On May 22, 2026, Reuters reported, and HuffPost and the New Republic followed, that Trump administration officials spent months trying to ban the Dominion Voting Systems machines used in more than half of U.S. states by having the Commerce Department declare their components a national security risk. The plan would have replaced machine voting with hand-counted paper ballots across much of the country, potentially just before the 2026 midterm elections.
The effort was spearheaded by Kurt Olsen, a White House adviser and self-described election-security czar whose role has been to substantiate Trump's false claims of 2020 election fraud. Olsen preferred hand-counted paper ballots over machines. The plan emerged in summer 2025 as officials brainstormed federalizing elections, and by September 2025 Commerce Department officials were exploring how to implement it. Others involved included Paul McNamara, a senior aide to then-DNI Tulsi Gabbard, and Brian Sikma of the Domestic Policy Council. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was reportedly unaware of the discussions.
The justification never materialized. A teardown of voting machines seized from Puerto Rico, the earlier 'test run' for this effort, found chips packaged in China, Japan, South Korea, and Malaysia, but no Venezuelan code and no evidence of hacking. There is no proof any U.S. voting machine has ever been hacked in an election. The administration could not find legal grounds to declare the machines a security threat, and the plan failed.
The substance is the attempt, not just the failure. The executive branch, which has no constitutional authority over how states run elections, explored using a national-security designation to force tens of millions of voters in 27 mostly Democratic-leaning states off the voting method they use, and onto hand-counting, which election experts say is slower and more error-prone. University of Michigan election-security expert Alex Halderman: 'Changing to hand counting would be chaotic and might facilitate cheating.' Roughly 98% of U.S. election jurisdictions already produce paper records that can be audited. The plan would have solved a problem that does not exist by introducing one that does, in the months before a national election.
Update (September 17, 2026): CNN reported on September 10 that Trump allies, “including some inside the administration,” are pressing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to use his supply-chain authority to ban certain voting machines before the midterms, citing Chinese-made components. Emails obtained by American Oversight and shared with CNN show that in August 2025 two activists, Will Huff and Conrad Reynolds, discussed election security with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who connected them with Ed Martin at the Justice Department; they sent Martin a “Proposed Ban Plan.” “This can immediately force states to move to hand-marked and hand-counted ballots like the President wishes,” Huff wrote. The activists said on their podcast that Lutnick met them for more than two hours in August 2026; Reynolds said Lutnick “said he would be getting on it.” Commerce did not respond to CNN and has not taken action. CNN reported that DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin sent letters in August warning that foreign components could “potentially compromise election infrastructure,” and that election industry sources compared the concern to asking “if there are Chinese parts in your cell phone or car.”