WASHINGTON — A government report identifying serious security weaknesses in American voting machines has been sitting unreleased for months, held back by White House officials as the November midterm elections draw closer, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter.
The report was produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and concludes that voting machines could be better protected through measures such as software updates. While the document does not claim that any votes were actually changed, it does identify security gaps in how the machines are used during elections, the sources said.
Inside the White House, the report has sparked debate. Some officials have argued that releasing it could damage voter confidence, particularly among Republican voters. Others have taken issue with the report for a different reason — they feel it does not adequately support President Donald Trump’s repeatedly debunked claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Several court cases brought by Trump’s legal team failed to establish any evidence of voter fraud in that race.
Some Democrats privately expressed concern that the investigation into voting machines could be used by the administration to pressure states into switching to paper ballots.
The sources spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who launched the investigation into voting machines and sought evidence to back Trump’s false election fraud claims, is stepping down on Friday. Federal housing regulator Bill Pulte will take over as interim director. Trump has publicly stated he wants Pulte to look into what he calls “rigged elections” during his time leading the agency.
What Pulte intends to do with the unreleased report remains unknown. Two of the sources said he has been briefed on the agency’s work examining voting machine flaws, including the existence of the unpublished report.
Democrats and some analysts have raised alarms about potential interference by the Trump administration in the upcoming midterm elections, which analysts widely expect will result in Republican losses.
Officials within ODNI and outside experts who advised the agency pushed in meetings with White House staff late last year to begin addressing the identified flaws. They warned that the remediation process — which requires significant coordination with individual states — needed to start promptly to be completed before the midterms.
When asked about the delay, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle issued a statement saying the administration “continues to offer assistance to state and local election officials, including through the FBI and CISA, to ensure the security and integrity of all machines used in American elections.” CISA refers to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
ODNI spokesperson Olivia Coleman said Gabbard has taken “actions within her authorities” to “support the President’s directive to secure our elections — which includes identifying vulnerabilities in our critical infrastructure.”
Pulte did not respond to a request for comment.
Some of the vulnerabilities described in the ODNI report are not new — one former senior Biden administration official and two other sources said previous administrations were aware of similar issues. Those weaknesses include voting machines running outdated software and machines that can connect to the internet, creating potential entry points for hackers.
All of the sources said they were not aware of any evidence that votes had been manipulated in U.S. elections.
The report is connected to the administration’s wider push to investigate potential election fraud, which gained momentum after Trump signed an executive order in February 2025 aimed at expanding federal oversight of U.S. elections. Under the Constitution, states hold the primary authority over how their elections are run.
Senior officials at the FBI and Justice Department have spoken publicly about their own investigations into possible voter fraud. The ODNI report, which draws on both open-source and classified intelligence, would mark the first time the administration has publicly detailed its work specifically focused on voting machines.
It is one of two reports ODNI commissioned on the subject. The second report, also unpublished, was written by a government contractor called Mojave Research, which examined voting machines that had been seized from Puerto Rico. That report found no evidence the machines had been hacked, according to two sources.
Both reports have come up in White House discussions where officials debated whether sufficient evidence existed to support Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was taken from him.
Over the past six months, ODNI has briefed the White House on its findings, but has never received the go-ahead to publish the report, two sources said. The report concludes that many states are relying on outdated election systems.
The intelligence agency drew on previous reports from CISA that referenced hacking conferences where researchers found some voting machines could be compromised through insecure hardware. CISA itself has said it found no evidence of foreign interference in the 2020 election and, along with other federal, state, and local officials, declared that vote “the most secure in American history.”
The Mojave Research contract was terminated in October. The software and coding vulnerabilities that contractor identified led to a recommendation that the administration launch an emergency remediation plan requiring states to immediately update their systems. Two sources confirmed that plan has not been put into action.
