, 2024), https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/technology/israel-campaign-gaza-social-media.html [https://perma.cc/UX4S-P9HZ] (discussing Israeli interference in 2024 election). And we can certainly add to that list. This is a real problem in terms of manpower that we have to deal with this, but it also is a classic problem in international relations theory that there’s an offense advantage.13See generally Sean M. Lynn-Jones, Offense-Defense Theory and Its Critics, 4 Security Studies 660 (1995). It’s not always easy to defend for the threat you haven’t seen yet. And I think that’s a real challenge we face. I think we’ll make it through this time, because I think the threats, as vast as they are, are still relatively new, and our edifice is complex and large enough that the law of large numbers still helps us. But I do think we’re sitting on a precipice here historically, that if we don’t make major reforms to our edifice, on the scale perhaps of the Electoral Count Reform Act,14Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, Pub. L. No. 117-328, div. P, tit. I, 136 Stat. 4459, 5233 (2022). we are going to be much more vulnerable as we go forward. So, we’re at the beginning of this story, not at the end of this story.
Karen Greenberg:
I want to just follow up on that a little bit, because as the government has taken this so seriously—creating a task force, and having an intra-governmental and inter-governmental response to it—do you think there’s actually a way to deter foreign malign influence? And how successful are we at it?
Jeremi Suri:
Well, I think we have to deter foreign malign influence, and we did not do a good job of that in the last few elections.15What to Know About Foreign Meddling in the US Election, Atl. Council (Nov. 5, 2024), https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/fastthinking/what-to-know-about-foreign-meddling-in-the-us-election [https://perma.cc/H7HB-F9M7] (noting foreign interference in 2024, 2020, and 2016 elections). And I think one of the ways we do that is by having an honest assessment after the fact—which is what the Mueller report16See generally 1 Robert S. Mueller, III, Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election (2019). was supposed to be, an honest assessment of foreign interference in our election—and then taking action against those who interfered.
The precedent would be just what Rick was talking about with the January 6th insurrectionists.17See Richard L. Hasen, Gary T. Schwartz Endowed Chair in Law, UCLA Sch. of L., Remarks at the Fordham Law Review and Voting Rights and Democracy Forum Symposium: The 2024 Presidential Election: Are We Ready? (Oct. 28, 2024) (on file with the Voting Rights and Democracy Forum). Everything I’ve heard leads one to believe that people have been somewhat deterred by knowing that if they undertake these sorts of actions, they will be prosecuted and go to jail.18See Ella Lee, Jan. 6 Capitol Riot’s Most Serious Offenders Are Sentenced. What That Means for 2024, USA Today (June 1, 2023, 5:12 AM), https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/06/01/what-consequences-for-jan-6-extremists-mean-for-2024/70261373007 [https://perma.cc/Q7TU-62XE]. Vladimir Putin paid no cost. In fact, he seems to have benefited in his popularity from his interference in our elections.19Suri, supra note 5, at 67. The Iranians have paid no cost.20Mark Hosenball & Sarah N. Lynch, U.S. Charges Iranians for Alleged Cyber Plot to Meddle in 2020 Presidential Election, Reuters (Nov. 18, 2021, 6:36 PM), https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-charges-iranians-alleged-cyber-plot-meddle-2020-presidential-election-2021-11-18 [https://perma.cc/X9MW-WKRS] (noting charges and sanctions against individuals but not against the Iranian government). Will the Israelis pay a cost? They’re major interferers with our election, right?21See Frenkel, supra note 12; see also Branko Marcetic, Israel’s Meddling in US Politics is Aggressive and Unceasing, Jacobin (March 23, 2024), https://jacobin.com/2024/03/israel-meddling-us-iran-netanyahu-aipac [https://perma.cc/QTX4-2E5R]; James Bamford, The Trump Campaign’s Collusion With Israel, The Nation (March 23, 2024), https://www.thenation.com/article/world/trump-israel-collusion [https://perma.cc/SX3V-2TZU]; James Bamford, The Candidate and the Spy: James Bamford on Israel’s Secret Collusion with Trump to Win 2016 Race, Democracy Now (March 24, 2024), https://www.democracynow.org/2023/3/24/james_bamford_2016_israel_netanyahu_trump [https://perma.cc/W2CU-YCKC].
So, if we are going to hold people accountable and we are going to raise the costs for people doing this, which we have to do, we have to be willing as a society to offer an honest assessment and we have to have both parties go along with penalties for those who are interfering in our elections. I find myself, I was saying this last week in Washington, in fact, and I find myself when I’m saying this, it seems strange to me that this is even a controversial point. It should be obvious, actually, right?
Karen Greenberg:
So, one of the things you’ve been talking to me about is the role of leadership in all of this. Can you just riff on that for a little while and talk about why this is a matter of leadership, not just about detection and countering the foreign influence?
Jeremi Suri:
Sure. I mean, I think leadership matters at three levels here, and I think this might actually overlap with a lot of what Rick was saying and what other panels have talked about.22See Richard L. Hasen, Gary T. Schwartz Endowed Chair in Law, UCLA Sch. of L., Remarks at the Fordham Law Review and Voting Rights and Democracy Forum Symposium: The 2024 Presidential Election: Are We Ready? (Oct. 28, 2024) (on file with the Voting Rights and Democracy Forum). First of all, the public needs to be educated. Most people don’t follow these issues as we do. And if Rick is correct that we’ve become a little more aware about the domestic difficulties or the domestic challenges in certification and moving through peaceful transition,23Id. the public is still woefully uninformed about international threats, woefully ill-informed about what it’s seeing on X and elsewhere for obvious reasons and where it came from. In fact, we were better informed in the last election than we’ve been in this. So the one role for leaders, of course, is the bully pulpit, public education, and even in a world of misinformation and a world of skepticism, there’s no doubt that when you have leaders consciously speaking about things directly in this way, it has an effect.
Second, I think leaders play a very, very important role in their relationships with other foreign leaders, and this is often undercounted, one of the key elements of international diplomacy are the conversations that happen leader-to-leader. And there have to be conversations about this. We made progress in the ‘70s and ‘80s when we put human rights on the inter-leader agenda in our diplomacy.24See generally Kenneth Cmiel, The Emergence of Human Rights Politics in the United States, 86 J. of Am. Hist. 1231 (1999). Election security has to be there. I’ve argued, again, in your wonderful book, Karen, that we need to put forward that election interference in any society, in any democracy, is a line we will not tolerate.25Suri, supra note 5, at 67–70. We will not do it ourselves anymore, even though we have in the past.26Id. at 57–62. We’re actually the chief violator of the last 40 years.27Id. at 62. That in no way apologizes for what Vladimir Putin does now, but we need to come clean about that, and we need to take action in our relations with the leaders of other societies to create that as a taboo in the way we’ve created certain taboos around certain human rights issues, certainly around nuclear issues. To talk about interfering in an election should be like talking about launching a nuclear weapon. It should be in that same category.
And that’s the third role that I think leaders have to play. Leaders have to embrace institutional reform. Our system, in spite of what we did in 2022, which was good progress, is still an 18th century election system.28See Understanding the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022, Protect Democracy (Sept. 18, 2024), https://protectdemocracy.org/work/understanding-the-electoral-count-reform-act-of-2022 [https://perma.cc/2EAB-K297]. It’s an embarrassment. It’s an embarrassment that India can have 800 million people vote and have actually a more secure and simpler election than we have in the United States.29See Sudev Kiyada & Anand Katakam, How India Conducted the World’s Largest Election, Reuters (June 6, 2024, 12:00 AM), https://www.reuters.com/graphics/INDIA-ELECTIONS/gdpzmqgrmvw [https://perma.cc/VCE2-5GR6]. All of the complexity and messiness in our system opens space for bad actors at home and abroad. And the only way to tighten that up is to fundamentally reform and simplify the system. And I think leaders need to start talking about that as well.
Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs & Professor of Public Affairs and History, University of Texas at Austin. These remarks were presented as part of the symposium “The 2024 Presidential Election: Are We Ready?” at Fordham University School of Law on October 28, 2024. The remarks have been lightly edited, and footnotes have been added, but they retain the form and style of the oral remarks.
