Mullin threatens states as DHS launches widespread review of elections

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Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin went further than President Trump in an address on election security Friday, asserting foreign adversaries could hack voter machines, threatening states that refuse to partner with his department and saying he would use “maximum pressure” to root out any illegally cast votes.

While Trump in his primetime address Thursday called voting machines “vulnerable and they’re easily compromised,” Mullin raised the specter of hackers entering such systems to manually change votes — something the U.S. intelligence community has concluded has never happened. Voting machines are not connected to the internet and are backed up by paper ballots.

He also said state election officials will pay a price if they refuse to cooperate with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) efforts, laying the groundwork to access states’ vote tabulators and even their voter rolls — something various courts have repeatedly denied federal government efforts to access.

“We’re not trying to get into anything else, but we’re saying that the machines had to be secured and that your voter restoration list needs to be scrubbed,” he told reporters on Friday.

“I will tell you if the states choose not to participate — we will make sure that we make those states a priority to look at who voted in their states and hold the election officials accountable,” he added.

Mullin spent much of the press conference exploring the possibility that noncitizens might vote in elections, even though studies have found instances are incredibly rare.

The left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice found 30 instances of noncitizen voting out of 23.5 million votes as it reviewed in the 2016 election. Meanwhile, the conservative Heritage Foundation found just 24 instances of noncitizen voting over the 20-year period between 2003 and 2023.

However, even as Mullin argued that as many as 287,000 noncitizens may be registered to vote — a figure for which Trump officials have provided little evidence — that number was eclipsed by the number of dead voters, some 400,0000, he claimed are still on voter rolls.

Ahead of Mullin’s press conference, the DHS said it had mailed letters to four states where a “preliminary review” found that as many as 250,000 noncitizens had been registered to vote — though it did not argue any of them had cast a ballot.

DHS did not respond to a request from The Hill seeking copies of the letter.

However, a copy of one of the letters obtained by The Hill found gaps in the numbers DHS publicized and those they communicated to states and little explanation for how it reached its topline estimate.

“Preliminary review of the records revealed that there may be as many as 14,576 non-citizens registered to vote in Pennsylvania. As an example, we found 8,594 Pennsylvania registrants for whom the name, date of birth, address and Social Security number match a non-citizen in our files,” the DHS wrote in the letter.

“The most efficient way to ensure the accuracy of our findings is to work collaboratively on identity verification.”

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt, a Republican, dismissed the idea of giving the DHS access to its voter rolls, which he said are maintained and updated.

“In Pennsylvania, every voter must take steps to verify their identity before they cast a ballot, including providing proper identification every time they register to vote, vote by mail, or vote at a new polling place. All evidence has shown that noncitizen voting is extremely rare across the country, including in Pennsylvania,” he said.

“While the Department has made clear that we cannot share Pennsylvanians’ private, personal information, we will review any information provided by DHS so that we can evaluate the validity of these claims.”

The court system has repeatedly barred the federal government from accessing state voter rolls, with Democracy Docket, a group run by Democratic election attorney Marc Elias, noting the Justice Department had lost 15 court battles on the matter without a single victory. The majority of those rulings, they said, were from judges appointed by Republican presidents.

Mullin fumed Thursday about judges stopping a number of different White House and DHS efforts regarding elections.

“Activist judges are saying what? They don’t want to secure our elections? Once again, how is this a partisan issue? 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.

Mullin would like to see states use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements database to verify whether voters are citizens. The database is designed to help verify whether someone is eligible for programs like Medicaid and food stamps, and Democratic lawmakers have said it should not be used for voting as it has been found both to be out of date and contain inaccuracies.

Mullin renewed plans to withhold grant money from states that don’t comply with the demand to use that program as well as other new mandates.

He repeatedly referenced the need to “scrub” voter lists.

“We’re not trying to change the outcome. We’re trying to make sure that American people can trust our voting system,” he said.

“Before and after the election, we will scrub all election records looking for illegal aliens and those who are ineligible to vote, including those that somehow voted yet they were deceased. If you’re illegal and attempted to vote, or you tried to vote illegally for someone else, we will find you and we will charge you,” noting those who do so could face up to five years in prison.

“We will pursue maximum pressure on this. To let you know, we will be proactively looking at early voting, and then after post-election, we will continue to scrub all those that did vote.”

Nevada one of the states DHS said had high volumes of noncitizens registered to vote, said it had not received the letter DHS said it had sent.

Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar (D) noted repeated attempts to get Nevada voter information that he described as efforts to undermine elections.

“The Trump Administration has persistently asked us for information regarding our voter data and made demands without answering basic questions – we have provided them with detailed information repeatedly on how Nevada maintains its list of eligible voters. There are numerous safeguards in place to prevent noncitizens, or anyone ineligible to vote, from casting a ballot. The Administration lacks a fundamental understanding of how elections work,” he said in a statement.

“They just want to cause chaos and doubt ahead of the midterms.”

While Mullin stressed the need for election security, the Trump administration has made cuts to a number of entities that helped secure them, including at DHS, where the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has seen widespread cuts, including to its election teams.

Updated at 1:09 p.m. EDT.

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