Election cyberattacks? It’s incompetence we need to worry about

Concerns about adversaries hacking democracy abound, but it’s sheer incompetence we should really be worried about, writes Annalee Newitz

By Annalee Newitz

Marcus Harrison-Geopolitics/Alamy

ELECTION season is ramping up in the US, and Americans have been bombarded with warnings that the process might be hacked by adversaries from overseas or extremists at home.

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Then, during the first night of caucuses in Iowa to help decide the Democratic presidential nominees, it happened. Those overseeing the vote found clearly incorrect tallies for the Democratic candidates in their software systems, volunteers at caucus sites couldn’t report results and Twitter exploded with conspiracy theories. Except it wasn’t a secret plot or an attack. It was just a phone app that had been deployed without rigorous testing. …