Trump, allies seek to sow mistrust about election security ahead of midterms

WASHINGTON— President Trump and his allies stepped up attacks on U.S. elections on Friday, threatening to punish California and other Democratic states that reject the administration’s demands for voter data, following the president’s effort to convince Americans that the country’s voting systems are fundamentally flawed.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened local election officials with fines and prison time if they did not turn over voter rolls to federal authorities seeking to root out alleged illegal voting by noncitizens.

California Governor Gavin Newsom said: “Try us” wrote to x In response to Mullin’s threats. “California has free, fair and secure elections,” he added, and the state “will fight for them.”

The administration’s threats, made less than four months before the November midterm elections, are a continuation of an aggressive Trump-led campaign to use the federal government to overhaul the nation’s voting systems and sow public distrust in the election.

The administration has sought for months to force Democratic-led states to hand over sensitive voter data to the federal government, but those efforts have met resistance in the courts, in part due to concerns about privacy laws. Courts have also reaffirmed in many cases that the Constitution gives the states, not the federal government, primary authority over elections.

On Friday, Mullin said his agency had found 190,832 potential noncitizens registered to vote in California, as well as more in three other Democratic-led states. He said Homeland Security arrived at those figures by checking public voter registration records for four states.

He promised to withhold federal election security aid from states until they agreed to the administration’s demands, including “purifying” voter registration rolls and updating election security systems.

“If these states want grants and want to get reimbursed for holding federal elections, they’re going to have to implement safeguards,” Mullin said at a news conference. “We need to make sure that individuals who are legally entitled to vote are voting.”

Newsom said the state has “no idea” where this claim came from. The administration has not publicly disclosed its methodology, and the system Mullin’s department has used to check on noncitizens in the past is erroneously marked some citizens as non-citizens. Past election reviews have found that it is rare for noncitizens to vote.

“There are every reason to be skeptical of the allegations coming from the administration,” said Brendan Fisher, director of strategic investigations at the Campaign Legal Center, “and every reason for voters to have confidence in our elections.”

Mullin’s remarks came the day after Trump gave a prime time speech about security flaws in the election system; These allegations were claimed to be largely unsupported by the evidence he presented. The White House has released a series of declassified documents that are insufficient to show that any American elections were affected by fraud or foreign interference.

The White House took a deep dive into the strategy Friday morning, directing agency heads to continue bolstering the idea of ​​weaknesses in the election even after fact-checking showed many of their claims were exaggerated and had been known, investigated or debunked in advance.

“SAVE OUR ELECTIONS,” the White House said at X.

Trump also used the speech to pressure Congress to pass legislation that would tighten voting restrictions and make it harder for millions of people to vote and register to vote. While conservative Republicans applauded him, others in the party rejected his request.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said Friday he doesn’t understand why Trump is focusing on a past election when Republicans should be focusing on what’s ahead.

“I think historically the midterms for the party in power are really tough,” Cornyn said. “So yeah, I’m concerned about that. We need to talk about the things going forward that our voters are most concerned about.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said the nation’s election systems are secure and while he thinks election officials need to be “vigilant,” he said he is more concerned about economic problems ahead of the midterms.

Discussing the legislation ahead of Thursday’s speech, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said it would be “impossible” to make changes to the nation’s voting laws by the midterms.

“The only thing that will happen now is that the integrity of our elections will be undermined,” Tillis said in his speech to the Senate.

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, called Mullin’s threats “ridiculous.”

“No significant federal grant funds have been allocated, so this threat has no teeth for any state. None are expecting significant federal funding for elections,” Becker said.

The federal government plans to use public records requests to obtain voter roll information to investigate whether noncitizens voted, Mullin told reporters Friday. Any member of the public may make a public records request; The move suggests the government has little recourse left to force the state to hand over voter data.

But Mullin appeared to acknowledge the limitations, saying: “Of course I can’t force the states.” He then threatened to impose fines, civil penalties or criminal charges against election officials in states that did not comply with the government’s request.

Mullin said he would ensure that state and county officials who do not work for the federal government “never work for the federal government again” if their conduct is not criminal.

More than a dozen courts have ruled against the Justice Department’s unusual request for state voter rolls. Becker said the federal government does not have the right to access the data under federal law.

He said previous government investigations into noncitizen voting found that most of the people flagged against the DHS database were either citizens or noncitizens who had never registered themselves to vote.

The Trump administration used a database from its immigration verification system to flag potential noncitizen voters, but election officials found this method misidentified some voters. Although citizens were mistakenly included in the count, the number of possible ineligible voters was extremely low. in texas0.0001% of the electorate.

Data shows that it is rare for non-citizens to vote. A research on the 2016 elections By Brennan Center for Justice It found that authorities referred nearly 30 cases of suspected non-citizen voting for investigation or prosecution. 2024 Review by the American Immigration Council between right-wing Heritage FoundationThe database revealed 68 cases in which noncitizens voted since the 1980s.

While Trump’s speech led his critics to warn that he could lay the groundwork for further steps to interfere in the election or tighten restrictions, experts said he had run out of moves.

Becker predicted that Trump would not actually attempt to cancel the election or send officers to the polls, and that the courts would block him if the president declared a national emergency to assert control over the election.

“But I think there are people in the administration, including the president himself, who want all of us to think this is possible,” he said.

Fisher said Trump could try to lay the groundwork to object to the midterm results if he is unhappy with the result, but his powers to do so are limited.

“There are safeguards and laws in place to protect the freedom to vote, and voters should tune out the noise and continue participating in our democracy,” Fisher said.