Mullin says Trump admin will comb ‘voting logs’ to hunt for noncitizens after election

Hours before polls closed Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the Trump administration will comb through “voting logs” after the election as part of its ongoing hunt for noncitizen voters.

“After this election we’ll be gathering all the data, we’ll be gathering the voting logs, and we’ll be going through those and making sure that no illegals voted,” Mullin said during an appearance on Fox News.

Mullin’s comments show the Trump administration’s unfounded claims of widespread voting by noncitizens will not stop after the election is concluded.  The Trump administration has used those claims as justification for its efforts to pressure states to remove people from their voting rolls. 

Mullin said DHS “will be looking at the registers” and “all those that voted after the election.”

Mullin did not say how the administration might gain access to such data, or whether the Trump administration would go to the extraordinary length of seeking warrants to seize ballots or voting machines. The Department of Justice (DOJ) previously demanded states hand over their unredacted voter rolls for inspection. Most  states refused, and the administration has lost every lawsuit trying to access those files.

Laws about accessing voter data vary by state. Whether someone voted in an election may be publicly available information, though sensitive identifying information like Social Security numbers is not.

The Trump administration’s hyperfocus on noncitizen voters is at odds with studies that show noncitizen voting is incredibly rare and has never decided the outcome of an American election. 

Mullin, over the summer, made sweeping claims that hundreds of thousands of noncitizens were on the voter rolls in states like California, Pennsylvania, Nevada and New Jersey. Those numbers dropped dramatically after closer examination.

In California, the Trump administration went a step further and sued state officials to stop them from counting 20,000 potential votes from people the federal government alleges may be noncitizens. California rebuffed the administration, and on Monday the U.S. Supreme Court shut down the DOJ’s emergency bid to set aside the ballots before Election Day.

But the DOJ made similar threats  in Washington, where it demanded officials set aside 405 ballots that may have gone to noncitizens. Pro-voting groups have sued both Trump and Mullin in their official capacity, and other top officials, to block the administration’s pressure campaign on the state. 

“Even past this election, it is still DHS’ job to make sure that this was an election that was handled by the federal laws, meaning that only those that were legally able to vote voted,” Mullin told Fox News on Tuesday.