NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe speaks with Gabriel Sterling of the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office about President Trump’s claims about election security.
Transcription
AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
President Donald Trump continued to try to sow doubt about America’s election infrastructure in a speech Thursday night. He also published documents that he says show the system is at risk.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: This evidence shows that the electoral system we have dangerously exposed and actually exposes, at levels never thought possible, to hacking, exploitation and foreign interference.
RASCOE: But he didn’t provide any new evidence of fraudulent votes cast in any election. Elections are administered by states, and the Trump administration has relied on state officials to make changes. Joining us now is Gabriel Sterling. He is the director of special projects for the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, the office that oversees Georgia elections. Welcome to the program.
GABRIEL STERLING: Happy to be here (ph), Ayesha.
RASCOE: So President Trump claims there are hundreds of thousands of noncitizens illegally registered to vote. Is that a problem in Georgia?
STERLING: Not particularly, and we really had to put it in context. The four states that DH Secretary Mullin specifically mentioned the next day (he came up with about 170,000 that they could actually identify, and the over 200,000) were estimates. So if you look state by state, one of them is Pennsylvania. It represents 0.09%. But the most important thing is what was not said. No one claimed that these people actually voted. They may have accidentally entered the lists, but there are no widespread claims that they voted.
RASCOE: So that’s not a problem that you see in your state?
STERLING: We literally have; we were the first state to audit this. We’ve gotten better tools and more tools. We have been able to use the federal government’s SAVE database. And we have found hundreds on the lists, and then a few who have cast their vote. And we look back to 1996. That was the first time we found a non-citizen casting a vote.
RASCOE: Okay.
STERLING: And we’ve found one that did it in the 2026 election so far. It is extremely small. But it’s important to make sure that we try to keep these people off the lists so that it doesn’t undermine trust. But telling people this in a way that is intended to undermine trust is a real situation. These are things that election officials and administrators deal with every day.
RASCOE: Well, the day after the president’s speech, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin asked states to share voter lists with a federal database.
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MARKWAYNE MULLIN: We have red states participating with us. We have some red states that are not red. Every state that does not participate with us should be asked a difficult question: why not? What are you afraid of?
RASCOE: But Secretary Mullin also threatened fines, sanctions and prison terms for officials who don’t cooperate. So what’s your answer to that?
STERLING: Well, now they have a big problem, as a federal judge said: You can’t use that database right now for this purpose. Laws need to be changed for that to happen, or another court case. You just can’t, and the secondary part of this is that we’re now in Georgia, I think, a little over 80 days away from the start of voting, and it’s about a hundred days until Election Day. Widespread changes cannot be made in 50 states and the District of Columbia in that time frame. People are building ballots. They are getting poll workers. This type of stress causes a problem for election administrators, who should block and address the conduct of elections. And when they are interfered with in this way and stressed in this way, that is when they can make mistakes, the basis for fraud claims later.
RASCOE: Well, I mean, when it comes to the influence of the federal government, I guess I want to ask you: Is the administration potentially infringing on state authority?
STERLING: They’re trying to some extent. I mean, they can ask these things all day. I mean, that’s what federalism is all about. But the reality is that there used to be more federal tools available to states. I talked to people in the election community and the intelligence community when they shut down CISA, which was one of the coordinating entities of the Department of Homeland Security that worked on election security. Essentially, no classified reports have been given to the states during the entire second administration.
They used to get, you know, about a dozen a year saying, this is the threat environment. This is what foreign actors are doing. This is what we have to look for, and they have not given support to the states, as they used to do.
RASCOE: Georgia was at the center of President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He claimed voter fraud. And earlier this year, the FBI raided a Fulton County elections office. Do you know what the status of that investigation is?
STERLING: We’ve been listening to Jack and Squat ever since. It’s been more than five months. And I think the reason is, in large part, that there is nothing to find. This is the most stimulated, incited, watched and reviewed election in history. So I don’t think there’s anything to find. We probably won’t hear anything.
RASCOE: Well, I mean, President Trump is pushing to pass the SAVE Act, which would impose stricter voting eligibility and ID requirements. Do you think that is necessary?
STERLING: Look, I think the idea of having documentary evidence of citizenship is a great public policy goal. You can’t do it in 100 days. Literally, to execute it properly, it would take several years of working with the federal and state governments to build systems, because what you don’t want to do is get into a situation where you can potentially disenfranchise someone.
RASCOE: That’s Gabriel Sterling from the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office. Thank you very much for being with us this morning.
STERLING: Thank you.
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