Voting officials fear DHS may actually be a threat to elections this year Voting officials fear DHS may actually be a threat to elections this year Text-Only Version Go To Full Site That myth has been debunked numerous times, including as part of Fox News' 2023 $787 million settlement with voting machine company Dominion, but Berntsen, a former CIA operative, has been pushing it for years. "One of the things that we learned is there's 14 different technical ways that you can steal an election," Berntsen explained in an interview in the fall with conservative podcaster Lara Logan. But ahead of the 2024 election, Berntsen says he couldn't get anyone to listen to him. Not the FBI. Not the media. Finally, he went to Congress, where he says he was similarly rebuffed by almost everyone, including Republicans. Except one. "One politician in America was not afraid," Berntsen told Logan. "It was Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma." Allies of Berntsen say Mullin - then a U.S. senator, now the head of the Department of Homeland Security - brokered a meeting at Mar-a-Lago so Berntsen could brief President Trump's team on conspiracy theories about Venezuelan interference in elections. That is just one time of many that Mullin has gone to bat for election denial. "[D]ue to all of the fraud and uncertainty surrounding the 2020 election there is no way I can vote to certify the Electoral College," Mullin wrote online on Jan. 2, 2021. Four days later, after a mob overran the U.S. Capitol during the certification, Mullin was one of 147 congressional Republicans who still voted not to certify the results. Mullin's history of false election fraud claims has heightened concerns that voting officials have had for more than a year: that DHS will not be a partner helping to secure elections, but rather a threat seeking to undermine results that Trump dislikes. Related Story: NPR "I'm actively discouraging it," said Matt Crane, a former Republican county clerk who now runs the professional organization for local election officials in Colorado. "I don't trust how the administration is using that data. I don't trust that they're going to keep it confidential. And so I can't in good conscience advocate that any of my counties do any work with them right now." Trump has spoken about wanting to "take over" elections in America. And Crane noted that the current DHS point person for elections, Heather Honey, also has a long history of spreading election misinformation. "All of this points to the fact that these are not trusted partners anymore," Crane said. "They've brought the fox into the henhouse." From allies to adversaries It's hard to overstate how different the federal election security landscape looks heading into this year's midterms, compared with two years ago prior to the last federal campaign. Related Story: NPR Administration officials, like White House border czar Tom Homan, and other Trump allies have seemed open to deploying immigration enforcement to voting locations this fall. That would be against federal law. "They say illegal aliens don't vote. But ... part of DHS' job is [to] secure elections, and I'm not going to say, you know, what our plan is going forward," Homan said on The Charlie Kirk Show this spring. "But if only U.S. citizens can vote, I don't see the issue." At his confirmation hearing in March, Mullin said DHS agents would only be present at polling places if there was a specific threat at those locations. And in a statement to NPR about this story, DHS said Secretary Mullin is "committed to restoring integrity to our election systems and ensuring that American citizens, and only American citizens, are electing American leaders." But he now helms a department where most people working on election security issues, at least within its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), were pushed out or resigned last year. That agency - which Trump created in his first term - has also been without a Senate-confirmed leader for the entirety of Trump's second term. Paul Lux, a Republican election supervisor in Okaloosa County, Fla., says the federal government has told local officials it is still providing the same cybersecurity services as were offered under the Biden administration and during Trump's first term, but he has not heard of any counties in Florida that have actually received services from the agency recently. "You know, try calling somebody at CISA and see who answers the phone," Lux said in an interview earlier this year. "Because at the end of the day, it's been radio silence from CISA when we reach out about just about anything." In response to a request for comment from NPR, a CISA spokesperson said the agency provides "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." But the spokesperson did not detail how many election jurisdictions it has provided services for during Trump's second term. Until recently, Lux chaired a national cybersecurity partnership for local and state election officials called the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC). The organization spawned after Russia's efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election exposed how little threat information was being communicated across the nation's thousands of election jurisdictions. Related Story: NPR Election officials are still baffled by how that move and other cuts at DHS square with Trump's language on wanting to secure U.S. elections. "The actions of defunding and dismantling those protections speak for themselves," said Jocelyn Benson, Michigan's Democratic secretary of state and a candidate for governor. "And it's meant that we as states have had to rebuild networks to protect our respective states from foreign interference. That's not easy. And we can never replicate what the federal government has built and had done." A fractured landscape The EI-ISAC scrambled last year to create a membership model funded by its county and state members, but the organization told NPR that membership is less than 20% of what it was before the federal funding cut. "So that collective collaboration is unfortunately becoming more fractured," Lux said. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., introduced legislation this month that would restore funding for a broader threat-sharing service that covers all local governments. But there's no indication the bill will gain traction. Marci Andino, a former South Carolina election official who now runs the EI-ISAC as executive director, said without federal backing, a big challenge is just communicating with the thousands of election jurisdictions. Some are eligible to join the group for free because their state pays for a membership plan, but it's a struggle to reach all of them to let them know that. "We're continuing to get the message out that the EI-ISAC still exists," Andino said. "We're having to say, 'Hey, we're still here.'" Related Story: NPR On Election Day, election officials can log on to share physical or cyber threats they're encountering in real time and see whether other local governments are seeing the same thing. There was no such space during the off-year elections last year, but the EI-ISAC plans to offer one this year. All members will be invited, but no one from DHS will be there. If the federal government wants a role in election security again at some point, said Lux, the Florida voting official, they'll be invited back - skeptically. "[They'll] probably be that uncle that we keep at arm's length at Thanksgiving rather than giving him a big bear hug," Lux said. "But, you know, we'll have to see. Certainly, the relationship has been damaged. And how long it takes to rebuild that trust will depend on how dedicated they are to trying to rebuild that trust." SCOTT DETROW, HOST: The new secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne Mullin, has, for years, amplified President Trump's false claims of a stolen 2020 election, and his history of pushing election misinformation matters this midterm year. NPR voting correspondent Miles Parks explains.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)GARY BERNTSEN: One of the things that we learned is there's 14 different technical ways that you can steal an election.MILES PARKS, BYLINE: That's Gary Berntsen, a former CIA operative who is convinced of the falsehood that Venezuela stole the 2020 election. The only problem is, as he explained in this interview with conservative podcaster Lara Logan, he couldn't get anyone to listen to him. Ahead of the 2024 race, he went to the FBI, then the media. No one gave him the time of day. Until...(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)BERNTSEN: One politician in America was not afraid.LARA LOGAN: Who was that?BERNTSEN: Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma.LOGAN: Yes. Yes.BERNTSEN: He's a real man, that guy.LOGAN: He's a real man.PARKS: Allies of Berntsen say Mullin, then a senator from Oklahoma, got Berntsen and his partner in front of President Trump's team at Mar-a-Lago to push conspiracy theories that are still floating around on the far right two years later, which gets to a larger truth about the incoming secretary of Homeland Security. He is all-in on election denial.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)MARKWAYNE MULLIN: What undermines the election is letting fraud and deception steal the election from the real American people that voted legally.PARKS: That's Mullin speaking to a local TV station shortly after voting ended in 2020. Even on January 6, 2021, after a mob overran the U.S. Capitol during the certification, Mullin was one of 147 congressional Republicans who voted not to certify the results, and he still seems to feel the election was rigged. At his confirmation hearing in March, Mullin declined to say who won when he was asked directly by Senator Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat from Michigan.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)ELISSA SLOTKIN: Who won the 2020 election?MULLIN: Ma'am, we know that President Joe Biden was sworn into office.SLOTKIN: That...MULLIN: He was the...SLOTKIN: That's not. We know...MULLIN: ...President for the last four years.PARKS: That sort of hedging worries voting officials and experts as they look ahead to the midterms.KATHY BOOCKVAR: It's not something to joke about, but there is a dark irony to it.PARKS: Kathy Boockvar was Pennsylvania's top voting official in 2020. The irony she's talking about is Mullin now heading an agency that declared in 2020 that that election was the most secure in American history.States and local governments run their own elections with little input from the federal government, but there are still ways that a federal law enforcement agency can sow chaos or delegitimize results if so desired. One thing many voting officials are worried about is immigration enforcement, which falls under DHS. In an interview last month on "The Charlie Kirk Show," border czar Tom Homan seemed open to the possibility of ICE officers at polling places, and he noted DHS' role in election security.(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "THE CHARLIE KIRK SHOW")TOM HOMAN: I mean, bottom line is, what are they afraid of? They say illegal aliens don't vote. But look, you know, part of DHS's job is secure elections, and I'm not going to say, you know, what our plan is going forward. But if only U.S. citizens can vote, I don't see the issue.PARKS: At his confirmation hearing, Mullin said DHS agents would only be present at polling places if there was a specific threat they were protecting against. And in a statement to NPR about this story, DHS said Secretary Mullin is, quote, "committed to restoring integrity to our election systems and ensuring that American citizens, and only American citizens, are electing American leaders."Mullin is also far from the only person who denies the 2020 election results who's in a position of power in the Trump administration. But voting officials from both parties say the elevation of people in DHS specifically undoes a decade of election security work. After Russia interfered in the 2016 race, the federal government spent years, including during the first Trump administration, working to improve threat monitoring and coordination among the nation's 10,000 or so local election jurisdictions. Officials now say that work has completely stopped.MATT CRANE: It breaks my heart.PARKS: That's Matt Crane, a Republican former county clerk who now runs the professional organization for local voting officials in Colorado. He says he's now actively discouraging local governments from sharing voter data or any other information with DHS this midterm year.CRANE: I don't trust how the administration is using that data. I don't trust that they're going to keep it confidential. And so I can't in good conscience advocate that any of my counties do any work with them right now.PARKS: Boockvar, the former voting official in Pennsylvania, said trust between the federal government and local voting officials has been, quote, "eradicated." Miles Parks, NPR News, Washington.(SOUNDBITE OF BADBADNOTGOOD SONG, "EXPERIENCE") Links
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