{"id":178062,"date":"2025-08-26T21:47:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T21:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/178062\/"},"modified":"2025-08-26T21:47:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T21:47:09","slug":"dhs-hires-researcher-who-has-distorted-voter-data-to-elections-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/178062\/","title":{"rendered":"DHS hires researcher who has distorted voter data to elections role"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 A conservative election researcher whose faulty findings on voter data were cited by President Donald Trump as he tried to overturn his 2020 election loss<\/a> has been appointed to an election integrity role at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania activist Heather Honey is now serving as the deputy assistant secretary for election integrity in the department\u2019s Office of Strategy, Policy and Plans, an organizational chart<\/a> on its website shows.<\/p>\n

The political appointment, first reported by Democracy Docket<\/a>, shows how self-styled election investigators who have thrown themselves into election conspiracy theories<\/a> since 2020 are now being celebrated by a presidential administration that indulges their false claims<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Her new role, which didn\u2019t exist under President Joe Biden, also comes as Trump has used election integrity concerns as a pretext to try to give his administration power over how elections are run<\/a> in the U.S.<\/p>\n

The president has ordered sweeping changes to election processes and vowed to do away with mail ballots and voting machines<\/a> to promote \u201chonesty\u201d in the 2026 midterms, despite a lack of constitutional authority to do so. Trump\u2019s Department of Justice also has demanded complete state voter lists<\/a>, raising concerns about voter privacy and questions about how the federal government plans to use the sensitive data.<\/p>\n

Neither Honey nor DHS immediately responded to requests for comment on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Honey runs an investigations and auditing consulting firm called Haystack Investigations, according to contact information provided on her LinkedIn profile. Since 2020, she also has led a variety of election research groups whose flawed analyses of election data have fueled right-wing attacks on voting procedures, including in battleground states Pennsylvania and Arizona.<\/p>\n

In 2020, her election research misrepresented incomplete state voter data to falsely claim that Pennsylvania had more votes reported than voters<\/a>. Trump echoed the falsehood during his speech<\/a> to supporters on Jan. 6, 2021<\/a>, saying Pennsylvania \u201chad 205,000 more votes than you had voters.\u201d Shortly after, his supporters violently attacked<\/a> the U.S. Capitol in an effort to prevent Biden from becoming president.<\/p>\n

In 2021, Honey was involved in the Arizona Senate\u2019s partisan audit of election results<\/a> in Maricopa County, she confirmed in a podcast interview<\/a> with a GOP lawyer. That review in the state\u2019s most populous county, which spent six months searching for evidence of fraud, was described by experts as riddled with errors, bias and flawed methodology. Still, it came up with a vote tally that would not have altered the outcome, finding that Biden actually won by more votes than the official results certified in 2020.<\/p>\n

In 2022, Honey\u2019s organization Verity Vote issued a report claiming that Pennsylvania had sent some 250,000 \u201cunverified\u201d mail ballots<\/a> to voters who provided invalid identification or no identification at all.<\/p>\n

Officials in Pennsylvania said the claim flagrantly misrepresented the way the state classified applications for mail-in and absentee ballots. The \u201cnot verified\u201d designation did not mean the voter didn\u2019t provide accurate identification information, nor did it mean their ID wasn\u2019t later verified.<\/p>\n

Former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said he received dozens of public records requests related to elections from Honey during his time in office, which took up \u201cscores of hours of staff time.\u201d He said he was surprised to hear she had been elevated to a position of such \u201cauthority and responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

From what he saw, Richer said, she\u2019s \u201cnot a serious auditor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Honey\u2019s hiring at the Department of Homeland Security comes amid reports that Trump\u2019s administration has met with several other election conspiracy theorists in recent months. Mike Lindell<\/a>, the founder of MyPillow and one of the most prominent election conspiracy theorists, said in an email to supporters in June that he had met with the president twice in the previous eight weeks. In June, a federal jury in Colorado<\/a> found that Lindell had defamed a former worker for a company that makes election equipment by making false claims related to the 2020 election.<\/p>\n

Seth Keshel<\/a>, an election modeler whose work on the 2020 election prompted challenges that were later dismissed, presented his research to White House personnel in May, he said on his Substack account.<\/p>\n

David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, said DHS used to have real credibility in its advisory role on elections. Its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency<\/a> had collaborated with states to shore up their elections from foreign attacks and disinformation<\/a>, he said.<\/p>\n

Now, the agency has fired its \u201creal experts\u201d on elections, he said. Trump\u2019s administration also has done away with much of its work tracking foreign influence campaigns targeting voters, both at CISA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019m concerned about is that it seems like DHS is being poised to use the vast power and megaphone of the federal government to spread disinformation rather than combat it,\u201d Becker said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to really harm DHS\u2019s credibility overall.\u201d<\/p>\n

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