Certification turns on whether a state accepted the conditions. Officials said reviewing an actual election would introduce variables the office has no method of weighing.
WASHINGTON—Citing the need for public confidence four months before the midterms, the Department of Homeland Security has stood up an office that will certify state elections as secure based on whether a state accepted the conditions attached to federal election security grants, and will issue those certificates before the elections take place, three officials confirmed Friday.
The Office of Electoral Assurance opened Wednesday in a converted training annex in Springfield, Virginia, with a staff of eleven. It follows Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s announcement Friday that states will get cybersecurity support from the federal government only if they run their voter registration rolls through a federal citizenship database.
“A certified election is an election in a state that has met the requirements,” said one senior department official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the certificates have not been published. “What happens on the day is a separate matter. We are not in the business of the day.”
How Election Security Grants Became a Certificate
Mullin said Friday that states wanting federal reimbursement for running federal elections would have to adopt what he described as “security issues, just security issues,” and that registration lists would need to be scrubbed. He also threatened state election chiefs with prosecution if they decline to use the database.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency told states on July 9 that it would hold back 20 percent of more than $1 billion in homeland security money from those that do not file compliance plans. Qualifying states must move to hand-marked paper ballots, manually audit at least 5 percent of ballots after each federal election, and verify the citizenship of every registered voter within 120 days of an award. Pennsylvania officials say nearly half of last year’s allocation still has not been released.
What the Certificate Does Not Examine
Under the office’s 24-page protocol, a certificate is issued on receipt of a state’s compliance plan. No review of ballots, equipment, tabulation, or results is conducted at any stage. Deputy Administrator Weldon Prather-Ames, 54, said in a Thursday briefing that examining an actual election would introduce variables the office has no method of weighing, and that a document describing compliance is a cleaner instrument than one describing an outcome.
Nineteen elections have been certified since Wednesday. None of them have occurred. Certificates run through the 2028 general election and renew administratively unless a state withdraws its plan.
States That Decline the Election Security Grants
States that file nothing will not be described as insecure, officials said. They will be logged as having declined certification, a category the office says carries no finding either way. Maine, where the department last week said an officer had fired fearing for public safety, has already turned down roughly $130,000 in election money rather than take the conditions.
A federal court currently bars the department from using the citizenship database to police most state voter rolls. Officials said the certification program is administered separately from the database, does not depend on it, and does not affect the requirement to use it.
Asked what happens if a certified election produces a disputed result, the senior official said the certificate would stand, because it describes the state’s compliance and not the election. Asked whether the office had considered certifying elections after they occur, the official said the question had come up and had been resolved.
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