Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin has formally warned that the electronic voting systems that dominate U.S. elections rely on components manufactured in China, creating supply chain vulnerabilities that foreign adversaries could exploit.
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The August 24, 2026 letter to the White House Transparency Task Force underscores a long-recognized hardware problem now tied directly to midterm election security under the Trump administration.
Mullin wrote that “voting machines with components manufactured by foreign adversaries introduce significant security risks.” He explained that “malicious actors could potentially compromise election infrastructure at any stage of the supply chain, even before the machines are assembled or deployed. If a component is tampered with during manufacturing, it could serve as a point-of-entry for hackers, allowing for the possibility of synchronized attacks across multiple machines and jurisdictions.”
Three vendors—ES&S, Hart InterCivic, and Dominion—control more than 80 percent of the U.S. market, Mullin noted. Representatives from each have acknowledged Chinese-made parts. In congressional testimony, Dominion’s then-President and CEO previously stated that “voting systems manufacturers would be challenged to source certain product hardware components from outside of China,” claiming: “In some cases, there are simply no alternative suppliers.”
ES&S representatives similarly said that “in some instances, there is no ability to procure from alternative component suppliers. Some components are sole-sourced, protected by a patent and/or intricate to the design of the circuit or sub-assembly.”
These admissions align with earlier public testimony. In 2020 House Administration Committee hearings, Dominion’s CEO described reliance on Chinese components ranging from LCD screens to chip-level parts, noting that no domestic manufacturing alternatives existed for certain items.
Proponents of pen or pencil and paper, hand-counted ballots have said this only underscores the need to return to the traditional, inherently high-security method of casting and counting votes.
The DHS letter places the hardware issue in the broader intelligence picture. Recently declassified records, including the 2024 ODNI Annual Threat Assessment, concluded that “China remains the most active and persistent cyber threat to U.S. Government, private-sector, and critical infrastructure networks.”
A National Intelligence Council Memorandum from October 2024 assessed that some U.S. adversaries—at a minimum China, Iran, and Russia—“have the technical capability to access some U.S. election-related networks and systems.”
Heroic! @SecMullinDHS letter – he finds that China parts are in election machines. Can’t be used if so compromised.
Mullin also has $1b for states to use safe machines.
READ IT! pic.twitter.com/Wy7c7JnADk— Eagle Ed Martin (@EagleEdMartin) October 5, 2026
Prior Warnings on Dominion Systems.
The Chinese-component issue compounds documented software and operational vulnerabilities already identified in widely used systems. A 2021 report by University of Michigan professor Alex Halderman and colleague Drew Springall detailed critical flaws in Dominion’s ImageCast X ballot-marking devices and scanners used in Georgia and other states. Attackers with brief physical access could install malware, alter QR codes on printed ballots to change votes, obtain county-wide cryptographic keys, and compromise ballot secrecy or outcomes in ways that risk-limiting audits or hand counts might not detect. Halderman concluded that Georgia voters had “greatly diminished grounds to be confident” that votes cast on the ICX were secured.
Georgia officials largely dismissed the findings. A spokesman for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office told concerned scientists that if they objected to being grouped with so-called election deniers, “tough noogies.” Computer scientist David Jefferson of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and other experts called the response irresponsible, noting that the vulnerabilities were real and required remediation.
Those software flaws exist independently of the manufacturing origin of any particular chip or screen. Supply-chain exposure adds a separate vector: a compromised component introduced before assembly could affect machines across multiple jurisdictions without requiring later physical access.
Verification Requirements and Midterm Stakes.
Mullin stated that “election security is national security” and that, under President Trump, he has directed DHS to prioritize it. Electronic voting systems “have one job—to accurately count the votes on ballots.” To receive full Homeland Security Grant Program awards, states must demonstrate they have conducted random post-election manual counts of paper ballots “to ensure that any errors or manipulation is detected.” This “trust but verify” condition supplements other DHS actions on election infrastructure.
The DHS letter frames the problem of Chinese and other foreign components in American voting machines as structural rather than theoretical. Vendors have long said certain parts cannot be sourced domestically. Intelligence assessments identify China as the leading cyber threat. Prior independent examinations of Dominion equipment identified pathways for vote alteration and secrecy breaches. Together, these facts support the case for mandatory random hand counts of paper ballots as a condition of federal election-security funding ahead of the midterms.
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