Trump administration tried to ban electronic voting machines citing security risks

US President Donald Trump's election security czar last year tried to ban voting machines used in more than half of US states, raising questions about whether the Commerce Department could declare the components to be national security risks, according to two sources.

Kurt Olsen, a White House aide and lawyer tasked by Trump with refuting widely debunked election fraud conspiracy theories, was the one who pushed the plan to attack Dominion Voting Systems machines.

The idea came up, according to sources, during a debate between Olsen and other officials about how the federal government could take control of elections, previously exercised by American states - an idea already publicly disclosed by Trump.

According to sources, Olsen wanted a national system of manually counting votes on paper ballots, a frequent demand of Trump.

According to some election security experts, it would be less accurate and potentially riskier than the current system of machines with auditable paper records used by almost all cities and states.

The plan to exclude the machines, first reported here, has advanced to the point that in September Commerce Department officials began exploring what grounds could be invoked to carry it out, three additional sources said.

However, the plan ultimately failed because Olsen and other administration officials working with him were unable to present evidence to justify such a move, two of the sources said.

The episode is part of a broader initiative by the Trump administration to usurp the authority of state and local governments to conduct elections - authority granted to them by the US Constitution to prevent the Executive Branch from assuming power.

Olsen is working with the nation's top intelligence and law enforcement agencies to investigate reports of voter fraud.

A Reuters investigation earlier this month revealed that government officials and investigators in at least eight states sought confidential records, lobbied for access to voting equipment and reexamined cases of voter fraud that courts and bipartisan investigations had dismissed.

Trump and his Republican allies are also pursuing unprecedented plans to redraw electoral districts ahead of the usual deadline to secure an advantage in November's midterm elections.

Olsen, who Democratic senators are trying to remove from office, aimed to invalidate Dominion voting machines before the midterm elections, the two sources said.

Others involved in the deliberations included Paul McNamara, a senior aide to Trump's spy chief Tulsi Gabbard, and Brian Sikma, a special assistant to Trump who works on his Domestic Policy Council, according to one of two sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

Olsen worked closely with Gabbard's ODNI (Office of the Director of National Intelligence).

Early last summer, McNamara asked Commerce Department officials to consider the possible designation of Dominion chips and software as a national security risk, the two sources said.

At the time, McNamara headed an ODNI task force that worked with officials across the government to investigate vulnerabilities in the country's voting machines. The two sources said McNamara discussed the matter with senior officials at the U.S. Department of Commerce, headed by Secretary Howard Lutnick.

Reuters was unable to determine whether Lutnick was involved in these discussions or had knowledge of them.

A Commerce Department spokesperson said Lutnick never met or discussed election integrity issues with McNamara and did not "address the matter in any way." The spokesman declined to comment on whether Lutnick's office or other officials were involved.

Olsen, McNamara and Sikma did not respond to interview requests.

Concerns about more election chaos
Democrats and election integrity experts fear that, with Republicans expected to lose in the midterm elections, the administration intends to suppress the vote and pave the way to contest the losses with more baseless allegations of voter fraud.

More than 98% of U.S. election jurisdictions now produce a paper record for every vote, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission in a statement released last year.

These votes are mostly cast on machines that print a paper record or marked by hand, but counted by electronic readers.

Election security experts largely support the current combination of technology and paper ballots, which provide a voter-verifiable trail for post-election audits.

Proponents of marked and hand-counted ballots argue that they eliminate concerns about cyberattacks. But they pose different risks, said Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan, including counting errors and voter fraud.

"Switching to manual counting would be chaotic," he said, "and could facilitate fraud."

White House spokesman Davis Ingle classified the report as a selective leak and called it disinformation.

Olivia Coleman, a spokeswoman for Gabbard's agency, said the report contained "inaccuracies and false descriptions" of the agency's work on election security, without elaborating.

Examining voting machines
U.S. supply chain rules give the commerce secretary powers to restrict transactions with technology companies from nations designated as "foreign adversaries," including China, Russia and, specifically, the government of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was ousted from power by the U.S. military in January.

A key focus of Olsen's efforts to find evidence of foreign cyberattacks is the now-disproven theory that Dominion computers were infected with code controlled by Venezuelans to rig the 2020 election against Trump, the two sources said.

Repeated investigations and lawsuits since 2020 have produced no evidence that Dominion computers were hacked. In 2023, Fox News paid Dominion $787 million in a defamation lawsuit over false claims of election fraud.

In 2024, at least 27 states used Dominion machines, a similar number to 2020. Denver-based Dominion was acquired last October by Colorado-based Liberty Vote USA.

However, Trump continues to repeat the allegations, most recently on May 12, when he reposted a six-year-old video of a host on the far-right network One America News making the false claim that Dominion machines deleted millions of votes.

In May 2025, Olsen helped lead a federal mission that seized Dominion machines used by Puerto Rico in its 2024 gubernatorial election.

An analysis of the machines by cybersecurity firm Mojave Research Inc. later that summer found some known vulnerabilities but no code of Venezuelan origin or evidence of intrusion.

Around the same time that McNamara spoke with Commerce Department officials, Olsen's team dismantled some of Puerto Rico's machines, believing they would find components made by countries designated as foreign adversaries, the two sources said.

The team found a chip manufactured in China by the American company Intel. These chips are generally not considered a threat to U.S. national security. Other chips were made in Japan, South Korea and Malaysia, the two sources said.

Olsen's report on the disassembly, they said, described the chips as "East Asian," which they believe was an attempt to cover up the absence of security risks.

A White House meeting in September called to discuss the machines was attended by cybersecurity experts from the National Security Council, two sources said.

The group, which included Olsen's team, discussed whether Dominion equipment contained traces of Venezuelan code, one of the sources said.

After the meeting, a Commerce Department political appointee asked the department's office that assesses foreign national security risks to technology supply chains to consider options for addressing any risks posed by voting machines, according to the three additional sources.

The office looked into the matter but took no action, two of the sources said.

Source: CNN