A right-wing researcher who made false accusations about the 2020 election has been appointed to the position of election oversight in the administration of US President Donald Trump.
Heather Honey, a Pennsylvania activist, is the deputy assistant secretary for election integrity in the Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans, according to a leadership chart released on Tuesday for the Department of Homeland Security.
The investigative news outlet Democracy Docket reported Honey’s appointment for the first time on Monday.
Due to her involvement in numerous initiatives that led to false research about the 2020 presidential election, her position has raised eyebrows among Trump administration critics.
Trump has repeatedly refuted the claim that his election loss from the 2020 election was the result of massive fraud.
He has placed loyalists in positions of authority since winning a second term in January, raising concerns about the independence of some positions.
He also pushed the country’s electoral system, which is largely run by state and local officials, against his false claims of fraudulent elections.
Critics have warned that openly partisan appointments to posts overseeing elections could undermine voter confidence.
According to David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, “What I’m concerned about is that it seems like the Department of Homeland Security [Department of Homeland Security] is being poised to use the vast power and megaphone of the federal government to spread disinformation rather than combat it,” Becker said.
“It’s going to seriously harm DHS’s overall credibility.”
Heather Honey, who is she?
Given her prominent role in spreading false information about the 2020 election, Honey’s appointment in particular has prompted election experts and local officials to speak out.
For instance, Democrat secretary of state Adrian Fontes told the news outlet ProPublica that Honey has a “well-documented history of spreading election lies.”
Honey is the owner of Verity Votes, a consulting firm that was involved in “audits” of elections that experts believe were flawed, as well as another company called Haystack Investigations, which also claims to conduct election research.
In their efforts to stifle the 2020 election results, Trump and his supporters have drawn lessons from the findings of her companies.
For instance, Honey’s organization falsely claimed that Pennsylvania, a significant swing state, had more votes than voters in 2020 when reclaiming incomplete voter data.
Verity Vote claimed that Pennsylvania sent mail-in ballots to voters who omitted necessary identification two years later, in 2022.
Verity Vote, however, was accused of misleading Verity Vote’s voting system’s “not verified” designation.
The Pennsylvania Department of State stated in press that it communicates to local authorities that a voter’s identification needs to be verified using the “not verified” tag. According to the statement, the designation serves as a “security feature” for voter applications and does not suggest that absentee voters could cast ballots without proper identification.
In the 2020 election, Democrat Joe Biden edged out Trump by less than 1%, giving him a slim majority in the state.
Honey participated in a partisan audit of election results in Maricopa County, a populous area home to the city of Phoenix, in another important swing state that Trump lost in 2020.
The audit found no proof that Biden’s victory was erroneous despite searching for fraud for almost six months. Experts continue to claim that the audit contained biased methodology and errors.
Republican former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer has since reported to The Associated Press that he has received numerous requests for public records in relation to Honey’s election-related requests.
According to Richer, these requests took up “scores of hours of staff time,” and he served in the position between 2021 and 2025.
He claimed that Honey was “not a serious auditor” and that he was surprised to learn that she had such “authority and responsibility.”
Honey’s appointment as president comes not as widely as the first time she is under fire for her work in his administration. Emil Bove and other appointees have been the subject of serious public debate over whether they would prioritize their loyalty to Trump over their commitment to government ethics.
Trump has opened investigations into critics and government officials who made false allegations about the 2020 election since his victory in the 2024 election.
Source: Aljazeera
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