Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Friday said he plans to tie certain grant funding to whether states decide to participate in the agency’s election integrity program.
Mullin appeared at a press conference to announce the initiative, among other measures that he said are designed “to make sure that the American people can trust our voting system.” The briefing was aimed at tackling concerns President Donald Trump raised during an address the previous evening, warning that intelligence indicates the United States’s election process is vulnerable to interference from foreign entities, particularly China.
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Mullin said that 23 states so far are participating in DHS’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, which he said seeks to ensure voting machines are secured and allows officials to “proactively check” voter rolls for errors, such as containing noncitizens or deceased residents. The secretary questioned why other blue states have declined to sign on to the program, which is being debated in court, and said he is working with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to withhold Homeland Security Grant Program funding from states not participating in SAVE until they agree to do so.
“Working with Secretary Lutnick, we are going to make our security enhancements mandatory, meaning that if these states want a grant and they want to be reimbursed to work or to run federal elections, they’re going to have to implement security,” Mullin told reporters. “We’re not trying to get into anything else, but we’re saying that the machines have to be secured, and that your voter registration list needs to be scrubbed. We need to make sure that individuals that are legally able to vote are voting.”
While Democrat-led states declined to participate in the SAVE system, Mullin said federal officials were still able to examine voter rolls in four blue states, where he claimed 250,000 noncitizens were found to be registered to vote, including in two battleground states that often feature close contests in major races, such as for the presidency. The four states were Nevada, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and California. Aside from the four states, officials have used the SAVE program in the participating states to locate 28,000 noncitizens on voter rolls nationwide, as well as 400,000 individuals still registered to vote who are deceased, according to Mullin.
“This shouldn’t be a partisan issue. This should be that any judge and any God-fearing individual that loves this country should want to make sure that our elections are secure,” he said. “We’re not trying to change the outcome. We’re trying to make sure that the American people can trust our voting system.”
Mullin made another major announcement, revealing that the DHS cybersecurity team at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency will release an “updated election infrastructure plan” within 30 days. He said it would give states the resources they need to help keep election systems secure, warning that foreign entities can hack into U.S. infrastructure.
“We know for sure that our foreign adversaries, not our allies, foreign adversaries, have parts that are vital pieces in our voting machines,” Mullin said, referencing Iranian hackers in the 2020 election. “We know that they can access what they consider the key to the back of these votes, to these machines. We know that they can change voter registration and your vote. We know it’s possible. There’s not a question.”
“We’re telling the American people not to scare them, but to ensure them that we are watching it,” he added. “We’re taking it seriously.”
Mullin said that election officials who “disregard information” from the federal government “need to secure their elections” and could face penalties, including prison time.
“The states that choose not to participate with the SAVE Program and they choose not to participate in securing the elections, we will make sure that we make those states a priority to look at who voted in their states and hold then the election officials accountable,” he said. “If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections, and they chose not to — then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even, depending on how far it goes, prison time.”
Mullin’s press conference follows Trump’s speech Thursday evening, in which the president unveiled hundreds of declassified intelligence documents and cited a CIA report he said found that voter data in 18 states was “bought, stolen, or hacked by China,” starting during the 2020 election cycle. Those files are available on the White House website. Trump said China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in the illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files.
Democrats, such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), rebuked the speech as an effort to undermine faith in elections and said Trump was revising claims Democrats say falsely accuse Joe Biden of securing a rigged win in the 2020 election. Mullin sought to push back on such framing Friday, saying that election security is a non-partisan issue, and that the president’s speech wasn’t “about rehashing the 2020 election.”
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“This should be something that every American, regardless if you’re a Republican, you’re a Democrat, you’re an independent, you’re a Libertarian, regardless if you live in a blue state or you live in a red state — everybody should know that their vote counts, and we have individuals that are voting that shouldn’t be, and it cancels out someone that should be,” he said.
“There’s some really easy steps that can be taken to secure our elections,” Mullin added. “And it shouldn’t be a partisan issue.”
