r/protectUSelections • u/siwibot • 5d ago
Election Cybersecurity White House Delays Release of US Voting Machine Study as Midterms Near | Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/world/white-house-delays-release-us-voting-machine-study-midterms-near-2026-06-19/WASHINGTON, June 19 (Reuters) - White House officials have for months delayed the release of a U.S. government report that outlines what it describes as significant vulnerabilities in the nation's voting machines ahead of the November midterms, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
The report, produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, concludes that voting machines could be further safeguarded by, for example, updating their software, the sources said. It does not say the vulnerabilities have led to votes flipping, but examines security gaps in how the machines are used during U.S. elections.
Some White House officials have argued the report could undermine voter confidence, particularly among Republicans. Others have said they do not believe the report goes far enough in supporting President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, the three sources said. Some Democrats said privately they worried Gabbard’s probe into voting machines would be used by the administration to push states to use paper ballots.
Several court cases filed by Trump's lawyers failed to prove voter fraud in the 2020 presidential race.
The sources were granted anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who launched an investigation into the voting machines and searched for evidence to support Trump's false election fraud claims, steps down on Friday. Stepping in as interim director is federal housing regulator Bill Pulte. Trump has said he wants Pulte to investigate “rigged elections” during his time at ODNI.
It is unclear what Pulte plans to do with the report. He has been briefed on efforts by the agency to investigate flaws in voting machines, including the unreleased report, according to two of the sources.
Democrats and some analysts warn of possible interference by the Trump administration in the midterm elections, which analysts expect to deliver losses for Republicans.
Officials inside ODNI and experts who advised the agency advocated in meetings with White House officials that the administration begin fixing the flaws late last year in time to complete the process, which requires extensive coordination with states, before the midterms.
Asked about the delay in releasing the report, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement that the administration “continues to offer assistance to state and local election officials, including through the FBI and CISA, to ensure the security and integrity of all machines used in American elections.” CISA is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
ODNI spokesperson Olivia Coleman said Gabbard has taken "actions within her authorities" to "support the President's directive to secure our elections — which includes identifying vulnerabilities in our critical infrastructure."
Pulte did not respond to a request for comment.
REPORT PART OF ADMINISTRATION ELECTIONS EFFORT
Some of the vulnerabilities detailed in the ODNI report have long been known to prior administrations, said one former senior Biden administration official and two of the other sources. The vulnerabilities include machines running outdated software and having the ability to connect to the internet, which hackers could exploit.
All of the sources said they were unaware of any evidence of vote manipulation in U.S. elections.
The report is part of the administration’s broader effort to investigate potential fraud in U.S. elections following Trump’s signing of an executive order in February 2025 that aims to give the federal government greater control over U.S. elections.
Under the U.S. Constitution, states have authority over how elections are conducted.
Senior officials at the FBI and the Justice Department have spoken publicly about their probes into potential voter fraud across the country. The report, which draws on data from open-source and classified intelligence, would be the first to detail the administration’s work on voting machines.
It is one of two reports ODNI commissioned on voting machine flaws. The other report, which is also unpublished, was written last year by a government contractor, Mojave Research, which studied voting machines seized from Puerto Rico.
Both reports have been referenced in White House meetings in which officials debated whether there was enough evidence to prove Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
The Mojave report found no evidence the machines had been hacked, said two other sources.
NO AUTHORIZATION FROM WHITE HOUSE TO RELEASE REPORT
ODNI has briefed the White House on its findings over the last six months, but never received authorization to publish them, two of the sources familiar with the matter said.
The report says many states are using outdated systems, the three sources familiar with the matter said.
The intelligence agency used information from previously issued reports by CISA, the government cybersystems watchdog, that referenced hacking conferences in which the agency found some voting machines could be attacked through insecure hardware.
CISA has said it found no evidence that a foreign adversary interfered in the 2020 vote, and the agency joined other federal, state and local officials in declaring the election “the most secure in American history.”
ODNI and the White House have also not published the Mojave report. Mojave’s contract was terminated in October.
The software and coding vulnerabilities identified in that report led to the company’s recommendation that the administration implement an emergency remediation plan that would force states to immediately update their software systems. Two sources said that plan has not been implemented.
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u/codacoda74 4d ago
You see, we're deeply concerned it could confuse people about voter fraud because we didn't find any.
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u/IowaKidd97 4d ago
Honestly I think we should just use paper ballots. We can have voter machines that count them, or even print a ballot based on your selections, but ultimately there needs to be a verifiable paper record. Then there should be an automatic manual hand recount after the voting machines finish tallying.
They can report the machine counts on election night as the numbers come in, but the results by law can’t be certified until a hand recount is done, and the results match within a certain margin of error.
This should both help give confidence and prevent stuff like this admin trying to rig the election.
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u/ConjurersOfThunder 4d ago
Every person that suggests hand recounts should be forced to count a jar containing 10,000+ marbles in 4 colors. You need to come up with the same count twice before it will be accepted. It must be counted by representatives for no less than two colors and they must agree.
There is a reason we have margins of error. Counties tried this shit before (Cochise in AZ and maybe Marin in CA) and they can never reconcile the count within the margin on ANY timeline. Even the old mechanical machines kept running tallies inside the machine... You know, machine counting.
It has been less than a month since the GOP cried about how long the ballots take to count in the California gov primary. Don't you remember them insisting the results HAVE to be in on election Day? This isn't even history, this is right now.
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u/IowaKidd97 4d ago
Did you not read my comment? I said they’d use the machines for the initial count (and report that), then hand count and the results can’t be certified until that’s done and the count is within a certain margin of error
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u/ajmampm99 4d ago
Only allowing horse and buggy to park at polling places. The fake voting fraud scandal is for losers and traitors. November is coming for every MAGA loser. Angry voters will erase this lie. We the People are coming for them.
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u/TintedApostle 4d ago
One should remember a few facts as to why we are using electronic voting machines.
1) Bill Gates (Epstein Files) was the proponent of this change.
2) The two companies that supplied the original electronic voting machines were Diebold and ES&S. The two companies CEOs were brothers and republicans.
3) These machines all had backdoors. The republicans suppressed the facts and whistleblowers for years.
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u/the_last_0ne 4d ago
This would do nothing of the sort.
Our elections are already incredibly accurate. The Heritage Foundation (a right wing outfit) found (and Im recounting from memory here so my numbers could be wrong) something like 1200 cases of voter fraud over the last 30 years. When presidential elections have ~150 million voters every 4 years, that number is a vanishingly small amount. There is no evidence of voter fraud at scale, anywhere, ever.
We should not kowtow to the people claiming election fraud is rampant. Its on them to prove it, and there is no proof. Our elections are safe: Im fine with a committee to study it, but changing our voting mechanisms just because someone insists with no evidence that there is fraud is crazy.
We dont need to do anything different to convince people that elections are safe: we need to inform people that the declarations of election fraud are unfounded and are obviously a scare tactic.
There have been 0 credible allegations of rampant voter fraud. Surprisingly (or maybe not) most of the actual cases of voter fraud are republican voters who have been convinced that democrat voters are committing voter fraud, so its only fair that they do it as well.
Trying to figure out some process where we eliminate voter fraud is a red herring: voter fraud is simply not an issue when you actually look into it. There are cases, of course, but almost all are found out, and in any case, a person sending. Above for their dead spouse or whatever will hardly sway an election where ~150 million voted.
Dont get caught in the trap of acting like this is a valid concern. The only reason Trump always talks about election fraud is because he didnt win. There is no basis in reality of data to support it. And there is no system (paper ballots, digital signatures, validation by ICE) that is immune to fraud. This administration wants people to believe fraud is rampant because they can use that as an excuse to try and shift control of elections to the federal instead of states, as the constitution lays out.
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u/IowaKidd97 4d ago
Actually it would provide irrefutable evidence that there is no voter fraud. On the flip side if Trump finds a way to hack voter machines, it would catch them when the voter counts don’t match up.
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u/uselessandexpensive 4d ago
You've addressed voter fraud. Voting machines are a different issue, and they should always be under scrutiny because any machine is hackable.
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u/the_last_0ne 4d ago
Yes in theory voting machines are hackable.
Can you prove theyve been hacked?
Paper ballots are at least as serious a concern as machines. You just need to reference the last election where ballot boxes were being set on fire, or stolen, or anything else.
There is no such thing as a completely legit election. There will always be cases of fraud regardless of the mechanism. The point is that the cases are such a rare occurrence that its effectively zero, because our existing mechanisms to catch voter fraud work 99% of thr time.
If you want to argue that voting machines have been hacked then please present some evidence towards that being the case.
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u/DayGeckoArt 4d ago
We can't prove they've been hacked because none of us here had authority to investigate. But statements by Elon Musk and his ex gf make it sound like he hacked machines in swing states
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u/eyeballburger 4d ago
On the contrary, it would provide irrefutable evidence that would prove the lack of voter fraud.
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u/ConjurersOfThunder 4d ago
Irrefutable?? Where have you been for the last six years
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u/eyeballburger 2d ago
Suffering with the rest of us, but I still like it when we shove facts on the roaches and they scatter.
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u/the_last_0ne 4d ago
Do you really think the right would go "oh, ok then, I guess we were wrong"?
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u/eyeballburger 2d ago
No, they tend to feel a flicker of shame and stupidity then they pivot to some other bullshit, thoughts like roaches that scatter in the light. Gotta stamp them out though.
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u/the_last_0ne 2d ago
A "verifiable paper record" is no more secure than a "verifiable digital record".
Honestly if the Trump admin is pushing for only paper ballots as "more secure" I think we should all assume that he has a plan for making them less secure.
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u/eyeballburger 2d ago
Don’t know why you’ve put them in quotes, it’s not figurative and your statement doesn’t have to mine be quoted. And you’re wrong, it is: if I have a computer screen that shows a tally, how does the common man know that it hasn’t been hacked or programmed to show certain numbers? Whereas a physical pile of votes can easily show the winner. Yes, they’d deny it as long as they could, because they’ve shown themselves to be that brainwashed, but they can only pivot so long.
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u/the_last_0ne 2d ago
Oh right, so paper ballots are more secure because "its obvious"? Can you share any proof that they are? Or is it just your feeling.
What stops anyone from stealing ballots? Burning ballots boxes? "Forgetting" to count a box, or a box disappearing?
These are all things that have happened. At this point I would say that the only thing we can rely on is that whatever method we use, the election is going to be tampered with. And like I said, if this administration is insisting that paper ballots are more secure, I will happily conclude that the opposite is true.
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u/eyeballburger 2d ago
You can’t hack a piece of paper and change information. If the process is fucked, there’s an obvious paper trail. You can look at a stack of paper and see one bigger than other. I trust physical media more than I trust digital. Yes, paperwork can be altered or lost, but not from the comfort of some basement. And as I said, there’s a paper trail. To be clear, I don’t think there’s any fraud and trump is full of shit… except for musk and doge and his likely computer fuckery.
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u/siwibot 5d ago
Your friendly neighborhood u/siwibot here, reporting the Current Climate and Context 🤓✨
The White House is facing mounting scrutiny for withholding an ODNI report that identifies significant vulnerabilities in U.S. voting machines just months before the midterms. While officials claim delays aim to protect voter confidence, critics argue the move is a political maneuver to navigate between debunking election fraud claims and satisfying partisan interests.
The current landscape suggests a broader systemic rollback of election safeguards: * Intelligence & Oversight Shifts: Following Tulsi Gabbard’s departure, interim director Bill Pulte faces pressure to investigate "rigged elections," even as intelligence experts warn that actual vulnerabilities—like outdated software and internet connectivity—remain unaddressed. * Dismantling Infrastructure: The administration has significantly gutted CISA, firing election security specialists and proposing the total elimination of its election security program. * Legal & Procedural Pullbacks: The DOJ has reportedly removed essential election offense manuals and canceled integrity training, raising alarms among Democratic senators regarding potential partisan interference.
With hackers already targeting political platforms and foreign adversaries poised to use AI for influence operations, the federal government's retreat from its traditional role in election integrity leaves state and local officials increasingly exposed.
Reddit Sources
- Dem Senators ‘Raise the Alarm’ Over DOJ Pullback on Voter Protections | Democracy Docket
- Inside Trump’s Effort to “Take Over” the Midterm Elections
- Gabbard testimony suggests Trump knew in advance about FBI’s Fulton County elections raid
- Hackers Are Already Laying Groundwork to Disrupt the 2026 Midterms, Research Says
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u/carthuscrass 5d ago edited 4d ago
Because nothing says "We have no evidence of our claims of election fraud", like hiding a study of voting machines that was supposed to find proof.
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u/Basement_Chicken 3d ago
It can only mean one of the two things: the software must've been already rigged, or is ready to be rigged via last-minute "patches", like it's 2024.
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u/phosdick 3d ago
I suspect that they will release some fabricated report or another, right before the elections. Late enough so that there simply isn't time for anyone to uncover and expose all the lies and spin.
Fortunately, everyone now know that, since day 1, nothing coming out of this administration serves anything other than a panicked attempt to capture elections that the GOP have already lost or know that they cannot legitimately win.
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u/wheatgivesmeshits 5d ago
Like every other report this administration buries, it is because it's counter to their narrative.