In the 45 days before Election Day, computer systems are supposed to be frozen to avoid last-minute changes that might cause something to break.
But last week, Arizona election official Michael Moore had to carry out a rapid thaw.
Using artificial intelligence, researchers had discovered a critical flaw making much of the internet vulnerable to hacking. The federal government urged anyone who was at risk to patch the hole or pull their systems offline.
In Florida, a company that powers local election websites yanked some of its services to buy time. For Moore, the chief information security officer for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, it was a moment he had been preparing for as he watched AI expose new cybersecurity problems in recent months.
He sprang into action and the immediate danger soon passed. Looking ahead to Tuesday, Moore said he’s taking nothing for granted.
“I am planning for Election Day disruption,” Moore said. “We are planning as if there will definitely be a cyberattack.”
Election officials are increasingly worried that AI-powered cyberattacks could disrupt their work, and the episode was a reminder of how vulnerable the final stretch of the midterms could be. Ultimately, the disruptions were minor, and officials stress that the systems used to vote and count votes are secure.
But AI is creating unprecedented challenges for election officials just as the Trump administration has sharply curtailed federal efforts to secure elections.
With little support from Washington, states, former officials and tech companies are scrambling to fill the gap — a patchwork response that experts say leaves election websites vulnerable.
“We can’t keep just using duct tape and Bondo to keep this car going,” said Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs (D). “We’ve really got to have a good federal partner that actually cares and is giving us information.”
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which states have relied on to warn about threats — especially those that American intelligence agencies have detected overseas — has been cut under the Trump administration. It lost about a third of its staff last year, according to documents released by Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee.
Moore said Arizona hasn’t had a cybersecurity adviser from the agency since March 2025. In the past, Moore said that role had been filled by a trusted person. When they called to say something was amiss, he said, “you know who the heck they are, and it’s not a phishing call, right?”
CISA said that on request it provides state and local election officials with free technical advice and vulnerability scans. It provided a briefing last week on the flaw in the programming language.
“Our regional teams assist partners across the country by assessing risks, helping entities bolster defenses and improve resilience, and responding promptly to threats,” the agency said in a statement.
U.S. election officials ramped up their focus on cybersecurity after Russian trolls and cyberspies attempted to interfere in the 2016 elections. In recent years, that work has increasingly examined how AI can be used to spread misinformation and outright lies.
As the threat of AI has emerged, Moore has expanded his job beyond traditional computer security: In 2023, he prepared a deepfake video of his boss to show other officials what was possible with the new technology.
This year, election officials have grown increasingly concerned that AI tools could give hackers new ways to disrupt elections. With the government taking a back seat, a former CISA official stepped in to connect election offices with leading AI companies and provide briefings on the capabilities of the technology, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private effort.
The companies have been putting their most advanced systems into the hands of cyber defenders in hopes of giving them the advantage over attackers. OpenAI’s tools helped uncover the vulnerability that sent Moore scrambling, and the company helped with the deployment of a fix. (The Washington Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.)
The company is running a midterms operations center as part of an effort involving hundreds of employees led by Josh Lawson, a former White House official and state election counsel in North Carolina. The group is monitoring for abuse of the company’s tools, including cybersecurity threats and deception campaigns, from Election Day until all votes have been tallied.
Other leading technology firms say they are also stepping up efforts to safeguard the elections. Cloudflare, a cloud and cybersecurity firm that handles 20 percent of the world’s internet traffic, is protecting about 450 websites across 33 states, said Alissa Starzak, the company’s chief legal officer.
Starzak said the company is well-prepared, but incidents this month have nonetheless made her nervous, given their proximity to the election.
“There’s so much being discovered that are potentially significant vulnerabilities,” she said. “I think everyone who’s in the cybersecurity world, who’s done election security at all, kind of holds their breath.”
There have been other disruptions affecting the elections in recent days. This week, the campaign finance filing system run by the Federal Election Commission was offline for more than a day, in what Reuters reported was a hacking attempt.
And in Florida last week, Tallahassee-based VR Systems took down services that allow citizens to look up their voting information and review campaign finance records as it responded to the PHP flaw, according to local news reports. Ben Martin, the company’s chief operating officer, said in an interview this week that the issue didn’t affect its customers in other states and had been fully resolved.
PHP — a programming language that powers the majority of the internet — was not something on the radar of Jenna Persons-Mulicka, who is overseeing the midterms for the first time as elections supervisor for Lee County. She said she was grateful that VR Systems took swift action. The disruption proved to be relatively minor and voters looking for help were still able to call the office, but Persons-Mulicka said it was important to be transparent about what happened.
“We definitely don’t want to cause alarm,” she said. “But at the same time, I think it’s important to educate people that there are vulnerabilities and there are security threats and that we take them seriously.”
Miriam Waldvogel contributed to this report.
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