The war on democracy

The Hill - Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin went further than President Trump in an address on election security Friday, asserting foreign adversaries could hack voter machines, threatening states that refuse to partner with his department and saying he would use “maximum pressure” to root out any illegally cast votes.

While Trump in his primetime address Thursday called voting machines “vulnerable and they’re easily compromised,” Mullin raised the specter of hackers entering such systems to manually change votes — something the U.S. intelligence community has concluded has never happened.

He also said state election officials will pay a price if they refuse to cooperate with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) efforts, laying the groundwork to access states’ vote tabulators and even their voter rolls — something various courts have repeatedly denied federal government efforts to access.