Trump Administration Threatens States With Prosecution, Funding Loss Over Election-Roll Compliance

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned state election officials Friday they could face fines, prison time, and the loss of federal election funding if they refuse to comply with the Trump administration’s demands to run their voter rolls through a federal database and adopt new voting-machine security measures.

The threats came one day after President Donald Trump’s primetime address repeating claims that the 2020 election was “rigged and stolen” — claims his own attorney general in his first term and multiple courts rejected — and alleging that foreign governments can manipulate U.S. voting systems.

Mullin claimed DHS had identified more than 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote in California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, though he did not explain how the department obtained those states’ voter data or how it arrived at the figure. He said only that it came from “public voter records.”

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“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,” Mullin said at a news conference.

The secretary also threatened noncitizens themselves with prosecution. “If you’re illegal and attempted to vote, or you tried to vote illegally for someone else, we will find you, and we will charge you,” he said, warning that penalties could reach five years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

Mullin said states must now participate in DHS’s SAVE program — a database originally designed to verify citizenship for government-benefits applications, recently retooled to check voter rolls — or risk losing federal grants used to run elections. He said he was working with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to make new voting-machine security enhancements “mandatory” by tying them to federal funding.

But a federal judge blocked the expanded SAVE program last month, ruling that the Trump administration violated federal law by pooling Americans’ private information — including Social Security records — across agencies without proper disclosure rules. U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, appointed by former President Joe Biden, found the administration “haphazardly” threatened “the sacred right to vote” by adopting a system it knew would falsely flag eligible voters, particularly newly naturalized citizens, as noncitizens.

Voting-rights groups and election experts say the database is error-prone and has repeatedly misidentified eligible voters. David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, called Mullin’s threats “empty,” noting that 15 federal courts — six of them presided over by Trump-appointed judges — have ruled the federal government cannot legally demand states’ sensitive voter data.

“Every court to consider the DOJ’s demands have confirmed that the federal government cannot legally demand access to states’ sensitive voter data,” Becker said. “What he’s suggesting is illegal.”

Research has consistently found that noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare. An analysis by the Bipartisan Policy Center of elections between 1999 and 2023 found only 77 instances of noncitizen voting, each investigated by authorities.

California Governor Gavin Newsom responded to Mullin’s threats on social media: “California has free, fair, and secure elections and we will fight for them. Try us.”

Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar said he was confident in his state’s voter file and noted that Nevada constantly reviews its rolls. Pennsylvania is among the states that have refused to turn over voter data to the administration.

Mullin did not specify what law election officials would violate or what charges could be brought if they declined to act on DHS information.

The Breakdown

• DHS Secretary Mullin threatened to withhold federal election funding from states that refuse to run their voter rolls through the SAVE database or adopt new voting-machine security measures.
• He warned state election officials could face fines, penalties, or prison time if they do not comply after DHS provides them with information about alleged noncitizens on their rolls.
• Mullin claimed DHS found more than 250,000 noncitizens registered in California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, but did not explain how the department obtained the data or verified the figure.
• A federal judge blocked the expanded SAVE program last month, ruling it violated federal law and would wrongly flag eligible voters, particularly naturalized citizens.
• Fifteen federal courts, including six presided over by Trump-appointed judges, have ruled the federal government cannot legally demand states’ voter data.
• Research shows noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare — one analysis found only 77 instances between 1999 and 2023.

What This Means for You

This is a direct test of how much control the federal government can assert over state election systems — and whether threats of prosecution can force compliance when courts have already said the demands are illegal. If you’re a California, Nevada, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania voter, your state is being told to hand over its voter rolls or face consequences, even though a federal judge has blocked the very program the administration is demanding states use. If you’re anywhere else, watch whether your own state complies under the threat or stands its ground — that choice will shape whether your voter registration stays in state hands or gets fed through a federal database a court has already found error-prone and unlawful. This also matters for how you weigh the administration’s claims about election integrity: when the evidence cited is a figure with no explained methodology, when the tool being demanded has been blocked by a judge for violating the law, and when multiple courts appointed by both parties have said the same thing, that tells you something about whose version of “election security” you’re being asked to accept.

What to Watch

Start with whether the threats hold up in court — the administration is demanding states do something a federal judge has already said violates the law, and 15 courts have ruled the federal government can’t force states to hand over voter data. If the administration tries to withhold funding or bring charges, expect lawsuits, and expect them to succeed based on the record so far. That doesn’t mean the threats won’t work anyway: some states may comply to avoid the fight, even when the law is on their side. Watch which states fold and which refuse — and whether refusal costs them federal dollars they were counting on.

The deeper question is what this does to voter trust. Mullin’s 250,000-noncitizen claim has no explained methodology, no breakdown by state, and no evidence that any of those people actually voted. Election experts say the number is “almost certainly false or wildly overstated,” built on comparisons with commercial data too incomplete to properly identify noncitizens. If the administration had actual evidence of noncitizen voting at that scale, it would bring indictments — the fact that it hasn’t, despite ordering prosecutors to pursue such cases, tells you the claims likely have no substance. But the damage isn’t in whether the number is true; it’s in whether voters believe it, and whether that belief reshapes how they see their own elections. When an administration uses its platform to repeat a debunked figure, threatens states with prosecution for not complying with an illegal demand, and insists the last election was stolen despite every court and its own first-term attorney general saying otherwise, that’s not election security — it’s election doubt, delivered from the podium. What you’re watching isn’t just a policy fight; it’s whether distrust itself becomes the policy.