In an effort to drum up support for his SAVE America Act, President Donald Trump claimed in a wide-ranging primetime speech on election security Thursday that, among other issues, several states have noncitizens on their voter rolls.
“Since Democrat states refused to share their voter files, the real number is actually much higher than that,” Trump said during his speech, in which he accused China of hacking voter rolls. “Yet, even this limited analysis found more than a quarter of a million foreigners illegally registered to vote.
“Put together, these disclosures reveal an election system so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it. It is not defensible,” he continued. “Hundreds of millions of U.S. voter files are in the hands of foreign governments.”
On Friday morning, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said DHS in a preliminary review found thousands of nonresidents on the voter rolls of four states, including Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey and Nevada. Pennsylvania, according to a draft statement obtained by Politico, was believed by DHS officials to have 14,576 noncitizens on its voter rolls. There are 8,968,498 registered voters in Pennsylvania.
“We’ve identified 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote in just four states,” Mullin said during a press conference Friday morning. “Mind you, we have 46 other states.”
DHS, he claimed, worked with 23 “proactive states” to identify another 28,000 noncitizens registered to vote on their voter rolls, “plus, 400,000 individuals that are still registered to vote that are deceased.”
Hours earlier, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, in an appearance on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” responded to the claims.
“What I would say to the administration is, if you have any real evidence of this, provide it to us,” he said. “We want to work to make sure that there’s integrity always in our system, as we believe that there is, because we’ve had free and fair, safe and secure elections repeatedly, sometimes where Donald Trump lost, sometimes where he has won.
“And so I would just say, if you got information, share it with us and let’s work together to address it,” he continued. “But I think at the end of the day, what they really have is a bunch of conspiracy theories, and they’re just trying to suck up to their boss and please him at a time where he is more and more unhinged and disconnected from reality.”
Schmidt: Pa. voter rolls are ‘properly maintained and updated’
Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, a Republican appointed by Shapiro, issued the following statement:
“Pennsylvania follows all state and federal laws when it comes to our elections, and our voter rolls are properly maintained and updated,” Schmidt said. “In Pennsylvania, every voter must take steps to verify their identity before they cast a ballot, including providing proper identification every time they register to vote, vote by mail, or vote at a new polling place. All evidence has shown that noncitizen voting is extremely rare across the country, including in Pennsylvania.
“While the Department has made clear that we cannot share Pennsylvanians’ private, personal information, we will review any information provided by DHS so that we can evaluate the validity of these claims,” Schmidt added.
U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, PA-5th Congressional Dist., said Trump’s speech reflected “his loss of touch with reality, his obsession with lies about an election he lost 6 years ago, and his desperation to hang onto power despite cratering public approval.”
“There is no credible intelligence to support Trump’s claims that his own government his evidence of foreign election interference from him in his first term,” she wrote on X. “The falsehoods in this speech are designed to undermine confidence in the integrity of our democratic systems and justify federal interference in our elections.”
U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans, PA-3rd, called the president’s speech a distraction.
“Our country is in a cost-of-living crisis, from the gas pump to the grocery store to the doctor’s office to buying a home to affording rent,” Evans said on X. “Rather than tackling this crisis, the president is trying to distract Americans from the fact that his war and his tariff-taxes created it.”
Republican Sen. Dave McCormick echoed his support for Trump’s legislation.
“As I have said many times, we must pass the SAVE America Act,” he said. “The American people overwhelmingly support it. Let’s act now.”
Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, PA-16th Dist., posted a link to Trump’s speech on X and wrote, “Free and fair elections are the foundation of our nation.”
