The Trump administration is escalating its attacks on election officials in key battleground states, with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin doubling down Friday on claims that hundreds of thousands of non-citizens are illegally registered to vote – claims that the agency has quietly acknowledged aren’t fully vetted.
In a news conference, Mullin repeated the claim first made in a release of documents alongside President Donald Trump’s primetime Thursday night speech, alleging that DHS had found a cumulative quarter-million non-citizens registered in California, New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
However, letters from DHS to the states informing them of the allegations are more hedged.
Mullin’s letter to Pennsylvania, for instance, notes that the figure is unverified. It says that there “may be as many as 14,576 non-citizens on the states voter rolls,” but that 8,594 came up as matches as non-citizens on its files. It asks for Pennsylvania’s help on working “collaboratively on identity verification” to more efficiently “ensure the accuracy of our findings.”
The Trump administration is attempting to force states to hand over sensitive voter data so that the Justice Department can audit their voter registration files. State election officials of both parties have told CNN they fear that the administration would use the data to exaggerate the problem of non-citizen voting, as a way to sow doubt about the midterm results, if Republicans fare poorly.
