Election security

'Red Scare 2': Russia and the 2016 US election

Among the many ways in which the 2016 US presidential election has been out of the ordinary is the invocation of Russia as a looming threat to American democracy, basically putting “Putin on the ballot” in the words of the Washington Post.

Russia was the topic that attracted the most attention during all three presidential debates and the vice-presidential one, easily surpassing every other subject by a wide margin. Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) was a distant second, while taxes brought up the third place.