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President Trump’s primetime address Thursday from the White House alleged vulnerabilities in the American election system, but the information shared largely didn’t reveal anything new and didn’t provide evidence that any election results from years past were fraudulent.
The president pointed to newly declassified documents that suggest foreign adversaries, particularly China, could interfere with future elections and suggested changes should be made, including passage of his signature voting bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote.
Here are five things to know about Trump’s election claims:
China trailed other US adversaries in meddling in elections
Trump’s biggest accusation of the night was that China was behind an effort to sway the 2020 election.
He accused China of acquiring more than 200 million U.S. voter files, which included individuals’ names, addresses, phone numbers, party affiliation and other sensitive data.
However, no hacking is required to obtain that data, which is routinely purchased by political parties in the United States.
A 2021 report from the intelligence community about foreign threats to the 2020 elections concluded with “high confidence” that China did not interfere in the election but did take steps to try to undermine Trump’s reelection. It also said China “probably” continued efforts to gather information on U.S. voters and public opinion to try to influence policy toward China, but that Beijing “did not interfere with election infrastructure, including vote tabulation or the transmission of election results.”
Trump said China has meddled in elections since the 2018 midterms “in an effort to reduce the U.S. president’s votes and make him resign or prevent his reelection,” he quoted from a CIA report.
He said China also tried to undermine his first administration in 2020, alleging that intelligence from the FBI that same year stated China even tried to create illegal ballots in favor of former President Biden.
China also had a strategy in 2019, he said, that “focused on undermining domestic confidence in the U.S. president.”
However, Trump failed to detail that in 2020, the intelligence community’s top concerns were primarily focused on influence efforts by Russia and Iran.
Among the documents included was a chart breaking down actions taken by Russia, China and Iran, showing that Russia was the only one attempting to target U.S. election processes.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington was quick to refute the president’s accusations.
“China has all along adhered to the principle of non-interference in other’s internal affairs. The US election is an internal matter of the US. Its outcome is determined by the votes of the American people. China has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections of the U.S.,” Liu Chang, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy, said in a statement Thursday.
Claims voting machines are susceptible to attack aren’t backed by experts
Trump said documents were declassified that show Americans were “blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure.”
One assessment, he said, showed that several U.S. adversaries — including Russia, China, Iran, North Korea — “have the capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure.”
He listed voter registration data, poll books and election websites as most vulnerable.
Though adversaries do routinely try to hack and access such information, none of those sites or databases is involved in the counting of ballots cast.
However, an analysis from January 2020 said the systems may be vulnerable to “local exploitation but would be difficult to manipulate on a wide enough scale to alter the election outcome,” a premise that the intelligence community has long concluded.
Trump also pointed to CIA documents that he said show that the Nicolás Maduro regime in Venezuela rigged voting machines to win an election as a way to argue the same could happen in the U.S.
One unclassified intelligence community report said from 2004 to 2020, Venezuelan officials “developed sustained interest and likely some capability in manipulating electronic voting systems … to influence electoral outcomes in Venezuela.”
However, it also states that the intelligence community concluded that neither the Venezuelan government nor the voting machines used “had the capability … to manipulate the outcome of an election outside of Venezuela.”
The type of machines used in Venezuela are only used in one location in the U.S., according to a CBS News report.
There has been no evidence of rigged machines in past U.S. elections. Experts point to the checks made before and after voting happens to show that machines aren’t easily compromised.
Most voting machines are also not connected to the internet, and there are ways for election officials to verify the accuracy of voting machines, like checking the paper ballots handed in.
No data to back claims thousands of noncitizens vote in US federal elections
The president claimed a review by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) found that roughly 278,000 noncitizens are registered to vote in federal elections. He added, since “Democrat states refuse to share their voter files, the real number is actually much higher than that.”
The DHS in a release said it had mailed letters to four states where a “preliminary review” found that as many as 250,000 noncitizens had been registered to vote — though it did not argue any of them had cast a ballot. But copies of the letters obtained by The Hill found gaps in the numbers DHS publicized and those communicated to states and little explanation for how it reached its top-line estimate. The DHS could only point to 118,000 voters it said may match information it has on file for a noncitizen.
Trump has repeatedly made the unsupported claim that Democrats want immigrants in the country illegally to come into the U.S. so they can register them to receive their vote.
The Justice Department is seeking voter lists from all 50 states and D.C., but Democratic states have fought the move and prevailed in court, with the Department of Justice losing 15 battles and winning none.
Studies have found that noncitizen voting is incredibly rare. The Bipartisan Policy Center found that nationwide, records show that just 0.04 percent of voter verification cases show up as noncitizens.
The conservative Heritage Foundation found just 24 instances of noncitizen voting between 2003 and 2023.
Trump zoned in on specific states
The president said files were declassified about the widely debunked claim of voter-registration fraud in Muskegon, Mich., from 2020. While an investigation found some fraudulent voter registrations, they were ultimately voided, and no votes by those individuals were cast.
The incident was referred to the FBI in 2021, but no one was charged.
Trump on Thursday directed FBI Director Kash Patel to reopen the investigation to “ensure that the matter is fully investigated.”
Michigan officials were quick to bash Trump for bringing up the claims.
“As health care costs escalate and millions of Americans struggle to make ends meet, the President of the United States chose tonight not to discuss any plans to address those critical needs. Instead, he chose to rehash long debunked and baseless conspiracy theories about an election he lost almost six years ago,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) said in a statement to news outlets.
Trump also pointed to the elections for California’s governor and Los Angeles’s mayor as “one example of the insanity” because of how long it took for the mail-in ballots to be counted. The primary election was last month, but the official certification of the race was last week. Vote counting in California takes a long time because of the high percentage of mail-in ballots.
The president has long tried to discredit mail-in ballots, despite using them himself and analysis showing that mail-in voting fraud is rare.
What’s next?
During his speech, the president used the examples to push for the passage of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and ID shown at the polls.
The legislation has been stuck in Congress. Trump is desperate to get it passed while Republicans maintain it’s not possible. Various versions of the contentious legislation have failed to pass the Senate already.
During his speech, he also directed agencies like the FBI, Justice Department, CIA and director of national intelligence to investigate various pieces of his claims.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Friday went even further than Trump, threatening state election officials if they refuse to cooperate with the department’s efforts.
“We’re not trying to get into anything else, but we’re saying that the machines had to be secured and that your voter registration list needs to be scrubbed,” he told reporters Friday.
“I will tell you if the states choose not to participate — we will make sure that we make those states a priority to look at who voted in their states and hold the election officials accountable,” he added.
Mullin said “maximum pressure” will be used.
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