Senior Justice Department officials are exploring whether they can bring criminal charges against state or local election officials if the Trump administration determines they have not sufficiently safeguarded their computer systems, according to people familiar with the discussions.
The department’s effort, which is still in its early stages, is not based on new evidence, data or legal authority, according to the people, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. Instead, it is driven by the unsubstantiated argument made by many in the Trump administration that American elections are easy prey to voter fraud and foreign manipulation, these people said.
Such a path could significantly raise the stakes for federal investigations of state or county officials, thrusting the Justice Department and the threat of criminalization into the election system in a way that has never been done before.
Federal voting laws place some mandates on how elections are conducted and ballots counted. But that work has historically been managed by state and local officials, with limited involvement or oversight from Washington.
In recent days, senior officials have directed Justice Department lawyers to examine the ways in which a hypothetical failure by state or local officials to follow security standards for electronic voting could be charged as a crime, appearing to assume a kind of criminally negligent mismanagement of election systems. Already, the department has started to contact election officials across the country, asking for information on voting in the state.
A spokesman for the Justice Department, Gates McGavick, said the agency “will leave no option off the table when it comes to promoting free, fair and secure elections.”
Voting experts say the push by the Trump administration is alarming, particularly given that it has repeatedly argued, without reliable evidence, that the 2020 election that President Trump lost was affected by mass voter fraud.
“The tactics we’re seeing out of D.O.J. right now are building on what we’ve seen from anti-democracy groups for years,” said Dax Goldstein, the program director of election protection at the States United Democracy Center, a nonprofit organization. “They’re rooted in the same lies about elections, and they’re all meant to create noise and fear and concerns about issues with our elections that just don’t exist. Our elections are safe and secure, and election officials are working to keep them that way.”
The instructions at the Justice Department come as the department’s elections and voting rights section is in significant turmoil trying to absorb new directives from the Trump administration.
Since Mr. Trump took office, the department has dropped or halted all of the open voting rights lawsuits that preceded Mr. Trump’s inauguration. The section itself has dwindled from about 30 lawyers at the end of the Biden administration to just a handful, part of a broader exodus of hundreds of attorneys from the civil rights division. Still, multiple former department officials say the department is trying to replenish its ranks.
The effort to explore criminal charges in state election supervision came as a surprise to some prosecutors in the Justice Department, according to the people familiar with the matter. Those people described the effort as a novel and aggressive way to try to find chargeable crimes in a technically arcane topic, but one that is increasingly a political flashpoint as the president and his supporters have made unsubstantiated claims about election data manipulation.
Inside the Justice Department, a number of lawyers have struggled to find a criminal statute to match the Trump administration’s demands, according to the people familiar with the matter.
In March, Mr. Trump signed an executive order that called for “preserving and protecting the integrity of American elections,” seeking to turn his own views and groundless accusations about electoral integrity into federal policy. A number of states have successfully sued to block parts, but not all, of Mr. Trump’s order.
One section directs the attorney general and the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to “prevent all noncitizens from being involved in the administration of any federal election, including by accessing election equipment, ballots or any other relevant materials used in the conduct of any federal election.”
It also orders the secretary of homeland security to “review and report on the security of all electronic systems used in the voter registration and voting process.” That assessment shall include “the security of all such systems to the extent they are connected to, or integrated into, the internet and report on the risk of such systems being compromised through malicious software and unauthorized intrusions into the system.”
That “review and report” language seems to be a far cry from the kind of criminal investigation envisioned by senior Justice Department officials, particularly on the question of whether there may be a form of criminal negligence attached to the management of election data systems, which are frequent targets of hackers.
But some in the department are already beginning to reach out to election officials across the country. Late last month, prosecutors from the criminal division contacted at least two states with broad requests about information sharing, according to a person familiar with the request.
Last week, at least two other states received a letter from different parts of the Justice Department with 15 broad questions about voting policies and compliance with federal laws, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by The New York Times. One question specifically asked about voting machines: “Describe all technological security measures taken by the state to prevent unauthorized access to the statewide voter registration list.”
Other states, including Wisconsin, North Carolina and Colorado, have received requests from the department for more information regarding their voting practices.
Ann Jacobs, the Democratic chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said that she had not heard from the Justice Department regarding election machines, but was confident in the security of the state’s systems.
“Any analysis of our system would reassure the investigators of the security of our system,” she said. But, she added, “we’re certainly happy to answer any questions that D.O.J. has on this. It’s my hope that they, while finding reassurance in our systems, recognize that coming into an investigation with a threat of prosecution tends to be the worst way to handle these matters.”
Conspiracy theories about the security of election machines have long percolated on the political fringes. But they were thrust into the mainstream after the 2020 election, when allies of Mr. Trump espoused spurious theories, claiming, with no evidence, that machines were hacked by foreign adversaries, some with ties to long-deceased dictators.
Even after that election, conservative activists continued to hunt for evidence of fraud caused by machines. In 2023, multiple people, including a former state representative, were indicted in Michigan as part of a brazen scheme to illegally obtain and inspect election machines. Tina Peters, a former county clerk in Colorado, is serving nine years in prison for tampering with voting machines in an effort to prove that the machines had been used to rig the 2020 election against Mr. Trump.
But the president has called Ms. Peters a “political prisoner” and called for her release. Mr. Trump also stated a desire to criminally prosecute state and local election officials while he was running for office in 2024. And Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for a second Trump administration, also pushed for using the Justice Department to prosecute election officials.
Election experts have also expressed concern that the Justice Department’s taking a role in election security could introduce problems or weaknesses to the national electoral infrastructure.
“D.O.J. has the full power of the federal government behind it,” Mx. Goldstein said. “And under the guise of election integrity, they could end up using their unique tools to introduce new vulnerabilities to the system.”
Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The Times.
Nick Corasaniti is a Times reporter covering national politics, with a focus on voting and elections.
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