Trump Admin Releases Plan To Protect 2026 Election Infrastructure- thefederalist.com

The Trump administration released a “comprehensive” plan on Thursday that U.S. election officials can use to safeguard the integrity of the voting process during the upcoming midterms, The Federalist has learned.

“Election security is national security,” Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement. “This plan, which will be implemented in full, is crucial to the security, freeness, and fairness of choosing the leaders of our country. Making America safe again isn’t just done at the border, in our streets, and on the coast — it’s also done in protecting the integrity of American elections.”

Obtained by The Federalist, the 2026 Election Infrastructure Security Plan includes numerous tools and services that election officials can use to protect election infrastructure from physical and cyber threats in the midterms. The extensive report was produced by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which falls under DHS.

The 13-page document begins by providing a comprehensive overview of existing election infrastructure (voting and processing facilities, voting hardware, etc.) and the core technological components (voter registration systems, tabulation systems, etc.) that define a typical election process. It also includes an analysis of potential cyber and physical threats to this infrastructure that officials may encounter during the 2026 contest, such as attempted cyber hacks of state voter registration databases and bomb threats directed at election offices.

The report provides guidance on how best to confront these prospective issues. For instance, to mitigate potential cyber vulnerabilities, the plan advises election officials to consider using paper ballots “that can be easily reviewed to ensure transparency, auditability, and resilience against software failures or manipulation,” and to “[c]onduct post-election manual audits of paper ballots to verify that voting systems function properly and to identify errors before certifying the final results.”