Experts in election law and administration say the appointment of Lebanon County activist Heather Honey to a top elections policy role in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security threatens to further drain resources that help states run elections, erode voter confidence and strengthen foreign adversaries. They also say Honey's appointment is part of a trend in President Donald Trump's second term where conspiracy is embraced at the highest levels over facts.
" She is part of an overall effort to delegitimize American elections that she disagrees with," said David Becker of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research, which works to support elections officials. "There are many who are part of that effort, going up to the president of the United States."
Becker said damaging Americans' confidence in elections could be the main consequence of Honey being given the megaphone of the federal government, amplifying messages already being shared by the president.
Becker pointed to Trump's statements to the press and on his social media site about getting rid of mail-in ballots and voting machines. Trump made these statements after discussing U.S. voting rules with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their Aug. 15 summit in Alaska. According to Trump, Putin said Trump's 2020 loss was due to mail-in voting.
Trump has also supported false claims that seem to have originated with Honey. On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump told his supporters gathered at Ellipse Park in D.C. that more votes were cast in Pennsylvania than there were people who cast ballots, a falsehood Honey maintains to this day despite evidence provided by the state's election administrators.
The experts point to Honey's record of litigation, conspiracy-driven claims, and attacks on legitimate election administration practices as evidence that her appointment is part of a broader strategy that is likely to undermine trust in U.S. elections, even if Trump's administration can't unilaterally change the rules.
The U.S. Constitution says states set their own election rules until Congress intervenes.
The Trump administration is going beyond the authority the executive branch has under federal law in its attempts to change election rules, according to Philip Hensley-Robin, executive director of the Pennsylvania chapter of Common Cause, a nonprofit that pursues democratic reforms.
Trump signed an executive order on March 25 that would rewrite how states run mail-in voting, voter registration, and what voting systems states use to count votes, most of which is currently blocked by federal courts.
" This administration is trying to micromanage elections from D.C. without even passing a statute to give them the authority to do it," Hensley-Robin said. "It runs counter to our entire history of how elections are run in this country."
DHS did not respond to questions for this article. Honey did not respond to WITF's efforts to reach her for comment, including contacting several organizations she runs or works with as well as a list of other activists she's known to work with.
Doing the work of adversaries
The U.S.'s foreign adversaries try to push false claims about the country's elections in order to generate distrust in the legitimacy of results. Honey is making many of the same claims, according to Kathy Boockvar, Pennsylvania's former Secretary of State who now runs a consulting firm focused on elections and democracy.
"The false and error-ridden theories Ms. Honey and others manufactured about the 2020 and 2022 elections have had no basis in accurate data nor fact, and have caused grave damage — strengthening foreign adversaries by undermining our own elections," Boockvar said.
Boockvar was the state's top election official until February 2021, when she resigned after her agency made a mistake that delayed a vote on a state constitutional amendment to open a two-year window for survivors of child sexual abuse to file litigation even after the statute of limitations, as first reported by Spotlight PA.
She said elections are secured by the work of county election officials and thousands of poll workers. Together, they run secure and accurate elections under bipartisan oversight, with transparency, and with audits.
Honey's appointment comes after the Trump administration shut down a DHS tool that elections officials used to share security information and get updates from federal intelligence agencies — the Elections Infrastructure and Information Sharing and Analysis Center.
Since 2017, when the federal government recognized elections infrastructure as a key piece of national security, DHS built relationships with state and local elections officials and provided security resources and analyses. That relationship paid off on Election Day last November when bomb threats were called into election sites around the country, including 32 Pennsylvania counties. DHS quickly identified those threats as non-credible and originating in Russia.
But DHS is now pulling back resources meant to combat foreign interference in elections. The Trump administration also fired members of the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force, which was meant to identify and interrupt foreign disinformation campaigns and worked closely with DHS' elections operations.
State elections officials are less and less able to rely on support from the federal government, according to Lawrence Norden, vice president of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center, a nonpartisan law and policy institute at the New York University School of Law.
Honey's appointment as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Elections Integrity in DHS' Office of Strategy, Policy and Plans further undermines the relationship between the federal government and local elections officials, Norden said. DHS seems to have created the role for Honey, he said.
WITF could not find any record of a comparable elections integrity position at DHS.
"If DHS puts out reports in the future, they're less likely to be trusted or relied upon by election officials or the public," Norden said of Honey's appointment.
Becker, whose work now largely focuses on providing legal support for elections officials who are sued or become the focus of public ire due to disinformation, said DHS has lost its credibility.
" The appointment of Heather Honey is just confirmation of the work of the last six months that DHS has gone from being one of the most credible and sought after supporters of American election integrity to potentially a purveyor of disinformation about American elections," Becker said.
From flawed reports to the federal government
Honey's strategy has been to generate inaccurate analysis of complex elections data, to establish legitimate-sounding groups and issue reports to pass off her findings as fact, and to collaborate with sympathetic elected officials to lend her work legitimacy.
Honey started Verity Vote, Election Research Institute, and Haystack Investigations, all of which claim to provide expertise on auditing complex systems for security vulnerabilities. She also started an activist group called PA Fair Elections, part of the national Election Integrity Network run by Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who helped Trump attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss.
Her strategy across each organization has been to call for increased transparency from elections offices, filing extensive records requests along with other members of her organizations, and filing litigation, all in pursuit of evidence for election fraud she claims already exists. When elections officials respond to Honey's claims, she incorporates those responses into her reports and doubles down.
Honey's work includes contracting with the Cyber Ninjas group that led the partisan audit of Maricopa County, Arizona's 2020 election results that was widely condemned by election experts for flawed methodologies. Even as the group claimed it found inconsistencies in the election system, which the county rebutted, the Cyber Ninjas found no fraud.
Honey has also worked to convince Republican states to leave the Electronic Information Registration Center, an information sharing tool that allows states to compare voter rolls and remove duplicate registrations. As reported by Votebeat, a nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom focused on election administration, Honey's flawed analysis of ERIC and her meetings with Republican leaders contributed to nine Republican-led states leaving the compact over unsubstantiated claims.
Honey, who has deep political connections, has also made repeated claims of partisans conspiring to hide evidence or close security gaps. Her reports referred to the Department of Justice under President Joe Biden as "weaponized," and she worked with Republican lawmakers to sue the Pennsylvania Department of State. Republican U.S. Reps. Mike Kelly, Dan Meuser, Scott Perry, Guy Reschenthaler, Lloyd Smucker and G.T. Thompson filed a federal lawsuit with Honey against Pennsylvania in September 2024 alleging military and overseas voters were not properly verified. A federal judge dismissed it a month later.
"The Department of State has spent years successfully defending Pennsylvania's election laws against lawsuits filed by Heather Honey, and we are engaged in litigation against her to this day," said department spokesperson Matt Heckel.
Honey has spoken at partisan events, including speaking on an election security panel at the 2025 Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, which describes itself as the largest state-based conservative conference in the country. According to the White House, at least part of Honey's speaker bio is incorrect. The description states Honey, "was the lead investigator on President Trump's criminal defense team supporting his January-6 trial preparation." A White House spokesperson said Honey "was not involved on the criminal defense team at all, and that description is inaccurate."
In addition to her own efforts, Honey has succeeded in recruiting and training other activists who believe elections are rigged. Members from PA Fair Elections were among those who filed challenges to 3,800 overseas voters and 385 by-mail voters just before Election Day last November, only to have each claim withdrawn or dismissed after Trump's victory in the state became clear.
WITF reached out to eight of Honey's known associates, none of whom responded. That includes Charles Faltenovich, listed as the PA Fair Elections director on a document released by the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, a group that claimed to work to prevent noncitizen voting ahead of the 2024 election. PA Fair Elections holds weekly calls that are closed to the press.
WITF also reached out to Lycoming County resident Karen DiSalvo, an attorney for the Election Research Institute, who works with Honey and has represented her in litigation. She did not respond.
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