House Intel Says No Midterm Vote-System Interference Seen
The House Intelligence Committee’s ranking member said an Oct. 27 briefing found no sign adversaries tried to tamper with voting systems or vote counts.
WASHINGTON — A week before the Nov. 3, 2026, midterm elections, the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said the committee had received a bipartisan, classified briefing from senior intelligence-community officials on foreign threats to those elections, and that the briefing did not change a longstanding assessment about voting systems.
Rep. Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut, said in an Oct. 27 statement that the session was the fifth briefing the committee had received ahead of the 2026 election. “We continue to see nothing to contradict the longstanding assessment by the IC that no adversary has attempted to interfere with the physical infrastructure or vote counting of our elections,” he said.
Himes added that the American public “should be reassured that our elections and the results are safe” but “should also remain on high alert for the spread of disinformation meant to impact the vote, particularly with the advances in AI and other technology.” He said the committee would stay in close communication with intelligence-community leadership “to ensure that we are fully informed of any changes in the IC’s assessment regarding foreign threats to the election.”
The statement describes what the ranking member said the classified briefing conveyed. The intelligence community did not release a declassified transcript of that session.
What lawmakers asked the DNI to provide
On Oct. 2, Himes and Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, wrote to Director of National Intelligence Walter “Jay” Clayton III. The letter said career intelligence-community analysts had already briefed the House committee about foreign threats to the midterms, and it asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to keep both intelligence committees “fully and currently informed.”
The lawmakers wrote that they had received the first in a series of statutorily required reports about foreign adversaries targeting the election but that “several outstanding statutorily required products” were still owed to the committees, including “the declassification and public issuance of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) about foreign threats to the 2024 presidential election.” They said the absence of a public ICA “contravenes the law” — citing 50 U.S.C. 3371(c) — “and undercuts needed transparency.”
They asked Clayton to arrange a full interagency classified update no later than Oct. 31 and to provide real-time notice of any change in the intelligence community’s analysis of election interference, “such as tampering with election infrastructure, manipulating election results, or otherwise interfering with the integrity of voting.” In the absence of such warnings before Election Day, they wrote, “we will assume that no such foreign interference has been observed — as the IC has consistently assessed going back multiple federal elections.”
The letter also encouraged unclassified public updates of the kind issued in previous cycles, saying “a statement noting the absence of indications of significant foreign interference efforts is just as important as a statement exposing any such activities.” Copies went to House Intelligence Chairman Eric “Rick” Crawford and Senate Intelligence Chairman Tom Cotton.
Himes’s Oct. 27 statement did not say whether the remaining statutory products or a public 2024 ICA had been delivered.
How CISA describes election infrastructure
Separately from the classified briefing, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency describes election security as one of its highest priorities. CISA notes that the Department of Homeland Security in January 2017 designated election infrastructure as a subset of the government facilities sector, treating it as critical infrastructure.
On its election-security page, CISA said that infrastructure includes voter registration databases and associated information-technology systems; systems used to count, audit and display results; voting systems; storage facilities; and polling places, including early-voting locations. The agency said it works with state and local officials and other partners to manage risks to those systems and that it has published a 2026 Election Infrastructure Security Plan describing no-cost, voluntary services.
CISA’s public materials focus on the security and resilience of election systems. They do not replace an intelligence-community assessment of foreign influence or interference.
What it means
Analysis: Himes drew a line the intelligence community has used before: interference with voting equipment or vote counting versus influence operations and disinformation aimed at voters. His statement said the classified briefing supported the first half of that distinction — no observed attempt to tamper with physical infrastructure or vote counts — while warning the public about the second. The Oct. 2 letter makes clear that the committees were still waiting on additional statutory assessments and on a public ICA covering 2024. Readers should treat the Oct. 27 remarks as a committee readout of a classified session, not as a newly released, unclassified Intelligence Community Assessment.
Sources
- Rep. Jim Himes: Statement on Intelligence Community Led Election Briefing
- Himes and Warner letter to DNI Walter Jay Clayton III, Oct. 2, 2026
- CISA: Election Security
Additional sources
Related coverage
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