President Donald Trump's national address Thursday renewed the debate over election security, while newly released intelligence records put a spotlight on publicly available Florida voter-registration data. Trump said during his Thursday address that mail-in ballots are inherently corrupt, urging Congress to adopt tighter voting restrictions and repeating claims about the 2020 election that have not been substantiated. Trump did not single out Florida, but records released by his White House did.
One declassified report says a Chinese cyber actor downloaded publicly available Florida voter-registration information from commercial websites in 2022. The same actor also obtained records from Colorado, Connecticut, Michigan, Oklahoma and Rhode Island. Another intelligence record lists Florida among 18 states whose voter information was obtained for possible identity matching and public-opinion analysis. The records describe the collection of voter information, some of it publicly available, but do not say Florida ballots or vote totals were altered. The 2022 report also says the actor's motive was unknown. The White House characterized the broader collection effort as a major compromise of American voter data. However, an earlier federal assessment of the 2022 elections found no evidence that detected foreign cyber activity prevented voting, changed votes or compromised the integrity of ballots.