State and local officials and election security experts largely panned a Thursday night primetime speech by President Donald Trump, saying it was reflective of White House “desperation” to find any credible evidence to support their claims that U.S. elections have been rigged against the two-term president.

While the White House teased explosive new claims about the potential compromise of U.S. elections by China, Trump’s speech was a rehash of claims that both have no supporting evidence and have been repeatedly debunked when investigated. 

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research and a former voting and civil rights attorney at the Department of Justice, said none of Trump’s claims or allegations were new or substantively different from previous theories he’s been espousing over the past six years.

“The White House promised a bombshell and they delivered a dud,” Becker said on a call with reporters Friday. “There was nothing that even calls into question past elections — certainly not the 2020 election.”

The administration declassified a huge tranche of documents from the intelligence agencies, and news outlets continue to sift through them, but thus far nothing has been found that remotely validates the administration’s claims about foreign interference from China costing Trump the 2020 election.

In fact, some of the most relevant documents found at this point have supported the opposite conclusion, with agencies assessing that while China engaged in influence campaigns around the election, it was not attempting to outright interfere with U.S. election infrastructure, hack voting machines or manipulate ballots.

John Solomon, a former journalist and opinion writer at The Hill brought in by the White House to lead the investigation, also told reporters Thursday that his search hasn’t turned up evidence that the 2020, 2022 or 2024 elections were affected by fraud.

The one new major claim by Trump — that the Department of Homeland Security determined hundreds of thousands of noncitizens were registered to vote across four states — is almost certainly false or overinflated, given that it contradicts post-election state audits that have routinely found single or double-digit numbers of noncitizens registered to vote within a single state across multiple elections.

Over the past six years, similar claims by GOP secretaries of state and political activists purporting to find mass numbers of noncitizens registered to vote have turned out to be grossly inflated due to shoddy data analysis, and the vast majority of cases involving “suspected noncitizens” turn out to be U.S. citizens who are legally registered to vote.

The White House has provided little to no information on the methodology used to flag and identify supposed noncitizen voters, other than alluding to the use of “commercial data” and federal databases. A federal court recently ordered DHS to dismantle the SAVE database, its primary database for verifying the citizenship status of U.S. voters, because it was unreliable and violated longstanding privacy laws. 

 Apart from DHS admitting its own data on citizenship is incomplete, Becker said using a list that relies on matching voter files with commercial data is not a reliable way of determining citizenship.

“It is impossible to take a public voter file with very little information that is uniquely identified, like a driver’s license number, and compare it to a commercial database and say for sure the Maria Rodriguez or the John Lee or the Shawn O’Hara you have on that is the same person,” he said.

Election officials also responded forcefully. Nevada Democratic Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said that Trump has spent a decade attempting to manufacture a crisis around voter fraud and the president’s speech Thursday night was an extension of that effort. 

“As Nevada’s chief elections officer, it’s my job to call balls and strikes — so when the President lies, I am obligated to call him out,” Aguilar said in a statement. “The facts have not changed: Nevada’s elections are among the safest, most secure and accessible in the nation.”

It’s not just Democrats that have objected to the administration’s efforts. GOP states have gone to court to block the Department of Justice from obtaining their voter data, and Idaho’s Republican secretary of state responded to a DOJ letter threatening prosecution of election officials as “not well met” and potentially illegal under state ethics laws. 

Trump’s speech potentially casts additional light on recent White House decisions, such as firing all three commissioners on the Election Assistance Commission. The agency helps certify voting machines for security, and all three commissioners have served across administrations and maintain close relationships with state and local election officials.  

Pamela Smith, CEO of the nonprofit Verified Voting, said that while the EAC can’t take certain actions that need commissioner approval, “critical functions like voting system testing and certification can continue under the existing framework and should not be affected.”

In 2020, Trump’s initial claims of widespread election fraud were undercut by leaders at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which said there was no evidence the election was compromised. The removal of EAC commissioners could represent an attempt to preempt any efforts to rebut or criticize White House claims that elections and voting machines have been compromised.

Some have worried that Trump could use the speech as a pretext to declare a national emergency or cancel elections.

Tom Lopach, CEO of the Voter Participation Center, said “you don’t dismantle election security infrastructure if you’re serious about protecting elections.”

“You dismantle it if you’re planning to claim, without evidence, that the system failed you,” he said. 

While Becker takes Trump’s broadsides against state election authority seriously, he also said it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that, in his view, the administration is losing the argument across the board.

More than a dozen federal courts have unanimously rejected the federal government’s attempts to forcibly obtain state voter data, while other courts have rejected core pieces of his election-related executive orders. State officials have publicly — and at times, angrily — pushed back on the administration’s demands as blatant federal overreach. 

Becker predicted that such an act would be quickly shot down by courts as well, noting that the U.S. has never canceled or postponed an election in its 250-year history, including when British troops were marauding on American soil during the War of 1812 or even at the height of the Civil War.

It’s important not to conflate the White House’s bluster and intentions with its actual authorities or capability to seize control of U.S. elections.

“This is what panic and desperation look like,” Becker said. “They’ve had 18 months in total control of the federal government and they have found nothing that would support President Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, and so they’re just trying to grab as much garbage as they can and throw it up against the wall, and it’s not sticking.”

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The Trump administration’s abrupt firing of Election Assistance Commission commissioners last week and a Department of Justice warning threatening states with criminal prosecution have created new legal peril for officials who run, administer and secure elections.

The EAC is an obscure but important agency that oversees testing and standards for voting machines, including around security. While federal certification is voluntary, states have until now relied upon their stamp of approval when purchasing voting machines. 

On July 10, Democratic Commissioners Ben Hovland and Thomas Hicks were fired by the White House, while reports indicate that a third Commissioner, Republican Christy McCormick, resigned. While Congress mandated the commission be bipartisan, the Supreme Court has recently given the President broad authority to fire executive branch officials at will.

In an interview with NPR, Hovland said he worried the firings would further erode trust that the commission was working in a bipartisan manner.

“And as you eliminate things – or if you get rid of commissioners, for example – or as you eliminate some of these other sort of safeguards or norms, it certainly strains the system,” said Hovland. “And it certainly also likely causes people to lose faith in our democracy and in the process and their confidence in our elections. And that’s very concerning.”

A letter also sent last week to all 50 states by the DOJ said the department will investigate and prosecute any election official “who knowingly retains non-citizens on the state’s voter registration list or facilitates noncitizens in receiving and casting ballots.”

CyberScoop spoke with several Secretaries of State who said that the number one threat facing elections in their state is not from a foreign country or AI but their own federal government. 

Tobias Read, the Democratic Secretary of State for Oregon, told CyberScoop that his office is focused on providing the state’s 36 county clerks with the resources and support they need to carry out a smooth election. But he acknowledged that his office is “playing defense in a lot of ways [from] the intrusion from the federal government” that continues to assert its authority over local elections.

“If the president were actually serious about election security, he would be sending more resources to local election officials and bolstering the system rather than cutting it,” said Read.

This year, several counties in Oregon will offer voters access to a new ballot tracking system that provides text or email updates when a voter’s ballot is moving through mail and has been certified.  Reed estimated at “pennies per voter per election” and called it a good option for cash-strapped counties to assure voters their ballots are secure and properly tracked.

At the same time, Read said federal agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency – which once regularly deployed cybersecurity and technical expertise to help states fix vulnerabilities and share threat intelligence – have largely gone quiet.

Oregon ranks in the top ten states for voter participation and relies heavily on mail-in voting.  However, state officials like Read lack confidence in the US Postal Service. Though a recent Supreme Court decision blocked an executive order giving the service control over mail-in ballot distribution, officials like Read are urging voters to take other measures to use drop boxes instead as a  safer alternative to ensure their vote is counted.

Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Secretary of State and a Democrat running for reelection, said his office is focused on primary elections and processing the mail ballots that have been arriving “for a while.”

After Iranian hackers defaced Arizona’s candidate bio portal last year, Fontes moved to fill a widening gap: the Trump administration’s withdrawal of federal foreign interference training and support. His office is now directly supporting local jurisdictions on election security while coordinating more closely with state law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and other states.

But it’s being done with a fraction of the resources and coordination that the federal government brought to bear under both the Biden and first Trump administrations. While Fontes said he maintains positive personal relationships within the Department of Homeland Security, his office does not have a formal relationship with CISA.

“We’ve hobbled together a loose and often informal network of information sharing – that doesn’t violate any rules, it doesn’t break any laws – but it is certainly not anywhere near as robust as it would be if we had a responsible federal agency that was interested in the security of American elections,” said Fontes.

He said even if CISA offered such services today, he wouldn’t accept it, citing the lack of trust between states and the Trump administration.

“They have proven through their actions that they don’t want to be effective partners in protecting the American electorate and protecting American voters,” said Fontes. “Because of that, the clear answer, the only sensible answer for someone like me, would be to say ‘No, I don’t want the help of people I cannot trust.’ People who have demonstrably and explicitly threatened me and local election administrators of all political stripes with criminal prosecution.”

After this story’s initial publication, CISA acting director Nick Andersen said the agency remains committed working with “with critical infrastructure owners and operators to assist them in securing both the physical security and cybersecurity of the systems and assets that support the nation’s election process.”

“We provide state and local election officials, upon request, no-cost voluntary services such as the sharing of threat information, technical expertise, vulnerability scanning, and resilience-building support,” said Andersen in a statement sent to CyberScoop. “Our regional teams assist partners across the country by assessing risks, helping entities bolster defenses and improve resilience, and responding promptly to threats. We are committed to supporting state and local elections officials to protect election infrastructure and safeguard our democracy.”

Secretaries of State in Colorado, Nevada, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and others have also called the DOJ letters an attempt at federal intimidation of election officials. 

Others, like West Virginia Republican Secretary of State Kris Warner, have reiterated their refusal to hand over state voter data. On Monday, a federal judge upheld his right to do so. 

Warner wrote to the DOJ in response to say the state was “available to discuss our existing voter registration list maintenance” but “West Virginia law prohibits the disclosure of sensitive personally identifiable information contained in voter registration records.”

It’s leading some states to take new precautions. 

Read said he was working with Oregon county officials to make sure “county clerks have the number of their county counsel on speed dial” and know how to distinguish between a legitimate and illegitimate federal warrant or subpoena.

Additionally, FBI raids of election offices around the country to seize ballots records related to the 2020 and 2024 elections have been a cause for Read’s concern. By state law, Oregon and other states must keep copies of the ballot records and other election data they receive from counties for a certain time according to state law, after which they must eventually archive or destroy them according to ballot retention schedules.

Read emphasized that “it’s important to destroy those ballots at the appropriate time,”  The Trump administration has used the raids to further the impression of electoral fraud, despite the absence of credible evidence. 

“We can see when people are not on top of that, then you expose yourself to other vulnerabilities like the federal government seizing those ballots in Maricopa County [Arizona] and Fulton County [Georgia] as well,” said Read.

A former CISA official estimated that on Election Day in 2024, more than 1,000 representatives from federal, state and local governments, election technology vendors and other election stakeholders sat together in a room to communicate and coordinate.

Less than two years later, Read called his office’s interactions with CISA “minimal.” He recalled that upon taking office as Secretary of State in Jan 2025, one of his first conversations was with one of CISA’s regional advisors. A week later, those advisors were summarily fired by the Trump administration.

UPDATE: 7/14/2026, 11:15 a.m.: Updated with comments from CISA acting director Nick Andersen.

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A federal judge in Massachusetts struck down major sections of a Trump administration executive order  that would have restricted mail-in ballots through the U.S. Postal Service and required states to adopt federally approved voter lists.

The ruling Thursday from Judge Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts found those parts of the order were unconstitutional, while declaring another section that directs federal law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute noncompliant state and local officials legally nonbinding.

Talwani wrote that the U.S. Constitution empowers States and Congress in different roles but “does not grant the President any specific power over elections.”

While the White House has cited the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and Civil Rights-era voting laws as justification, Talwani found those laws do not authorize the government to regulate state voter registration practices.

“Notably, nowhere in HAVA does Congress prescribe who should be included on State voter lists,” Talwani wrote. “Further, neither in HAVA nor any other federal statute does Congress authorize the federal government to create their own voting database. Instead, Congress, consistent with the Constitution, has left that authority to the States alone.”

Talwani also declined to remove President Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick as named defendants in the suit, rejecting the administration’s argument that the court could not regulate or intrude upon the president’s’ constitutional authority “in the performance of his official duties.”

“Contrary to Defendants assertion, Presidential action is not inherently unreviewable,” Talwani wrote.

The order, issued in March, instructs the Homeland Security secretary, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigrations Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration to compile lists of American voters for each state, including their supposed citizenship status.

To build the lists, the agencies would rely on the controversial Systemic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database that DHS has been building under the Trump administration, as well as Social Security and federal citizenship and naturalization records.

Those lists would then be sent to states, most of which have already refused similar Trump administration efforts to control voter registration.. The order instructs the Department of Justice to investigate  and prosecute  state and local election officials who issue  ballots to ineligible voters. 

The order also requires mail-in ballots to be sent in special barcoded envelopes for tracking. Crucially, it demands states provide lists of voters eligible for mail-in voting, and threatens to deny ballots to states that refuse. It also claims the attorney general is entitled to withhold federal funding from noncompliant states.

Talwani found that states have shown they already have a rigorous voter registration and verification process to ensure non-citizens and other ineligible voters aren’t able to vote in U.S. elections, and have laws in place to investigate and prosecute those who do.

Executive branch lawyers argued the order was merely an internal federal directive that does not impedestate authorities. But Talwani noted that states like Connecticut were already pulling staff from critical activities, such as translating election materials required under the Voting Rights Act, to develop compliance plans for the order.

Nearly half of the states in the lawsuit have already purchased mail-in ballots for this election cycle that are out of compliance with the Postal Service’s envelope and design standards.

Despite a string of losses in the courts and Congress, the White House has continued to assert broad authority over the way states and localities administer elections.

The Department of Justice has sued dozens of states to force them to hand over sensitive voter data. In the 10 cases decided so far, states have won every one.

In their opinions, judges cited the executive branch’s lack of inherent authority to create state voter lists. Others accused the DOJ of misusing Civil Rights-era laws designed to protect Black and minority voters,  creating an “unreliable” database that would disenfranchise  legitimate voters.

The Massachusetts ruling comes to the same conclusion, with Talwani writing “it is clear that the federal agencies charged with compiling Confirmed Citizen Lists lack the ability to create complete and accurate lists of the U.S. citizens residing in every State.”

On Wednesday, Trump canceled a signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing bill in an attempt to pressure  congressional Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act, which would implement many of the same changes to U.S. elections. In a Truth Social post, Trump said he considered passage of the bill to be a “National Emergency.”

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The Trump administration released a legal opinion outlining the legal rationale behind its nationwide voter data collection efforts, justifying an aggressive federal role in vetting voter eligibility, a position courts have repeatedly rejected in related litigation.

The memo, released Tuesday by the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, concedes that while election administration is “primarily the purview of the states,” the administration’s efforts are a lawful exercise of federal oversight. 

The Justice Department grounds that rationale in a provision of the 1960 Civil Rights Act, requiring election officials to keep voter records for 22 months after an election so it can investigate potential civil rights violations. Under the memo’s reading, that retention rule also gives the Attorney General authority to obtain copies of those records “upon demand in writing.” 

The memo also cites several other federal election laws – like the Help America Vote Act, the National Voter Registration Act and the Voting Rights Act – as support for the executive branch’s efforts. It argues that those statutes have long required states to modernize and secure voting systems (including accessibility upgrades) and maintain accurate voter rolls by removing ineligible voters.

The memo further argues that the potential presence of one or more non-citizens on state voter rolls is enough to trigger the federal government’s nationwide data collection and sharing efforts with immigration authorities.

“Because illegal aliens are ineligible to vote, these generally applicable laws are also implicated by an illegal alien’s presence on a state’s voter rolls,” the memo states.

Multiple federal courts have come to the opposite conclusion, dismissing half a dozen lawsuits from DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security that would force states to comply. Further, states have repeatedly confirmed through recounts, audits, investigations and lawsuits that the number of non-citizens registered to vote (and who end up actually casting ballots) in U.S. elections is infinitesimal.

David Becker, executive director of the Center of Election Innovation and Research, noted in a post on BlueSky that “6 courts, including 2 judges appointed by the current president, think this ‘opinion’ isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.” Becker, a former DOJ senior trial attorney in the voting section of the Civil Rights Division, has consistently argued that the executive branch and White House have no legal or constitutional role to play in vetting state voter registration. 

Sarah Copeland Hanzas, Secretary of State for Vermont, gave a similar reaction when CyberScoop reached out for comment.

“It’s not worth the paper it’s printed on,” Hanzas said in a statement. “Or the electrons it takes to store and transmit 41 pages of fantasy.”

Election officials have largely resisted the federal government’s demands. Earlier this year, West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner told CyberScoop he had no intentions of handing over more information than is already publicly available.

“If they want it, they can have it: $500 dollars for [anyone to buy] the statewide list, but they’re not getting personal information,” Warner said in a January interview. “State law says we’re not sharing that and my job is to carry out the law laid out by the West Virginia legislature.”

The inability of the federal government to point to serious evidence of mass voter fraud or non-citizen voting has led states to rebuff attempts to collect sensitive data on every voter in their state, including names, social security numbers, home addresses, voter history and other details.

The administration says it intends to cross-check state data against immigration records, share that data with DHS and immigration enforcement agencies and ultimately create its own list of eligible voters. An executive order issued by the White House earlier this year sought to deny federal funding to states that did not accept voter lists from the federal government and directed the Attorney General to investigate state election officials for voter roll discrepancies. Voting groups have challenged the order’s legality, and a previous election-related executive order was largely ruled unconstitutional by the courts.

The administration has sued dozens of states who have refused to hand such data over, though it has yet to convince courts of the merit. One judge called the administration’s efforts “unprecedented and illegal” and accused the administration of twisting the Civil Rights Act and other federal laws that were passed “to protect hard won civil rights victories allowing access to the ballot box” in order to obtain unfettered access to state voter data.

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