The Department of Homeland Security is requiring random paper-ballot audits for the midterms, citing foreign-made parts in U.S. voting machines and the risk that a compromised component could open the door to hidden, widespread vote-count manipulation.
In a letter to the White House Transparency Task Force, Secretary Markwayne Mullin said “election security is national security” and that he has directed DHS to prioritize it. He warned that voting machines with parts made by foreign adversaries “introduce significant security risks,” because a component could be tampered with during manufacturing, before the machine is even assembled, and used as a way into multiple machines and jurisdictions at once.
Mullin noted nine vendors supply U.S. voting systems, and three of them—ES&S, Hart InterCivic, and Dominion—control more than 80% of the market. All three have acknowledged using Chinese-made parts. Dominion’s then-CEO told Congress some hardware simply has “no alternative suppliers.” ES&S said some components are sole-sourced and built into the circuit design.
To get full Homeland Security Grant Program awards, Mullin wrote, states must show they conducted random post-election manual counts of paper ballots so errors or manipulation can be caught. FEMA will withhold 20% of the award until a state proves it complied. DHS also tied the money to a plan to move off barcode and QR-code counting systems and onto equipment that takes hand-marked paper ballots, a manual audit of at least 5% of ballots after each federal election, matching the number of voters to the number of ballots cast, and running everyone on the voter rolls through SAVE to check citizenship within 120 days of accepting the grant.
DHS is also seeking a contractor to gather publicly available voter registration files—and, where available, voter history from federal general, primary, runoff, and special elections—for Homeland Security Investigations fraud-detection work. Collections would start with a limited set of jurisdictions and may expand. The agency says it does not want party affiliation and that the contractor must stay politically neutral.
