A White House fact sheet says China obtained roughly 220 million American voter registration records, including nonpublic information, through purchases, theft or hacking that targeted election infrastructure.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
The nation’s intelligence chiefs have concluded that China’s acquisition of American voter registration records falls within the intelligence community’s formal definition of election interference, according to a White House fact sheet released this week.
The statement was approved by the heads of the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Department of Homeland Security. It followed President Donald Trump’s declassification of election-related intelligence and his July 16 address outlining weaknesses in the country’s voting infrastructure, including vulnerabilities in voting machines and the presence of noncitizens on state voter rolls.
The intelligence community distinguishes between broader attempts to influence an election and operations directed at the systems used to administer it, according to the declassified documents cited in the fact sheet.
“Election influence includes overt and covert influence activities of foreign governments or actors serving as agents of, or on behalf of, foreign governments intended to affect directly or indirectly a US election- including candidates, political parties, voters or their preferences, or political processes,” the statement said, quoting the official definition.
“Election interference is a subset of election influence targeted at the technical aspects of the election, including voter registration, casting and counting of ballots, and reporting of results,” it added.
Under that standard, China’s targeting and acquisition of U.S. voter registration data constitutes election interference because voter databases are part of the technical infrastructure supporting elections, the fact sheet said.
The intelligence chiefs said China obtained approximately 220 million American voter registration records through a combination of purchases, theft and hacking. The collection included nonpublic data that was unavailable through ordinary commercial transactions, according to the statement.
The clarification followed Trump’s prime-time address on election security, during which he presented documents that he said revealed numerous breaches and vulnerabilities concealed by the Biden administration and what he described as a self-proclaimed “shadow government.”
Trump said U.S. intelligence agencies detected Chinese efforts to acquire American voter databases during the spring and summer of 2020. The databases contained tens of millions of records, but officials allegedly made a coordinated decision not to inform Trump, Congress or the public.
The amount of compromised data later expanded to approximately 220 million voter records by 2023, while the Biden administration failed to stop the collection, according to Trump and the documents released with his address.
Trump also said the intelligence showed that China activated influence or interference methods specifically aimed at him, even as intelligence agencies publicly assessed that Beijing had not undertaken operations intended to change the election’s outcome.
The declassified material further included intelligence reports from 2020 identifying alleged vulnerabilities that could allow foreign governments to penetrate American voting machines and alter ballots without detection through post-election hand audits, Trump said.
He stated that Venezuela moved during the summer and fall of 2020 from studying those vulnerabilities to developing a practical plan to exploit them. A recent DHS test confirmed that the weaknesses remain, according to the president.
Democratic leaders rejected Trump’s interpretation of the intelligence, arguing that the disclosures did not demonstrate that a foreign government changed ballots or altered an election outcome.
They also noted that some voter registration information is commercially available and maintained that China’s acquisition of the records did not necessarily prove operational interference in vote casting or counting.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats characterized Trump’s address as an attempt to weaken public confidence in the election system before the midterms rather than a legitimate warning about national security.
Their response contrasted with concerns Democratic lawmakers raised before the 2020 election about voting technology and the possibility of foreign interference.
In December 2019, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., joined Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wisc., in sending letters to private equity firms invested in Dominion Voting Systems and other election technology companies.
The lawmakers said the vendors had “long skimped on security in favor of convenience” and warned that voting systems across the country were “prone to security problems.”
The newly released intelligence assessment does not state that Chinese actors successfully changed ballots or election results. It instead classifies the targeting and acquisition of voter registration infrastructure and nonpublic voter data as election interference under the definition used by the CIA, NSA, ODNI and DHS.
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