Trump DHS using unverified figures to attack election officials on non-citizen voting
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is pushing claims that hundreds of thousands of non-citizens are registered to vote across several battleground states. In recent press statements, the department cited a figure of a quarter-million potential registrations in California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. However, internal correspondence from the agency tells a different story. Letters sent to these states characterize the data as unverified and suggest the numbers represent potential matches rather than confirmed non-citizens.
State election officials from both parties report that the data provided by the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system requires further vetting before any conclusions are drawn. In Georgia, for instance, officials noted that only a small fraction of the individuals flagged by the federal system had any history of casting a ballot. Despite this, the administration is pushing for full access to sensitive voter rolls to conduct audits, leading to legal standoffs in multiple jurisdictions.
Legal challenges against this data collection effort have intensified. More than a dozen courts have ruled in favor of states that refused to hand over their voter registration files. One federal judge even declared the specific DHS program central to these audits to be illegal. Secretary Mullin has criticized these rulings and warned that state election officials could face fines or potential imprisonment if they do not comply with federal demands to participate in the reviews.
Secretaries of State across the country have rejected the administration’s characterization of the data. Many describe the federal pressure as speculative and suggest that the threat of prosecution ignores the standard procedures for list maintenance. Officials emphasize that non-citizen voting remains an extremely rare occurrence and that they have not received sufficient evidence from federal authorities to substantiate the claims of widespread registration errors. The standoff continues as states stand their ground against the federal requests for private voter data.