President Donald Trump announced Thursday that his administration will work with state and local jurisdictions to address known election-system vulnerabilities and better protect voter data ahead of the November midterm elections.
During a primetime address from the White House, Trump said his administration was in the process of notifying states whose election data had been compromised by the People’s Republic of China and others.
“In light of the brand new and irrefutable information I have revealed tonight, my administration is in the process of notifying the states whose election data was compromised by the People’s Republic of China and many others, we will be working closely to mitigate any harm, and we’re taking swift action to ensure that sensitive voter data is better protected, so we can never be bought, we can never be hacked, and we can never watch a stolen election again.”
“Tomorrow, the Secretary of Homeland Security will hold a briefing to outline his department’s recent work confirming cyber vulnerabilities in our electronic voting systems. They are bad,” the president continued. “We’re in the process of informing governors, senators, and members of Congress of potential issues in their states. If you look at voting today, it’s in such bad shape in so many states, and we are committing to fix it.”
“And we’re also committing to be working with those states and local jurisdictions to help them fix and patch known technical vulnerabilities before the midterm elections. We have very important elections coming up. We want those elections to be honest. I’ve also ordered DHS to notify every state about non-citizens on their voter rolls and direct them to remove all ineligible voters from the lists immediately,” Trump said.
The White House on Thursday released declassified intelligence records, including a document indicating that voter rolls in at least 18 states had been “compromised” by China and that more than 200 million voter records had been compromised. The document publicly named Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island, as well as the District of Columbia. “President Trump is alerting Congressional and state government leadership officials to the election infrastructure vulnerabilities in states identified by name in the declassified intelligence records,” the July 13 document stated.
Trump also said a Department of Homeland Security review identified approximately 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote in federal elections after comparing state voter-registration lists with public records, arguing that the number could be higher because several Democrat-led states did not provide their voter files. “Since Democrat states refused to share their voter files, the real number is actually much higher than that,” Trump said. The president also claimed that foreign governments possess substantial amounts of American voter data and that voting machines and ballot-tabulation systems remain vulnerable to hacking and manipulation. “Hundreds of millions of U.S. voter files are in the hands of foreign governments,” Trump said, adding, “Our machines and ballot counting systems are exposed to hacking, manipulation, and corruption.”
Watch DHS Secretary Mullin speak at an election integrity briefing here.