Trump official tried to ban half of US voting machines, citing conspiracy theories
Written by: Erin Banco, Jonathan Landay and Alexandra Alper
WASHINGTON, May 22 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s election security czar last year sought to ban voting machines used in more than half of U.S. states by asking whether the Commerce Department could declare the components a national security risk, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said.
White House counsel Kurt Olsen, a lawyer Trump tasked with proving widely debunked election-rigging conspiracy theories, pushed the plan to target Dominion Voting Systems machines. Sources said the idea “came about while Olsen and other officials were brainstorming how the federal government could take control over elections in U.S. states, and the idea was made public by Trump.”
Sources said Olsen wants a national system of hand-counted paper ballots; Some election security experts said the request, a frequent request from Trump, “would be less accurate and potentially riskier than the current system of machines with auditable paper trails that nearly all cities and states use.”
The plan to exclude the machines, first reported here, had gone so far that in September Commerce Department officials began looking into what grounds might be used to implement it, three additional sources said. But it eventually collapsed because Olsen and other administrative staff who worked with him failed to provide evidence to justify such a move, two sources said.
The incident is part of a wide-ranging effort by the Trump administration to violate the election authority of state and local governments, which is granted to them by the U.S. Constitution to prevent the executive branch from seizing power. Olsen is working with the nation’s top intelligence and law enforcement agencies to pursue allegations of voter fraud.
A Reuters investigation earlier this month found that administration officials and investigators in at least eight states were seeking secret records, pressing for access to voting equipment and re-examining voter fraud cases that courts and bipartisan reviews had rejected. Trump and his Republican allies are also pursuing unprecedented plans to redraw electoral districts earlier than usual to gain an advantage in November’s midterm congressional elections.
Olsen, who Democratic senators want to unseat, aims to override Dominion voting machines before the midterm elections, two sources said.
Others involved in the talks included Paul McNamara, a senior aide to Trump’s espionage chief Tulsi Gabbard, and Brian Sikma, Trump’s special assistant who works on the Domestic Policy Council, according to one of two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Olsen worked closely with Gabbard’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
Early last summer, McNamara asked Commerce Department officials to consider the possibility of Dominion chips and software being designated a national security risk, two sources said.
At the time, McNamara was heading an ODNI task force that worked with administration officials to investigate vulnerabilities in the nation’s voting machines. Two sources said McNamara had discussed the issue with senior officials at the U.S. Commerce Department, led by Secretary Howard Lutnick.
Reuters was unable to determine whether Lutnick was involved or involved in those discussions.
A Commerce Department spokesman said Lutnick never met or discussed election integrity issues with McNamara and had “no interest in the matter.” The spokesman declined to comment on whether Lutnick’s office or other officials were involved.
Olivia Coleman, a spokeswoman for Gabbard’s agency, said the ODNI, including McNamara, “did not brief the Department of Commerce or coordinate a plan to take action to ban Dominion voting machines.”
Olsen, McNamara and Sikma did not respond to interview requests. Responding to this story, Democratic U.S. Senator Alex Padilla said in a post on X that Olsen should be fired, calling her a threat to democracy.
CONCERNS ABOUT MORE ELECTION CHAOS
Democrats and election integrity experts worry that, with Republicans expected to suffer losses in the midterm elections, the administration aims to suppress voting and pave the way to challenge the losses with more baseless claims of election fraud.
More than 98 percent of U.S. precincts currently keep paper records of every vote, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission said last year. These votes are mostly cast on machines that print paper records or are marked by hand but counted by electronic readers. Election security experts broadly support the current combination of technology and paper ballots that provide voter-verified tracking for post-election audits.
Proponents of hand-marked, hand-counted ballots argue that they eliminate hacking concerns. But they carry different risks, such as counting errors and ballot box stuffing, said Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan.
“The transition to hand counting can be chaotic and make it easy to cheat,” he said.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle stated that news for this story was selectively leaked and called it misinformation.
VOTING MACHINES CLEAR TRACES OF ‘FOREIGN ENEMIES’
U.S. supply chain rules give the commerce secretary the power to restrict transactions with technology companies in countries designated as “foreign adversaries,” including China, Russia and, especially, the government of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, which the U.S. military deposed in January.
The main focus of Olsen’s efforts to find evidence of foreign hacking is the debunked theory that Dominion machines were infected with code controlled by Venezuelans to steal the 2020 election from Trump, two sources said.
Repeated investigations and lawsuits since 2020 have revealed no evidence that Dominion machines were hacked. Fox News paid $787 million to Dominion in a defamation lawsuit over baseless allegations of election fraud in 2023.
At least 27 states used Dominion machines in 2024, similar to the number in 2020. Denver-based Dominion was acquired by Colorado’s Liberty Vote USA last October. Liberty did not respond to a request for comment.
However, Trump continues to repeat the claims; most recently, on May 12, he rebroadcast a six-year-old clip of a host on the far-right One America News network making the false claim that Dominion machines had deleted millions of votes.
In May 2025, Olsen helped lead a federal mission that seized Dominion machines used in Puerto Rico’s 2024 gubernatorial election. Cyber contractor Mojave Research Inc. An analysis of the machines by , later that summer, found some known vulnerabilities, but no code originating from Venezuela or evidence of hacking.
During McNamara’s meeting with Commerce Department officials, Olsen’s team took apart some of the Puerto Rican machines, believing they would find components manufactured by countries designated as foreign enemies, two sources said.
The team found a chip in China packaged by US company Intel. Such chips are generally not considered a threat to US national security. Other chips are packaged in Japan, South Korea and Malaysia, two sources said. Olsen’s report on the disassembly stated that the chips were described as “East Asian” and that they believed this was intended to cover up the lack of any security risk.
A meeting was held at the White House in September to discuss the machines, including cyber experts at the National Security Council, two of the sources said. The group, which included Olsen’s team, discussed whether traces of the Venezuelan code were found on Dominion’s equipment, one of the sources said.
Following the meeting, a Commerce Department political appointee asked the department’s office, which assesses foreign national security risks to technology supply chains, to consider options for addressing the risks posed by voting machines, according to three additional sources.
The office considered the matter but took no action, two of the sources said.
(Reporting by Erin Banco, Jonathan Landay and Alexandra Alper in Washington; Additional reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Don Durfee)
