Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin defended Donald Trump's disputed election claims on Friday, using figures from a DHS review to amplify accusations of widespread voter registration problems that election experts and state officials have quickly challenged.
Trump cited the DHS review during a Thursday prime time address in which he claimed the election system falls "catastrophically short" of "greatness," though the speech offered no new information about threats to election security. Mullin used a Friday press conference to expand on those claims, presenting data his agency says supports concerns about noncitizen voting.
"This isn't about rehashing the 2020 election. This is just exposing what took place, and to make sure it never happens again," Mullin said.
The secretary claimed DHS identified 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote across California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada. But David Becker, executive director of the non-partisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, said the administration has not been transparent about the methodology behind that figure.
The methodology itself contains significant gaps. Mullin's letters to state secretaries of state describe matches between names, dates of birth, addresses, and Social Security numbers in DHS files with those of people on voter rolls. But as Mullin acknowledged, these matches have not been verified. More critically, registration does not equal voting, and citizenship status can change over time, meaning his department would need to prove individuals were noncitizens at the moment they cast a ballot, not merely when they registered.
Pennsylvania's Republican Secretary of State Al Schmidt responded directly to the claims on Thursday, stating that voters in his state "must take steps to verify their identity before they cast a ballot" and that "all evidence has shown that noncitizen voting is extremely rare across the country, including in Pennsylvania."
Mullin also cited 28,000 noncitizens identified on voter rolls across more than 20 states working with the DHS Save program, which verifies citizenship status. Becker noted this figure represents only 0.04 percent of the 68 million eligible voters in those states, suggesting the scale of the problem is far smaller than the administration's rhetoric implies.
During the press conference, Mullin invoked a familiar threat: withholding federal grant money from states unwilling to "secure" elections. He warned that states refusing to cooperate should "raise serious questions," though the federal government has lost multiple lawsuits seeking access to state voter rolls containing personal data of millions of Americans.
Mullin also repeated claims about voting machine vulnerabilities that contradict expert consensus. He suggested foreign adversaries have access to "vital pieces" in American voting machines and echoed Trump's references to alleged Venezuelan involvement in US elections. However, cybersecurity professionals and election officials consistently note that voting machines are not connected to the internet and undergo rigorous testing before each election. The CIA analysis Mullin appeared to reference concerned vulnerabilities in voting technology used only in Venezuela by Smartmatic, not in US systems. Longstanding claims that Venezuelan leadership controls electronic voting worldwide, including in 2020, remain unsupported by credible evidence.
Mullin stated without evidence that rivals can "change voter registration and your vote," declaring the matter beyond debate.
Author James Rodriguez: "Mullin is wrapping unsupported claims in the authority of a federal agency, but the numbers don't match the alarm, and election officials across the political spectrum are calling out the gaps in his argument."
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