Safeguarding the Pennsylvania Election

For months, state officials have prepared to manage the threat of far-right conspiracists who may try to “stop the steal.”

October 31, 2024 | Eliza Griswold | The New Yorker

The term “red teaming” derives from the war games that U.S. officials conducted during the Cold War to prepare for catastrophic attacks against American interests. In the run-up to the Presidential election, think tanks have been executing countless such exercises. So has the state of Pennsylvania, which has an election-threat task force that includes officials from the governor’s office, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Guard, and the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA). For most of this year, the task force met once a month to share information and to spend half a day gaming out what might go wrong. In October, it began meeting once a week.

In an overwhelming majority of scenarios, the path to the Presidency runs through Pennsylvania: both candidates have few ways to win without its nineteen Electoral College votes. As a result, state officials are preparing for multiple possible disruptions. The most dramatic, and least likely, scenario involves a large-scale natural disaster or a violent attack on November 5th. …

“The goal of the tabletop exercises is to understand who the players are so we’re not meeting on Election Day”
-Randy Padfield, PEMA Director