States That Won’t Adopt Trump’s Sweeping Election Changes Risk Losing Millions in DHS Funding: CNN

States that refuse to implement the Trump administration’s sweeping new election changes risk losing tens of millions of dollars in federal funding, CNN reported on Monday.

The changes are meant to root out election fraud — which remains relatively rare — while giving the federal government greater influence over how states run elections.

“Over the past 18 months, the administration has been going after election fraud, despite little evidence that there’s any sort of widespread issue here,” said CNN’s Gabe Cohen on Monday’s The Situation Room. “Now, what it appears they’re doing is trying to use Homeland Security funding as leverage in that fight.”

“So, what we’re talking about here are these large grant programs that are run through the Department of Homeland Security,” Cohen said. “This year alone, they’re set to deliver about $1 billion out to states. It is one of the key tools that the federal government has to help cities and states prepare for terror attacks, cyber security incidents, major disasters — cities and states consider this really critical funding. Well, now, what the administration is saying is, if you want all of that funding, you’re going to have to implement these mandatory election changes, otherwise, you’re going to have to forfeit 20% of your grants, which could, for a lot of places, mean millions of dollars gone.”

Cohen continued:

So, what they are specifically demanding is…they are looking for a transition from states away from electronic voting systems that use things like QR codes and barcodes. They want to move to hand-marked paper ballots. That’s one of the things we’ve heard the administration talk a lot about over the past year. Plus, they want states to be conducting election audits, but this is a key note: They want them using methods that are specifically developed by the administration and by the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. So, they want the administration in the driver’s seat when it comes to election audits. They also want states using a government-approved system to verify the citizenship of any workers who are working at polling locations. And this one might even be most controversial of all: They want to require states to run their complete voter rolls through the SAVE system at the Department of Homeland Security. It is this citizenship verification tool where they can search for non-citizen voters or ineligible voters.

Cohen added that the administration has “tried to attach language to grant funding that would push their policies” in the past, but states have sued and courts have blocked some of initiatives.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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