Trump Ties Anti-Terrorism Grants To Sweeping Election Overhaul, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Federal Disaster Money Was Still Reaching States That Counted Their Votes On Machines

WASHINGTON. In what the Department of Homeland Security characterized as a routine update to grant guidance, the Trump administration announced Monday that any state wishing to keep the full federal funding it uses to guard against terrorist attacks, protect critical infrastructure, and prepare for natural disasters must first agree to overhaul the way it runs its elections, resolving a long-standing concern that the nation's disaster-preparedness money was still flowing to states regardless of whether they counted their ballots in a manner the President found reassuring.

Under the new rules, which govern several grant programs expected to total more than $1 billion this fiscal year, states must phase out widely used electronic voting machines in favor of hand-marked paper ballots, run their voter rolls through a Department of Homeland Security citizenship database, conduct manual audits using methods the administration itself will establish, and verify the citizenship of every poll worker through an approved federal system. States that decline any of these conditions would forfeit 20 percent of the grants, money that for years had been distributed to help localities respond to hurricanes, chemical spills, and mass-casualty attacks, no questions asked.

A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the conditions merely ensured that taxpayer money was being spent responsibly. "We are not telling anyone how to run their elections," the official said. "We are simply clarifying which states will continue receiving the funds they rely on to survive a major disaster, and which states have decided, for reasons entirely their own, that they would prefer not to."

The roughly 30 percent of American voters who live in places that depend on the machines now slated for removal, among them Delaware, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, and Los Angeles County, were informed that their governments could either adopt the new federal preference or absorb the loss of millions of dollars earmarked for preventing the next attack, a decision the administration repeatedly stressed was theirs alone to make.

The requirements arrived as the President, who has spent the better part of a decade asserting without evidence that American elections are riddled with fraud, approached a midterm in which his party's prospects had dimmed. Officials noted that the changes would make the nation's elections more secure, secure being defined, for the purposes of the guidance, as more closely resembling the elections the President has long maintained he would have won had they only been conducted correctly.

At press time, the administration had reassured a former Justice Department lawyer who predicted the rules would be struck down in court that the federal grants used to secure the nation's courthouses also remained fully available, pending his state's cooperation.