As election integrity measures continue to stall in Congress and the Supreme Court refused to help secure elections, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is looking for an alternative way to incentivize states toward eliminating voter fraud.
Through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), DHS is hoping to convince states looking for more federal aid to reform weakened election systems. The Homeland Security Grant Program is set to make more than $1 billion in taxpayer money available to governments at the state, territorial, local, and tribal levels; that is, if said governments take “common-sense steps to protect U.S. elections.” It remains to be seen if enough governments will apply and accept the terms in order to make a significant difference to U.S. elections.
“Election security is national security and protecting the Nation’s critical infrastructure is a top priority,” declared DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin. “Under President Trump’s leadership, we are taking decisive action to protect election systems from threats like foreign interference, insider threats, and cyberattacks. These new requirements for homeland security grant recipients will preserve election integrity and ensure that Americans can trust the results.”
One of the crucial reforms that DHS is demanding is a switch from using electronic machines that scan ballots’ QR codes to count them and instead use equipment that recognizes hand-marked ballots for counting. Furthermore, DHS insists upon a manual audit of at least five percent of all votes at the end of every election. By auditing a random selection of the votes, election officials should be able to determine if the official results are consistent with the evidence of the manual audit or whether there are apparent discrepancies and irregularities.
The third requirement involves reconciling the number of ballots cast with the number of registered voters who participated in a particular federal election.
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From the DHS press release:
• Fourth, within 120 days of accepting the grant award, states must use the reliable and free U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system to verify the citizenship status of everyone listed in the state voter registration database. This measure helps ensure that only eligible citizens are registered to vote.
◦ [To the extent that the functionality of the SAVE system has been impacted by the June 22, 2026 order in the League of Women Voters v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Civ. Action No. 25-3501, while on appeal, for any person who is registered to vote but for whom a State does not have records of citizenship, the State may resolve this uncertainty by submitting relevant information to USCIS for an immigration records search consistent with the requirements of 8 U.S.C. § 1373.]
Many leftist states and cities explicitly refuse to clean their voter rolls, so it is not clear if any of them would be willing even to apply for this grant program.
The final requirement is particularly interesting in light of an unconfirmed report that California has been encouraging non-citizen students to work at polling places:
Finally, states must also use the SAVE system, or another authorized government system, to verify the citizenship of anyone working at polling places or operating election systems. This requirement applies to all individuals involved in the administration of elections, further protecting the process from potential vulnerabilities.
If DHS can get enough governments across the country to implement these policies, that could make a major difference ahead of the midterm election and the next presidential election.
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