DHS plans costly crackdown on states that don’t cooperate on election security

By Fox News · Fox News

FIRST ON FOX : The Department of Homeland Security will withhold billions in preparedness grant funding from states that refuse to adopt new election security measures, including voter citizenship verification, post-election audits and expanded use of paper ballots. The push comes as President Donald Trump and many Republicans slam states that do not want to let the federal government audit their voter rolls, while also criticizing the snail's-pace, widely criticized vote tabulations in states like California. FEMA, a sub-agency of DHS, is making more than $1 billion in taxpayer funding available to states that want to participate in its Homeland Security Grant Program , but with a catch. OBAMA-APPOINTED JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP'S ELECTION ORDER AS SAVE AMERICA ACT FIGHT INTENSIFIES To qualify for grants, states must submit plans to transition away from " unsecure electronic voting systems " that employ QR codes or barcodes instead of hand-marked paper ballots. By doing so, the agency said, it provides a paper trail to quickly assess any alleged irregularities. After each federal election, states seeking preparedness grants must conduct a manual audit of at least 5% of all ballots cast with the agency arguing a manual, random review will confirm voting-machine tabulations’ synthesis with paper ballots and identify any "manipulation." States must also match the number of voters who participated in the election with the number of ballots cast and, within 120 days of any grant award, use the SAVE database — brought to the fore amid numerous illegal immigrant truckers getting in fatal crashes — to verify the citizenship of every listed voter in the state. SAVE, the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, has been criticized by some Democratic governors for being insufficiently maintained, an assertion DHS has denied. LEGAL WAR ON TRUMP’S AGENDA GAINS FIREPOWER AS FEDERAL LAWYERS DEFECT TO DEMOCRATS DHS told Fox News Digital that threats to election systems con…