‘Got to be kidding me’: GOP officials pan Trump’s claims of shocking new election threats

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Four days after President Donald Trump declared that his administration uncovered “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure,” dozens of state election officials from across the country gathered in Boston.

But they weren’t there for an emergency summit to tackle the supposed crisis, even though the midterm elections are only 15 weeks away.

Instead, these election officials from 37 states met for a long-scheduled professional conference that struck a strikingly business-as-usual tone. In fact, Trump and his primetime address hardly came up.

In interviews with CNN, more than a dozen election officials from both parties said Trump’s address surfaced little new in terms of evidence. Several GOP officials even scoffed at his presentation, pointing to the data that the administration released to try to bolster its case that there are massive numbers of non-citizens voting in US elections.

Matt Crane, a Republican who runs the Colorado County Clerks Association, said his text chat with a bipartisan group of colleagues was filled with “a lot of laughing emojis, and like, ‘you got to be kidding me?’ that this was all it was.”

A GOP official from a state Trump won three times also panned the speech, which included the declassification of intelligence reports that Trump said posed an “unprecedented election security nightmare” with threats from China and Venezuela. (Trump didn’t mention that the reports also made clear that neither country ever tampered with US election results.)

“I read the documents,” the official told CNN on the condition that his state not be identified. “It was old. I’ve already seen this stuff. It wasn’t new to me. We already had most of this information.”

Democratic officials and election experts have condemned Trump for, in their view, escalating his longstanding attacks on the voting process, accusing him of laying groundwork to explain away any potential GOP losses this November.

Many Republicans who run elections have been far more circumspect in their public comments – broadly expressing support for Trump’s stated goal of cleaning up voter rolls and preventing illegal voting, while defending their record in their states.

But in private, many decry what Trump is doing.

“We all know elections aren’t rigged, but we have to keep our heads down and do our jobs,” one Republican election official told CNN, on condition of anonymity, because they didn’t want to anger the Trump administration.

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The president’s speech last Thursday, and a follow-up presentation from the Department of Homeland Security, singled out several states that supposedly had staggeringly high numbers of non-citizens on the voter rolls.

Trump has long peddled false and fantastical claims that thousands and perhaps even millions of undocumented immigrants are voting in US elections. Isolated cases do exist, but comprehensive studies from right-wing and left-leaning think tanks have concluded that this occurs on a tiny scale .

Still, the administration said it had reviewed public data and uncovered hundreds of thousands of non-citizens on the rolls in Pennsylvania and Nevada, and in California and New Jersey, which are Democratic strongholds. Some officials in those states have called for more transparency, demanding to know how DHS arrived at those numbers.

Even some red states that voluntarily turned over their voter lists to the Trump administration for examination were swept into the president’s latest push. The administration said more than 28,000 non-citizens had been found on rolls in states with GOP election officials.

The DHS citizenship database being used to review voter rolls – called SAVE, or Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements – has a record of overstating the number of registered non-citizens. DHS itself acknowledges that states using the system voluntarily for voter-roll maintenance must further investigate any matches.

Sam Hayes, the GOP executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections who has aggressively backed several of Trump’s election policies, said his team wouldn’t rubber-stamp the administration’s findings. He said the state, which DHS claimed had 1,599 non-citizens on its rolls, would conduct its own verification, which takes time and requires contacting registrants.

“There’s nothing we accept at face value and just start removing folks” from the voter rolls, Hayes told CNN. “We’ve got to make our own independent assessment of this. … We still have to do the due diligence on our end.”

Hayes also threw cold water on Trump’s desire for quick answers, saying: “It’s going to be tough to get it done by the midterms, but we’re working toward that goal.”

Georgia election officials told CNN the administration’s claims about non-citizens on their rolls appear inflated. Of the 2,549 registrants flagged by DHS, they said, only about 20 had ever cast a ballot in the state.

Despite questioning the White House data, officials from both parties stressed that they take seriously their duty to keep non-citizens off the rolls.

New Jersey’s governor announced Tuesday that a software error at the state Motor Vehicle Commission accidentally added about 6,600 non-citizens to the voter rolls, and that 400 cast improper ballots in recent elections.

The surprising revelation from a Democratic governor in a liberal stronghold immediately made waves and drew “told-you-so” recriminations from the Trump administration.

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At a follow-up press conference Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened fines and even potential “prison time” for election officials who don’t comply with the Trump administration’s demands for voter rolls and other election overhauls.

Election officials told CNN they take these threats seriously, especially after seeing the Trump-era Justice Department indict several of his political opponents. But at the same time, officials said, their focus is on their work.

“There is the concern about, ‘Could I be made the example of?’” said Crane, the Republican who runs Colorado’s bipartisan election clerks’ association. “But I think, by and large, it’s become somewhat white noise at this point.”

A Democratic election administrator from a battleground state told CNN, on condition of anonymity, that he got a concerned call from his mother after she heard Mullin’s comments about possibly prosecuting election officials.

Earlier this month, the Justice Department sent similar warning letters to all 50 states. Idaho’s Republican attorney general was among those who pushed back, rebuking the DOJ in a sharply worded reply letter that said the “insinuations of criminal violations of the federal election laws are not well taken.”

“Stop threatening your friends in Idaho,” wrote James Craig, a top lawyer from the Idaho attorney general’s office.

A GOP election official from another state told CNN that even some officials in red states don’t feel safe, because of the Trump administration’s unpredictability.

“It’s extremely concerning when they talk like that, and we have no idea what they’re going to do,” the official said.

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在唐纳德·特朗普总统宣布他的政府发现了“我们选举基础设施中令人震惊的漏洞”四天后，来自全国各地的数十名州选举官员聚集在波士顿。

但他们并没有召开紧急峰会来应对所谓的危机，尽管中期选举只有 15 周的时间了。

相反，来自37个州的这些选举官员参加了一场早已安排好的专业会议，会议气氛出奇地平静，一切照旧。事实上，特朗普及其黄金时段讲话几乎没有被提及。

在接受CNN采访时，来自两党的十几位选举官员表示，特朗普的讲话并没有提供多少新的证据。几位共和党官员甚至对他的讲话嗤之以鼻，并指出特朗普政府此前公布的数据已经证实，美国大选中有大量非公民投票。

科罗拉多州县书记员协会主席、共和党人马特·克莱恩表示，他与两党同事的短信聊天中充满了“大量的笑脸表情符号，以及‘你在开玩笑吧？’之类的话，仿佛这就是全部真相。”

一位来自特朗普曾三次赢得该州的共和党官员也抨击了特朗普的演讲。演讲中，特朗普宣布解密一些情报报告，称这些报告构成了“前所未有的选举安全噩梦”，并指出中国和委内瑞拉构成了威胁。（特朗普没有提及的是，这些报告也明确指出，这两个国家从未干预过美国大选结果。）

“我看过这些文件，”这位官员告诉CNN，但他要求匿名，并要求透露他所在的州。“这些文件很旧了。我以前就看过这些东西。对我来说并不新鲜。我们之前已经掌握了大部分信息。”

民主党官员和选举专家谴责特朗普，认为他加剧了长期以来对投票程序的攻击，指责他为掩盖共和党在今年11月可能出现的任何败选铺路。

许多负责选举的共和党人在公开场合的言论要谨慎得多——他们大致表示支持特朗普提出的清理选民名册和防止非法投票的目标，同时为自己在各自州的政绩辩护。

但私下里，许多人谴责特朗普的做法。

一位共和党选举官员匿名告诉 CNN：“我们都知道选举没有被操纵，但我们必须保持低调，做好自己的工作。”因为他不想激怒特朗普政府。

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总统上周四的讲话以及国土安全部的后续报告，特别指出几个州的选民名册上非公民人数高得惊人。

特朗普长期以来一直散布虚假且荒谬的说法，声称成千上万甚至数百万的非法移民正在美国大选中投票。虽然个别案例确实存在，但来自右翼和左翼智库的全面研究都得出结论，这种情况发生的规模极小。

尽管如此，政府方面表示，他们审查了公开数据，发现宾夕法尼亚州、内华达州、加利福尼亚州和新泽西州（均为民主党票仓）的公民登记册上存在数十万非公民。这些州的一些官员呼吁提高透明度，要求国土安全部说明这些数字是如何得出的。

就连一些自愿向特朗普政府提交选民名单以供审查的共和党州，也被卷入了总统的最新行动中。政府称，在共和党选举官员执政的州，已发现超过2.8万名非公民出现在选民名册上。

用于审查选民名册的国土安全部公民身份数据库——名为SAVE（系统性外国人资格核查系统）——曾有夸大已登记非公民人数的记录。国土安全部自身也承认，自愿使用该系统维护选民名册的各州必须对任何匹配项进行进一步调查。

北卡罗来纳州选举委员会执行主任、共和党人萨姆·海耶斯曾积极支持特朗普的多项选举政策。他表示，他的团队不会盲目接受政府的调查结果。他说，国土安全部声称该州选民登记册上有1599名非公民，但北卡罗来纳州将自行进行核实，这需要时间并联系登记选民。

“我们不会轻信任何表面现象就贸然将人从选民名册中移除，”海耶斯告诉CNN。“我们必须对此进行独立评估……我们仍然需要尽职调查。”

海耶斯也对特朗普希望尽快得到答案的愿望泼了一盆冷水，他说：“要在中期选举前完成这件事很困难，但我们正在朝着这个目标努力。”

佐治亚州选举官员告诉CNN，政府关于选民名册上存在非公民的说法似乎有所夸大。他们表示，在国土安全部标记的2549名登记选民中，只有大约20人曾在该州投过票。

尽管对白宫的数据提出质疑，但两党官员都强调，他们认真履行职责，将非公民排除在人口普查名单之外。

新泽西州州长周二宣布，该州机动车辆委员会的软件错误意外地将约 6600 名非公民添加到选民名册中，其中 400 人在最近的选举中投了不当选票。

一位民主党州长在自由派的大本营中做出的惊人爆料立即引起轩然大波，并招致特朗普政府的“我早就说过”式的指责。

安娜·莫尼梅克/盖蒂图片社

在周五的后续新闻发布会上，国土安全部长马克韦恩·穆林威胁说，对于不遵守特朗普政府关于选民名册和其他选举改革要求的选举官员，将处以罚款，甚至可能判处“监禁”。

选举官员告诉CNN，他们非常重视这些威胁，尤其是在看到特朗普时代的司法部起诉了他的几位政治对手之后。但与此同时，官员们表示，他们的工作重心仍然是选举工作。

“人们担心的是，‘我会不会成为杀鸡儆猴的例子？’”科罗拉多州两党选举工作人员协会主席、共和党人克莱恩说道，“但我认为，总的来说，这种担忧现在已经变得无关紧要了。”

一位来自摇摆州的民主党选举官员匿名告诉 CNN，他的母亲在听到穆林关于可能起诉选举官员的言论后，给他打了个担忧的电话。

本月初，司法部向所有50个州发出了类似的警告信。爱达荷州的共和党籍总检察长是反驳者之一，他在一封措辞严厉的回信中斥责司法部，称“暗示存在违反联邦选举法的犯罪行为是不可接受的”。

“停止威胁你在爱达荷州的朋友，”爱达荷州总检察长办公室的高级律师詹姆斯·克雷格写道。

一位来自其他州的共和党选举官员告诉 CNN，由于特朗普政府的不可预测性，即使是红色州的一些官员也感到不安全。

“他们这样说话非常令人担忧，我们完全不知道他们会做什么，”这位官员说。