The Trump administration is preparing to leverage billions of dollars in federal homeland security grants to compel states to enact sweeping changes to their election systems, a move that has drawn sharp criticism and promises of legal challenges from voting rights advocates and state officials.
According to internal documents obtained by CNN, states that do not comply with the new requirements could lose up to 20 percent of their grant money . The funds, which are used for critical state and local initiatives like counterterrorism, cyber defense, infrastructure protection, and natural disaster preparedness, are expected to total more than $1 billion this fiscal year .
The new guidelines, which are expected to be formally announced this week, represent a significant expansion of the administration's efforts to influence election administration. For years, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grants have required that 3 percent of funds be broadly used for election security. However, the new rules go much further by imposing mandatory, specific reforms and penalizing states that do not fall in line .
A DHS spokesperson did not directly respond to concerns about the legality or intent of the new guidance, stating that the guidelines are not "official until they are formally announced" and that "any recipient of federal funding should expect accountability for how taxpayer dollars are spent" .
Key Requirements for States
The new mandates target several core pillars of state election administration. To receive the full amount of their grants, states would be required to phase out certain electronic voting systems, including those that use bar codes, and transition to hand-marked paper ballots . This change could be enormously expensive; for instance, Georgia has estimated the cost of such a transition at $66 million , while nationwide costs could reach $2.7 billion .
States would also be required to conduct manual election audits using methods established by the administration and to run their voter rolls through the SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) database to verify citizenship . Critics have raised concerns that the SAVE system is flawed and has produced false positives, leading to eligible voters being erroneously removed from rolls . Additionally, states would need to use a federal system to verify the citizenship of anyone working at a polling location . States that refuse to comply with these conditions would face the loss of 20 percent of their grant money .
Legal and Political Hurdles
The move is viewed as a way for the administration to bypass the legislative process after the SAVE Act, a bill that would have mandated citizenship verification for federal voter registration, stalled in the Senate . Despite intense pressure from President Trump on Senate Majority Leader John Thune to eliminate the filibuster to pass the bill, it currently lacks the necessary votes to advance .
Legal experts have expressed strong doubt that the new DHS guidelines will survive court challenges. "I expect (the new requirements) will be blocked in the courts," said David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer who now advises election officials . The administration has previously attempted and failed to use this same strategy to withhold funds from states over immigration policies. Last year, a federal court blocked a similar policy that would have withheld money unless states submitted population data in line with the administration's hardline immigration stance . Courts have previously found that while Congress can pass election regulations, the president has very limited constitutional power to unilaterally force election rule changes, as the Constitution grants states significant control over administering ballots .
