A Record Election Year Brings New Threats

With more than 80 national elections scheduled across the globe in 2024—impacting roughly 4.2 billion people in countries including Indonesia, the United States, India, and the European Union—this represents the largest election cycle until 2048. Cloudflare has spent the last seven years providing free security and reliability services to state and local governments running elections. As the threats facing election officials have grown more sophisticated, the company has expanded its protections to a broader range of stakeholders involved in the democratic process.

Election officials today contend with a complex threat landscape. A Brennan Center poll from April 2023 found that 45% of local election officials fear for the safety of their colleagues, while many have faced death threats and online harassment. The digital risks are equally serious: in the three months before the 2022 US midterms, Cloudflare blocked approximately 150,000 phishing emails targeting campaign officials.

Expanding Protections Beyond the United States

Cloudflare's election security efforts operate across multiple programs. The Athenian Project protects state and local government election websites, while Cloudflare for Campaigns, launched in partnership with Defending Digital Campaigns, has provided more than $3 million in products to political campaigns and committees. Project Galileo extends coverage to voting rights organizations and nonprofits promoting free and fair elections. In 2020, a partnership with the International Foundation for Electoral Systems brought Enterprise-level services to election management bodies outside the US, including the Central Election Commission of Kosovo, the State Election Commission of North Macedonia, and local election bodies in Canada.

“Cloudflare is a technology enabler for the State Election Committee (SEC) in North Macedonia, and its tools help us ensure that early election results will be accessible to the general population, thus promoting visibility and transparency.” — Vladislav Bidikov, Cybersecurity Task Force Member, State Election Commission of North Macedonia

Internet Traffic Patterns on Election Days

Historical data shows a consistent pattern: Internet traffic dips during polling hours and spikes once results begin to come in. This was observed in France and Brazil during 2022 elections. Indonesia, which held general elections on February 14 with more than 200 million voters spread across over 17,000 islands, followed the same trend.

// Visualization of daily traffic drop in Indonesia on election day

Daily traffic fell 5% compared with the previous week, with hourly drops as high as 15% between 08:00 and 13:00 local time while polling stations were open. Interestingly, mobile device usage hit its 2024 high on that date, accounting for 77% of all requests from the country.

Pakistan's Election Day Connectivity Issues

Pakistan's general elections on February 8 took place amid significant connectivity disruptions. Cloudflare data shows an outage that began around 02:00 UTC and only recovered after 15:00. The shutdown targeted mobile networks operated by Telenor (AS24499), Jazz (AS45669), and Zong (AS59257), drawing criticism from Amnesty International. Social media platform X also experienced a national-scale disruption following protests over allegations of vote rigging.

For election coverage, such curbs on social media and messaging applications present major obstacles. These platforms have become indispensable tools for journalists to connect with audiences and securely communicate with sources.

Preparing for the 2024 US Elections

In early 2024, Cloudflare conducted webinars for state and local governments under the Athenian Project, covering configuration recommendations and lessons from the 2020 and 2022 midterms. Topics included preventing website defacement and checking domain and SSL certificate expiration dates. While more than 92% of domains under the project now use Cloudflare's proxy services, the company continues to push participants to enable two-factor authentication, which remains a persistent gap.

A survey of Athenian Project participants revealed key concerns ahead of the general election:

  • A majority of participants believe generative AI tools will significantly impact the 2024 election.
  • 80% of surveyed teams experienced an email phishing attack in the past year.
  • Trust and reputation ranked as the highest concern from a cyber attack, with election operations a close second.

Super Tuesday: Traffic and Mitigations

Super Tuesday, when multiple states including California, Alabama, Iowa, and North Carolina hold primaries or caucuses, saw no credible digital threats according to CISA. Cloudflare likewise observed no major cyberattacks against the election groups it protects on March 5, 2024, despite the increased attention. The company mitigated over 18.9 million requests that day against state and local governments under the Athenian Project alone.

// Visualization of traffic spikes across election project websites

Traffic to protected election websites began climbing after March 4, with a clear surge in human traffic starting around 05:00 EST on March 5 and tapering off around 23:00. This reflects voters checking polling place locations and viewing results. Bot traffic maintained a relatively steady pattern throughout the period.

Websites under Cloudflare for Campaigns saw consistent traffic through February that started growing the weekend before Super Tuesday, peaking at 23:00 EST on March 4 and 20:00 EST on March 5. The increase was driven primarily by human visitors, with 53% of traffic going to political party websites in Super Tuesday states. Projects under Project Galileo, which protects more than 65 Internet properties related to voting rights, experienced a massive spike on Super Tuesday morning—a single nonpartisan nonprofit providing online voter guides saw request traffic surge 1360% between 07:00 and 09:00 EST. That peak of 3.22M requests more than doubled the previous maximum of 1.56M from February 20, demonstrating how unpredictable legitimate traffic spikes can be.

The Year Ahead

With elections happening throughout the year and global attention focused on election security, continued collaboration between governments, nonprofits, and private companies remains essential. Cloudflare's approach centers on providing free, enterprise-grade security tools to election officials, voting rights groups, political campaigns, and parties—helping ensure that accurate voting information stays accessible and that democratic processes remain protected from disruption.