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By Amanda Castro
Associate News Editor
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Americans will vote Tuesday in the 2026 midterm elections under heightened scrutiny of election security, with officials confronting threats ranging from voter intimidation and cybercrime to AI-generated misinformation and challenges to public confidence in the count.
The stakes extend beyond which party controls Congress, as the credibility of close or disputed results will depend on whether ballots can be traced, physical records preserved, vote totals checked, and irregularities distinguished from evidence of actual fraud.
Voters, poll workers, and thousands of state and local election officials will therefore rely on a patchwork of safeguards that experts say makes widespread manipulation difficult, although uneven resources, cyberthreats, and rapidly spreading false information create vulnerabilities.
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All 435 House seats and 35 Senate seats are on the ballot Tuesday, alongside gubernatorial, state and local contests. The elections will be administered across thousands of jurisdictions, meaning procedures differ considerably from one place to another.
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"America’s election system has a genuine strength that is sometimes overlooked: it is decentralized," political scientist Daniel Schatz told Newsweek. "Elections are administered by thousands of state and local officials, using multiple layers of checks, including paper records, bipartisan procedures, ballot tracking where available, post-election audits and judicial review. That makes a single point of failure far harder to exploit."
Therese Pearce Laanela, head of the Electoral Processes Program at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, told Newsweek that local administration fosters "innovation, local ownership and resilience against any centralized attacks," but less-resourced communities may struggle to recruit expertise or provide the same level of service.
The result is a system whose security is better understood by looking at what happens to an individual ballot, and how the reported total can later be checked, than by treating Election Day as a single nationwide event.
How Ballot Tracking and Mail Voting Safeguards Work
Mail ballots draw particular scrutiny because voters complete them outside a polling place, but jurisdictions employ multiple methods to verify eligibility and protect ballots before they are counted.
Pearce Laanela said those protections can include voter declarations, witness statements, identification documentation, password systems, multiple envelopes, signature verification, ballot tracking and observer access to locations where ballots are received.
"The integrity measures used in the U.S. are among the most rigorous in the world," she told Newsweek.
Ballot tracking has a separate purpose from the final count. Where offered, it can give a voter information about a ballot's progress through the election process, while physical custody rules and verification procedures address how election officials handle it.
That distinction also creates an opportunity for fraudsters.
Aaron Rose, a cybersecurity evangelist and security architect manager in the Office of the CTO at Check Point Software Technologies, told Newsweek that criminals have impersonated election communications at precisely the moment voters expect to receive them. Washington, for example, legitimately sends ballot-status texts to voters who register for that service, making an imitation potentially harder for a recipient to spot.
"The practical test is to never navigate from the message: type the state or county election site yourself or call the local office," he said.
Election Observers and Ballot Chain of Custody
Election observation adds another layer of accountability because security depends not only on rules existing on paper but also on whether election procedures can be scrutinized.
Pearce Laanela said observer access to ballot-receiving centers can be one component of mail-ballot safeguards, while Schatz pointed to transparent, independently checkable procedures as central to public confidence.
That does not mean observers themselves decide whether ballots are valid or investigate suspected crimes. Instead, transparency around ballot handling and counting gives candidates, voters, and other stakeholders a way to assess whether established procedures are being followed.
Chain of custody becomes especially important once ballots enter election officials' control. Jeremy Epstein, former chair of the ACM U.S. Technology Policy Committee and a cybersecurity and privacy professor of practice at the Georgia Institute of Technology, told Newsweek that jurisdictions need to pay close attention to the chain of custody for physical ballots.
Together, paper records, custody controls, observers and subsequent audits create different layers of verification. A claim that an election was compromised can therefore be measured against physical records and documented procedures rather than judged solely by competing political assertions.
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Voter Intimidation and Threats to Election Workers
Federal law prohibits intimidation, threats or coercion intended to interfere with voting rights. Pearce Laanela said international standards call for election security to be neutral, proportionate and politically independent, while rules governing law-enforcement presence differ by state.
Timothy Gallagher, managing director, chief security officer and co-lead of physical security and threat mitigation at Nardello & Co., told Newsweek that people working at polling stations, volunteering for campaigns or appearing on the ballot should pay particular attention to the personal information they expose online.
Gallagher, who spent 22 years with the FBI and served as the bureau's election security coordinator in Kansas City during the 2006 midterms, said publicly identifying a person's location can make it easier for others to find additional information about them.
"Nobody should be scared away from the polls," Gallagher said, but those involved in the election should "take extra care with their digital footprint."
For election administrators, preparation is also critical.
Epstein said large jurisdictions generally are well prepared and have considered possible disruptions, but he is more concerned about smaller jurisdictions with fewer resources.
"Having backup plans in place is particularly important to ensure election workers can safely carry out their responsibilities and voting can continue if an incident occurs," he said.
The vulnerability, in other words, does not have to involve somebody changing votes. Threatening experienced workers, disrupting an election office or intimidating voters can weaken the machinery of an election without altering a single tally.
Cybersecurity Threats Don't Necessarily Mean Votes Were Hacked
One crucial distinction for voters is between a cyberattack connected to an election and evidence that votes were altered.
Rose told Newsweek that the cybersecurity threats researchers observed targeted voters, poll workers, and election staff, rather than voting systems or ballot counting.
"They're different problems with different fixes," Rose said of the importance of that distinction. "Everything we observed was aimed at voters, supporters, poll workers, and election staff, and none of it targeted voting systems or how votes are counted, so the harm is stolen money and personal data rather than changed votes."
Check Point's research found 4,394 new domains containing "vote" and another 1,036 containing "election" registered between September 1 and October 1, according to Rose. The company also detected credentials linked to nine Oklahoma State Election Board email addresses, although Rose said researchers could not confirm whether the passwords were still valid.
The distinction matters because evidence that an election employee received a phishing email, a voter encountered a fraudulent website or personal information appeared in a criminal marketplace does not establish that a ballot was altered.
AI Misinformation Could Confuse Voters Without Changing Ballots
Artificial intelligence adds another problem: false information can now be created quickly and cheaply, potentially reaching voters before officials can rebut it.
Epstein called AI a "huge and growing risk" for misinformation and disinformation, especially when combined with social networks that can target messages to particular groups.
False claims could concern polling places, voting hours, procedures or purported election results. Such claims can interfere with participation even without penetrating any election equipment.
That is why Epstein urges voters to verify election information they encounter on social media against official state and local election websites.
Schatz said the information environment may represent a more immediate vulnerability than the machinery used to cast ballots.
"False claims about polling locations, eligibility, deadlines or voting procedures can confuse voters before they ever reach the ballot box," he said.
The possibility of increasingly sophisticated synthetic content also makes the source of a claim more important than its appearance. A realistic video, screenshot or purported election alert does not by itself establish that the information came from an election authority.
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Internet Voting and Ballot-Marking Devices Remain Weak Spots
Not every method of casting a ballot presents the same risk.
Epstein singled out internet voting as a significant concern, although he said it remains largely restricted to a limited population, typically including military and overseas voters.
"The combination of poorly secured internet voting systems which don't get updated regularly, AI systems that are becoming ever-more powerful, and nation-state adversaries that want to interfere with elections make internet voting a big red flag," Epstein said.
He suggested jurisdictions separately disclose internet vote totals so an anomaly would be easier to identify.
Epstein also raised concerns about ballot-marking devices, or BMDs, used in some jurisdictions instead of ballots marked directly by hand. But viewed across the entire election system, he said the risks are "far lower than they were not very long ago."
That illustrates why sweeping claims about "the voting system" can be misleading. The United States uses different technologies and procedures across thousands of jurisdictions, so identifying a real vulnerability requires determining what equipment or process is at issue and whether evidence shows it affected votes.
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What Voters Should Watch if Election Results Are Disputed
The first results reported Tuesday night will not necessarily be final. A secure count can take time because ballots must be processed under each jurisdiction's rules before results are finalized.
If a race is challenged, experts said voters should focus on evidence rather than the speed or intensity with which a claim spreads online.
That means asking whether an allegation can be tested against physical ballots, custody records, audits, recount procedures, official canvasses, court proceedings or other independently verifiable evidence.
Schatz said voters should "be skeptical of viral claims designed to provoke urgency or distrust, and distinguish isolated administrative problems from evidence of systemic fraud."
Pearce Laanela similarly warned against converting every Election Day problem into a larger allegation.
"Mistakes are not fraud," she said, emphasizing the importance of proportionate reactions to incidents.
For voters, the most immediate defense is simpler: verify when and where to vote through state or local election authorities, approach urgent social-media claims skeptically, and look for evidence when someone alleges that an election process or outcome has been compromised.
As Schatz puts it: "The essential safeguard is not blind faith in the system, but transparent procedures that can be independently checked and clearly explained."
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Samantha Beech and Tony Phillips.
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