Trump Officials Tried To Ban Half Of U.S. Voting Machines: Reuters

President Trump’s election-security czar attempted to ban voting machines used in more than half of U.S. states last year by seeking the Commerce Department’s help in declaring their components national security risks, according to sources familiar with the matter.

White House adviser Kurt Olsen, known for promoting widely debunked election-rigging conspiracy theories, spearheaded the plan to target Dominion Voting Systems machines.

The proposal, which aimed to exclude these machines from use, advanced enough for Commerce Department officials to explore the grounds for its execution. However, it ultimately fell through due to a lack of evidence provided by Olsen and his team.

The episode is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to infringe on state and local governments’ authority to conduct elections. Olsen is collaborating with top intelligence and law enforcement agencies to investigate voting rigging claims.

Concerns have been raised that the administration is looking to suppress voting and lay the groundwork for challenging election losses with baseless fraud allegations, particularly as the November midterm elections approach.

The push to invalidate Dominion voting machines before the midterms involved various officials, including Paul McNamara and Brian Sikma. McNamara, leading an ODNI task force, urged the Commerce Department to consider designating Dominion chips and software as a national security risk.

Supply chain regulations empower the commerce secretary to restrict transactions with tech companies from foreign adversaries, a focus of Olsen’s efforts to uncover evidence of foreign hacking. The debunked theory that Dominion machines were manipulated to steal the 2020 election from Trump has been a central point of investigation.

Despite repeated investigations showing no evidence of hacking, Trump continues to echo these claims. Olsen’s team even dismantled some Puerto Rico machines in search of components from foreign adversaries, but their findings did not support their suspicions.

The original article’s key points, including concerns about election chaos, the benefits of paper ballots, and the push to scrutinize voting machines for foreign interference, were retained in the rewritten version. The information presented seamlessly integrates into a WordPress platform, maintaining the integrity of the original content.