DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin Orders MANDATORY Random Paper Ballot Audits for 2026 Midterms — Warns Chinese-Made Voting Machine Parts Pose “Significant Security Risks”

The Trump administration is taking another major step to secure America’s elections ahead of the critical 2026 midterms.

The Department of Homeland Security will require states seeking full Homeland Security Grant Program awards to conduct random, post-election manual counts of paper ballots, providing a physical check against results produced by electronic voting systems.

In an August 24 letter to the White House Transparency Task Force, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned that voting machines containing components manufactured by foreign adversaries create “significant security risks.”

“There is no question that election security is national security,” Mullin wrote.

Under the new grant requirement, states must demonstrate that they conducted “random post-election manual counts of paper ballots” before receiving their full awards, according to Mullin’s letter.

Translation: States that want every federal grant dollar will have to trust—but verify—the results generated by their voting machines.

The policy does not require officials to hand-count every ballot. However, earlier DHS election-security guidance required grant recipients to manually audit at least 5% of all ballots cast, reconcile the number of participating voters with the number of ballots, and develop plans to transition away from electronic systems that use barcodes or QR codes to tabulate votes.

The agency also required states to use the federal SAVE system or another authorized government database for certain citizenship-verification measures.

This is a major development for Americans who have spent years demanding voter-verifiable paper records, meaningful post-election audits, and transparency in the machines used to count their votes.

Mullin’s letter also sounded the alarm over America’s dependence on foreign-manufactured voting-machine components.

According to the secretary, three companies, Election Systems & Software, Hart InterCivic, and Dominion, control more than 80% of the American voting-system market. Representatives from all three companies have previously acknowledged that their systems contain components manufactured in China.

Mullin warned that compromised components could potentially provide hackers with an entry point before voting machines are even assembled or deployed. A malicious actor could theoretically exploit the same compromised component across multiple machines or jurisdictions.

The letter did not announce an immediate ban on all Chinese-made components. In fact, Mullin acknowledged that American voting-system manufacturers currently depend on foreign suppliers because certain hardware reportedly cannot be sourced domestically.

That dependence is precisely why independent paper records and manual audits are so important.

If an electronic system produces an incorrect result, whether because of programming errors, defective equipment, foreign interference, or deliberate manipulation, officials need a physical ballot that can be examined by human beings.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, the Trump administration was preparing to condition federal homeland-security funding on states adopting manual audits, documentary citizenship verification, and paper-based voting safeguards.

States refusing to implement the reforms faced losing a portion of more than $1 billion in federal security grants.

The Gateway Pundit also reported in July 2025 that Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers asked President Trump and then-Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to investigate foreign components embedded in Arizona’s election infrastructure.

Rogers specifically raised concerns about Chinese-manufactured microchips, circuit boards, and networking hardware used in vote tabulators, electronic pollbooks, ballot-printing equipment, election-management software, and reporting systems.

Those warnings can no longer be casually dismissed.

The Gateway Pundit further reported in April on a declassified National Intelligence Council assessment concluding that Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea possessed the capability to access and potentially manipulate data in American election-related computer systems.

The assessment did not identify a specific plan to manipulate an election, but it documented vulnerabilities involving voter-registration databases, electronic pollbooks, and voting machines.

President Trump’s election-integrity agenda has consistently demanded voter-verifiable paper ballots, stronger voting-equipment standards, accurate voter rolls, documentary proof of citizenship, and enforcement of the federal Election Day deadline.

Now DHS is using the power of the purse to force states to take basic safeguards seriously.