DHS Secretary threatens jail for state officials defying Trump's voter roll purge demands

The Trump administration has pledged to block federal grants unless states "scrub" their voter rolls and has threatened to imprison state officials who refuse to comply.

Key Announcement

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin announced during a press conference in Washington on Friday that state officials who defy the administration's new election demands could face jail time.

"If the states choose not to participate with the state program, and they choose not to participate in securing the elections, we will make sure that we make those states a priority to look at who voted in their states, and hold them—the election officials—accountable," Mullin said. "If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections, and they chose not to, then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even—depending on how far it goes—prison time."

Context

The pledge came hours after Donald Trump delivered a national address that included numerous factual inaccuracies and vast exaggerations about his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, and weaponized those conspiracies in an attempt to undermine American trust in future elections.

Mullin also stated:

"Working with [Commerce] Secretary [Howard] Lutnick, we are going to make our security enhancements mandatory. Meaning that if these states want a grant, and they want to be reimbursed to run federal elections, they are going to have to implement security issues. Just security issues. We're not trying to get into anything else, but we're saying that the machines have to be secured and that your voter registration lists need to be scrubbed."

"We need to make sure that individuals legally able to vote are voting."

Legal Concerns

The homeland security chief made the announcement while standing in front of several American flags, despite the fact that the entire scheme is likely illegal and that he is acting far outside the limitations of his office and the executive branch. Homeland Security lacks the necessary authority to either withhold federal grants or force states to purge voter rolls. Only Congress has the power to do that.

Voter Fraud Data

Voter fraud remains a statistical nonissue in American elections. For example, a 2024 statewide audit in Georgia—the epicenter of one of Trump's baseless 2020 theories—revealed that 20 non-citizens out of 8.2 million residents existed on the state's voter roll, representing just 0.00024 percent of the state's voting population. Of those 20, only nine participated in elections many years ago, before ID was required as part of the voter verification process. The other 11 individuals were registered but never actually voted, according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

This story has been updated.

Related Coverage

Read more about Trump's conspiracies:

• Intel Docs Declassified by Trump Expose All His Election Fraud Claims

Fox News Buries Trump's Election Speech

President Trump's Thursday night address to the nation about election fraud was full of inaccuracies, previously known information, and claims unsupported by evidence. On Fox News—the largest conservative TV network, which Trump watches regularly—the speech received little attention on Friday morning.

Matthew Gertz of Media Matters, a nonprofit that monitors right-wing media, wrote that Fox News's Friday morning programming prioritized several other stories over Trump's speech. Among the stories covered were:

• Caitlin Clark's WNBA game Thursday night
• New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's policies toward landlords
• Fox's World Cup coverage for Sunday's final
• Secretary of State Marco Rubio's antifa summit Thursday

Fox & Friends did not mention the speech at all.

This continues the network's treatment of the speech from the previous night. Laura Ingraham did not...