DHS staff lacks ‘high confidence’ in Trump’s claims of noncitizen voters in Pa., Al Schmidt claims in letter to Mullin

Pennsylvania’s top election official contended in a letter to a cabinet secretary this week that the Trump administration’s own staff does not have “high confidence” in its claims of thousands of noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls.

In a letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Secretary of State Al Schmidt said the Department of Homeland Security has still not fulfilled a promise to provide a written copy of its methodology “with a list of specific data sources” for its calculation that there are more than 14,500 noncitizens on the state’s voter rolls — a claim Schmidt and other Pennsylvania officials dispute.

“We await this information,” Schmidt said in the letter, citing a virtual Aug. 13 meeting with DHS staff.

Schmidt, a Republican appointed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, told Mullin that during that meeting “DHS representatives explained that they did not have high confidence that the 14,576 individuals... were, in fact, non-citizens who had improperly registered to vote in Pennsylvania.”

The correspondence, shared with The Philadelphia Inquirer, comes amid increased scrutiny of election workers ahead of the consequential midterm elections just over two months away and as President Donald Trump has been pushing for an overhaul of the way Americans vote.

DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.

Pennsylvania was one of four Democratic-led states — along with California, Nevada and New Jersey — that DHS claimed had a collective total of 250,000 noncitizens on their voter rolls in a July document posted at the same time Trump delivered a prime-time address on election security that waded into conspiracy theories.

The White House and DHS have provided little explanation for how they have arrived at these numbers, and election experts have said the large numbers may likely be pulling from other government data sources and include hits to names from systems that were never meant to identify noncitizen voters.

Schmidt said in the letter that he looks forward to understanding “how you attempted to match registered voters in Pennsylvania with information in DHS’s data sources and how you determined which matches were associated with greater or lesser degrees of confidence.”

Mullin said in a news conference the day after Trump’s address that leaders in any states who resist working with the department to screen for noncitizen voters would be “held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even depending on how far it goes, prison time.”

Schmidt, who previously investigated noncitizen voting when he served as Philadelphia’s Republican city commissioner, has repeatedly rebuked the department’s requests, which would require handing over unredacted voter rolls, which Schmidt has warned could put individual privacy at risk. He has also said it is extremely rare for noncitizens to vote and is already prohibited by state law.

In New Jersey, a few days after Mullin’s announcement, Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill disclosed that, due to a computer glitch, roughly 6,600 noncitizens were inadvertently registered to vote over a yearlong span ahead of the 2024 election.

Mullin claimed on X, following Sherrill’s announcement, that more than 35,000 noncitizens could be registered in New Jersey.

Sherrill’s office has since provided updates to its estimates, sharing Aug. 19 that approximately 5,100 individuals, who were only registered from the error, were removed from voter system and about another 1,450 will undergo additional review. Roughly 340 individuals, her office said, who were registered because of the error cast a ballot at least once.

Sherrill won the 2025 governor’s race, and New Jersey went for Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024. Neither contest’s outcome would have been changed by those 340 votes.

But New Jersey’s disclosure has helped put additional pressure on the other three states targeted by DHS as November approaches. Shapiro, who is seeking a second term as governor this November, and Schmidt have continued to reject Trump’s push for a greater federal role in elections.

In closing his letter, Schmidt said he wants DHS’ additional information to conduct further review and appealed to the high stakes of the potential premature removal of eligible voters.

“The right to vote is sacred, and the cancellation of any voter registration record must be based on reliable data sources and done in accordance with Pennsylvania and federal law,” he wrote.