During his prime time address Thursday night, President Trump said his Government Transparency Task Force revealed six U.S. states had their voter rolls "compromised" by Chinese government actors in 2022.
Those states include Oklahoma, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, and Rhode Island, according to one of dozens of recently declassified federal documents, released in tandem with Trump's address.
"Voter registration information from at least 2013 through 2021 is publicly available for download from the commercial websites and it appears the PRC CNE actor downloaded the full repositories," The document reads. "This activity represents newly-identified interest by this PRC CNE (sic) actor in U.S. elections, and the PII information obtained - to include names, party affiliations, email addresses, physical addresses, and phone numbers - could, in theory, be leveraged to carry out anything from future CNE operations to election influence operations, although the actual motivations for collecting this information is unknown."
But Oklahoma Election Secretary Paul Ziriax said in a press conference Friday the apparent problems from the disclosure are not as severe as they appear.
"The task force's memorandum states that the information that was obtained was public information under Oklahoma law and that it was obtained from a commercial website, not from the state election board's systems or databases," Ziriax said.
In response to data downloaded by Chinese actors, Trump called on states to tighten up their election security and on Congress to pass the SAVE Act, a measure that would require states to verify voter citizenship using a federal system, among other mandates.
Then, on Friday, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened states that didn't comply with federal election funding cuts and possible prison time for election officials.
"If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections, and they chose not to, then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even, depending on how far it goes, prison time," Mullin said.
But Ziriax said Oklahoma has several safeguards in place to protect the integrity of its registered voter database and its elections while they happen. Those are listed in a press release the state election board put out ahead of the conference and include the use of paper ballots, voting machines that can't connect to the internet, bipartisan oversight at polls and regular post-election audits.
Ziriax said he's not worried about getting in trouble with the federal government.
"We value election integrity and security and regularly work with federal and state partners," he said. "So, I don't think it is even applicable to Oklahoma moving forward."
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