PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. — With less than a week until Election Day, officials are giving a stark warning about what’s going on online.
The supervisor of elections in Palm Beach County saying — the amount of misinformation online is unlike anything she’s ever seen before during her six-year tenure.
Security is on top of the list of priorities as Election Day gets closer, and elections officials all over the state are seeing more and more misinformation online, mixed with the use of artificial intelligence to create fake videos.
“If you talk to Homeland Security, talk to the national and the state level, that misinformation is coming from two places, it's coming from abroad, but it's also domestically,” said Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link.
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The office has a full cybersecurity team, focused on communicating with several agencies, like the FBI and local departments to keep up with any red flags and get ahead of them.
Link said some of it is coming from overseas to interfere with results and stress voters.
“We know that China, Iran and Russia are very actively involved in using AI to get a lot of misinformation and it looks real,” she said. “It gets voters very nervous. It doesn't help anybody, certainly doesn't help the democratic process.”
Link said they’re working diligently to combat the misinformation seen online. They’re doing that by “flooding” voters with correct information. They also want to hear from you if you’ve seen something that seems off.
“We want people to be aware if they see something or hear something that concerns them, or it doesn't seem like it's right. Please call us,” she said. “Let us research it, look into it for you and get you that answer.”
She also explained their election audit process. Watch below:
Security isn’t just happening online. They’re also working with police departments and other law enforcement agencies to keep things controlled.
“We don't want any voter intimidation at the polls, harassment and intimidation of the voters isn't tolerated by us and will be reported to law enforcement and they'll handle that accordingly,” she said.
Voters in Palm Beach County are coming out in record numbers.
So far, more than 230,000 people have voted at the 26 early voting locations, and another 200,000 or so have voted by mail.
That means, roughly half of all eligible voters in the county got it done already.
