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Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin went further than President Trump in an address on election security Friday, asserting foreign adversaries could hack voter machines, threatening states that refuse to partner with his department and saying he would use “maximum pressure” to root out any illegally cast votes.
While Trump in his primetime address Thursday called voting machines “vulnerable and they’re easily compromised,” Mullin raised the specter of hackers entering such systems to manually change votes — something the U.S. intelligence community has concluded has never happened.
He also said state election officials will pay a price if they refuse to cooperate with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) efforts, laying the groundwork to access states’ vote tabulators and even their voter rolls — something various courts have repeatedly denied federal government efforts to access.
“We’re not trying to get into anything else, but we’re saying that the machines had to be secured and that your voter restoration list needs to be scrubbed,” he told reporters on 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.
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