Around 250,000 noncitizens were found in New Jersey, California, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, Secretary Markwayne Mullin said.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Friday said that states that do not purge their voter rolls of potentially ineligible voters and noncitizens could lose funding.
It came as he said the DHS has identified more than 250,000 noncitizens who were illegally on voter registration rolls in four states: California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Nevada.
“We know Iran hacked state voter files and attempted to compromise our systems where military members used to vote,” he said, adding that DHS “security enhancements” will be mandatory.
“If these states want a grant, and they want to be reimbursed to run federal elections, they’re going to have to implement security measures.”
Voting systems have to be secured, and voter registration lists need to be “scrubbed,” Mullin said.
“We need to make sure that individuals that are legally able to vote are voting,” he said.
“President Trump is correct when he said that election security is national security … this is just exposing what took place and to make sure it never happens again.
“And there’s some really easy steps that can be taken to secure our elections, and it shouldn’t be a partisan issue.”
Mullin said he is asking election officials in those four states to check voter rolls for people who are not American citizens, saying that it’s not a “partisan issue” to safeguard the process.
“We will secure our elections,” he said, adding that DHS has a mandate to “keep our voters safe and our elections safe.”
The remarks from Mullin follow a speech given by President Donald Trump on July 16 in which he detailed what he said were significant irregularities and flaws in the 2020 election and problems with voter rolls in states.
He called to pass a voter identification bill that is currently stalled in Congress.
“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 in his speech on Thursday.
“But most importantly, addressing this crisis of election security demands that Congress must pass the SAVE America Act.”
Trump was referring to the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, a highly debated election bill that would mandate voters to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote and present valid photo identification to cast ballots in federal elections.
It was passed in the House but faces opposition in the Senate.
The Trump administration has called on Republican senators who hold the majority to remove the legislative filibuster to pass it, although Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has said his party lacks the votes to do so.
Trump said in his address that recent intelligence findings showed that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and other foreign adversaries tried to meddle in the 2020 election, that there was evidence of voter fraud being buried, that hundreds of thousands of deceased people and noncitizens are active on voter rolls, and that voting systems were exposed to manipulation and hacking attempts.
“This vital information has for many years been covered up and hidden from you,” Trump said.
The White House on Thursday concurrently released sections of documents related to alleged vulnerabilities in U.S. voting systems, China having acquired and exploited U.S. voter data, the results of a Michigan voter-registration investigation, and details on noncitizens on state voter rolls.
