DHS Secretary Mullin threatens prosecution, prison time for election officials

Hours after President Trump's July 16 primetime address on election security, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin held a press conference threatening state election officials with fines, penalties, and potential prison time if they refuse to run voter rolls through a DHS database. Mullin said DHS had preliminarily identified more than a quarter-million noncitizens allegedly registered to vote across California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, without disclosing DHS's underlying methodology. He said states declining to use the tool would be made a federal-scrutiny "priority" and that people who vote illegally in the midterms would be hunted down and prosecuted. A federal judge had previously ruled that repurposing the DHS database at issue for voter-roll verification violated federal privacy law, and Mullin reiterated the threats in a follow-up briefing the next day.