DHS secretary vows fines — and even prison time — for election officials that don’t comply
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Friday that officials who do not cooperate with the administration’s election security efforts could be fined and possibly sentenced to prison.
“Once election officials gave them the information they needed to secure their election – which they chose not to do – then those individuals could be held liable with fines, penalties and even jail time, depending on how far it goes,” Mullin said at a news conference at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. he said.
Mullin also promised that DHS would work to “mandate our security improvements” for states. he promised withholding federal election security grants until state officials take steps the administration has requested, including running voter registration lists through a system that checks for non-citizen voters.
Mullin’s remarks were based on President Donald Trump’s remarks Thursday night prime time speech on election security, Here he reiterated already understood concerns about the security of voting systems, described China’s efforts to access voter rolls, and aired old complaints about the outcome of the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden.
In his speech Friday, the DHS secretary focused on DHS’s efforts to work with states to secure election systems and purge voter registration rolls of fraud, as well as concerns about noncitizen voting.
Mullin’s warnings and Trump’s speech fit into the Trump administration’s broader pattern of election-related escalation, especially as the president steps up legislative efforts to overhaul the U.S. election system and voter registration. The administration’s effort to gain control over the country’s generally decentralized electoral system Worried election officialsThere are those who say that this effort could shake trust in the system.
The Ministry of Justice also sent a letter this month Threatening with nationwide prosecution election officials who fail to remove non-citizens from voter rolls.
Trump claimed in his speech: DHS exposed tens of thousands of noncitizens As Mullin said Friday, DHS has no evidence that these noncitizens actually voted. Mullin said officials plan to review those voter records one by one to determine whether anyone actually voted.
Mullin suggested Friday that the agency was able to estimate the numbers using the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Systematic Alien Verification of Entitlements (SAVE) system and said it was already working with DHS to analyze voter rolls from 23 states. He also criticized legal challenges slowing down the administration’s work: A judge was blocked last month It blocked the Trump administration from creating a database containing Americans’ information, including Social Security numbers and citizenship status.
Most election experts believe that non-citizens registering to vote, let alone voting, is occurring. is rare and not covered The Trump administration appears to be recommending this.
Election officials and security experts also Criticized using the SAVE systemargues that it greatly exaggerates the number of non-citizens who could be on the list due to false positives.
Mullin also announced that DHS cyber officials and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency officials will soon unveil “an updated election infrastructure plan” to provide states with more election cybersecurity resources. CISA spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the plan. Election security programs at CISA, the agency that managed election security coordination at the federal level during the last federal elections – was largely frozen early last year during an investigation by DHS.
Despite Trump’s claims on Thursday that China’s ability to access voting information was dangerous (even though there was no evidence that the state actually changed any votes), the administration continued to frame the issue as one of domestic accountability rather than foreign retaliation.
Asked on Friday whether China would face consequences for the allegations, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told reporters that “this is not a story about China,” saying the issues were “separate strands.”
Instead, he portrayed it as about “America’s refusal to protect our electoral system at the political level,” adding that “there are nefarious actors at home who want the 2020 election to go a different way.”
