Vulnerabilities in Electronic Voting and Ballot-Counting Systems, By President Donald J. Trump

For years Americans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure, including electronic voting machines and ballot-counting systems. We are releasing a series of previously-classified U.S. Intelligence Community Assessments and other reports proving that our government has long known these machines are extremely exposed to attack. As one assessment states: "We judge that U.S. adversaries, including at a minimum Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, as well as non-state groups, have the capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure." The documents also state: "We assess that centralized election-related data repositories, such as voter registration databases, pollbooks, and official election websites, are most vulnerable to exploitation, and adversaries could use access to these systems to disrupt election processes." Tonight, we are releasing all of these findings, spanning from January 2020 to June 2026. This is a cyber threat aimed at the very heart of our democracy.

Many people have questioned whether it could actually be possible to electronically manipulate vote totals or change election results. Today, we are releasing documents that show the CIA obtained reporting of a specific plot by the Maduro regime in Venezuela to do exactly that—conspiring to digitally rig their own country's elections in 2020. This reporting included precise details about methods the regime developed to digitally alter vote totals in ways that could not be detected even with an audit. This intelligence underscores why we must take urgent action to ensure that our own systems can never be hacked or compromised.

Over a period of years starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People's Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history—resulting in China's illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files. That information includes names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences, and other sensitive data that would be needed to register to vote, and engage in other nefarious activities. This data loss presents an unprecedented election security nightmare. The intelligence even shows that China assigned a data exploitation unit specifically to this new project.

Members of the Deep State in our intelligence agencies worked to actively suppress and downplay information about the extent of China's sinister election meddling—covering it up from both the President and the American People. U.S. spy agencies began learning about the compromise of voter registration files in 2020, when they discovered that tens of millions of voters' data in 18 states had been bought, stolen, or hacked by China. Yet those responsible for sounding the alarm instead kept the information hidden.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/