By Doina Chiacu and AJ Vicens
WASHINGTON, July 17 (Reuters) – U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened state officials with fines and criminal charges on Friday if they do not comply with election security measures, as President Donald Trump renewed false claims of past election fraud.
At a news conference on Friday following the Republican president’s prime-time address on election security, Mullin outlined steps the Department of Homeland Security wanted states to take to ensure people who are not U.S. citizens cannot vote.
The steps include securing voting machines and reviewing voter registration lists to verify citizenship status. If states do not follow the instructions, Mullin said, the federal government will look at who voted in those states and hold election officials accountable.
“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 said.
On Thursday evening, Trump escalated his effort to make election security a central issue in November’s midterm elections, asserting that China interfered in the 2020 presidential campaign despite a U.S. intelligence assessment that found no evidence to support that claim.
Republicans are facing the prospect of losing one or both chambers of Congress in November with Trump’s approval rating weighed down by the unpopular Iran war and high energy prices.
CLASH OVER NUMBERS
Mullin said DHS had identified more than 250,000 potential non-citizens illegally registered to vote in just four states. He said he sent a letter asking secretaries of state in California, New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania to review their voter rolls and respond within two weeks.
DHS listed a number of what it said were potential violations in each state, but offered no evidence to corroborate its tallies. Mullin did not detail the criteria DHS used to compile the figures.
Nevada’s top election official disputed Mullin’s data.
“We can affirm that on its face, we refute these claims,” Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said in an email. “These numbers are wildly speculative at best and the Department of Homeland Security hasn’t shared anything that backs it up.”
He said Nevada has repeatedly provided DHS with detailed information on how it maintains its list of eligible voters and the safeguards that are in place to prevent fraud.
Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, Al Schmidt, said the state would review information provided by DHS “to evaluate the validity of these claims” but would not share citizens’ private information.
Every person in Pennsylvania must verify their identity before voting, he said, adding: “All evidence has shown that noncitizen voting is extremely rare across the country, including in Pennsylvania.”
California did not respond to a request for comment on the DHS letter. New Jersey referred to a joint statement from 24 Democratic governors criticizing Trump’s false claims about elections as attempts to intimidate and silence voters.
Courts have blocked Trump administration efforts to obtain state voter rolls, dealing a blow to its effort to boost the federal government’s role in elections.
VOTING MACHINES
Trump has spent years raising doubts about electoral outcomes, falsely asserting that his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden was rigged. He has also advanced other false claims, including that mail-in balloting is rife with fraud, voting machines are untrustworthy and non-citizen voting is widespread.
Numerous courts and vote recounts found no evidence of large-scale fraud in the 2020 election.
During his comments Friday, Mullin said that foreign adversaries “have parts that are vital pieces in our voting machines,” and that “they can access what they consider the key to the back of these machines.”
He added that the adversaries “can change voter registration and your vote. We know it’s possible.”
Mullin did not provide evidence for his claims. There have been no known attacks by foreign countries to manipulate U.S. elections directly.
Mullin also said the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency will release an “updated election infrastructure plan within 30 days.”
CISA did not immediately respond to questions about the updated plan.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu, AJ Vicens in Detroit; editing by Michelle Nichols, Deepa Babington and Cynthia Osterman)
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