The Homeland Security Department will require random audits of paper ballots in the midterm elections, citing long-simmering concern that the nation’s largest voting technology companies use Chinese parts in their voting machines, according to a letter from Secretary Markwayne Mullin released Thursday.
Mullin sent the letter to the White House Transparency Task Force earlier this week outlining the dangers posed by Chinese components in American voting machines and the way that these components could be exploited by hackers or other malicious actors.
The letter highlighted longstanding concerns first raised in a bipartisan manner before the 2020 election, but which officials appear to have taken little action on in the intervening years.
“Voting machines with components manufactured by foreign adversaries introduce significant security risks,” Mullin wrote. “These vulnerabilities mean that malicious actors could potentially compromise election infrastructure at any stage of the supply chain, even before the machines are assembled or deployed.”
The secretary explained, “If a component is tampered with during manufacturing, it could serve as a point-of-entry for hackers, allowing for the possibility of synchronized attacks across multiple machines and jurisdictions.”
Two Biden administration Intelligence Community memos in 2024 identified China as “the most active and persistent cyber threat” and assessed that China, along with Iran and Russia, has “the technical capability to access some U.S. election-related networks and systems.”
You can read Mullin’s letter below:
08.20.2026 – WHTF Letter Commerce – S1 SIGNED.pdf
Earlier this year, the Trump administration took drastic action to ban the import of all internet routers manufactured in foreign countries because of the unacceptable security risks posed by Chinese hacking capabilities.
Internet routers connect computers, cellphones, and other electronic devices to the internet, the backbone of the modern economy.
Hellbound and Down 