Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Friday that foreign adversaries could hack voter machines and warned states that refuse to partner with his department he would use "maximum pressure" to root out illegally cast votes, threatening possible prison time for officials who do not comply. Mullin said DHS had preliminarily determined there were more than 250,000 noncitizens on voting lists in at least four states — California, New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania — and demanded states run their voter rolls through a federal DHS database or risk losing federal election-related grants.
The federal database Mullin urged states to use was historically meant to assess immigration benefits, and a federal judge has blocked repurposing it for voter-roll checks because doing so would violate rules on the disclosure of Social Security records, officials said. The database has proved error-prone when used to evaluate voter rolls, often flagging newly naturalized citizens as noncitizen voters, and voting rights experts warn the process could lead to registered voters being wrongly purged.
Mullin said DHS will be scrubbing election records both before and after the midterm elections to find ineligible votes, including those by noncitizens and by people who are deceased, and he warned that illegal voter registration and illegal voting carry penalties of up to five years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines. DHS said Mullin sent letters to secretaries of state asking them to respond within two weeks and commit to collaborating with the federal government, and the secretary said President Trump directed the DHS cybersecurity team to release an updated election infrastructure plan that Mullin plans to make public within 30 days.
Mullin also said America’s adversaries have the "key to the back" of American voting machines and alleged bad actors could change voter registrations and manipulate votes that have already been cast, but he offered no evidence and did not elaborate on how such manipulation would occur.
The announcement followed President Trump’s Thursday night speech in which he accused China of interfering with American elections and declassified documents he said show vulnerabilities at the ballot box. Critics and election experts quickly said the documents contained no new revelations; election law expert Rick Hasen wrote that if the government had actual evidence of noncitizen voting there would be indictments and that the claims "likely have no legs." Officials have also pursued other actions tied to election integrity, including a Justice Department push for voter files that courts have rejected, an FBI raid on an elections hub in Fulton County, Georgia, and personnel changes at agencies that help secure elections.