By Doina Chiacu and AJ Vicens
WASHINGTON, July 17 (Reuters) – U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin asked election officials in four states to check voter rolls for people who are not U.S. citizens, a day after President Donald Trump renewed unsubstantiated claims of past election interference.
In a statement on Friday following Trump’s prime-time address on election security, Mullin said he sent a letter to secretaries of state in California, New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania citing preliminary reviews of the states’ records.
DHS cited a number of potential violations in each state, but offered no evidence to corroborate its tallies in the statement.
Mullin asked the secretaries of state to respond within two weeks and confirm that they would work with DHS on election security, the statement said.
Mullin told reporters on Friday that election officials who did not take the steps the agency wanted to “secure their elections” could be “held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even, depending on how far it goes, prison time.”
Nevada’s top election official rejected Mullin’s assertions.
“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 Nevada maintains its list of eligible voters and the safeguards that are in place to prevent fraud.
New Jersey, Pennsylvania and California did not respond to a request for comment on the DHS letter.
Mullin said on X that DHS had identified more than 250,000 potential non-citizens illegally registered to vote in the four states, and called for passage of Trump-backed legislation known as the SAVE America Act. Mullin repeated the claim in comments to reporters Friday but did not detail the criteria DHS used to compile the figure.
BEHIND THE NUMBERS
Trump has pressed fellow Republicans in Congress to pass the bill, which imposes new voter identification and citizenship requirements despite established findings that voter fraud is rare in the United States.
Trump escalated his effort to make election security a central issue in November’s midterm elections on Thursday evening, 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.
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 directly manipulate U.S. elections.
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 election security plan.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu, AJ Vicens in Detroit; editing by Michelle Nichols and Deepa Babington)
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