Tina Peters and other election-denial activists said they presented a July 22 Trump administration CISA midterm security plan to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The document, labeled the 100-Day Risk Mitigation Election Plan and Operational Guidance for the November Federal Election – 2026, asks the agency to push hand-marked paper ballots and full hand-counts.
The proposal was released by Peters on her website, where she also posted a July 24 letter to the acting director of CISA thanking him for meeting with the group and for giving them the chance to present their concerns and proposed path forward for the 2026 federal election. Peters discussed the plan again during a July 27 podcast appearance.
Tina Peters and July 24
Peters, a former Colorado election official convicted of charges related to the 2020 election, used the website posting and the July 24 letter to frame the pitch as a meeting rather than a one-off statement. The letter thanked the acting director for meeting with the group and for giving them the opportunity to present their concerns and proposed path forward for the 2026 federal election.
On the podcast, Peters said, "CISA is not a forceful body that they can make people do things, but they can actually make recommendations" and added that states could comply with "certain things like paper ballots and so on and so forth." She also said the Department of Homeland Security could use a recently announced grant as an incentive for states that follow those steps.
Operational Guidance for the November Federal Election – 2026
The plan goes beyond a general call for paper ballots. It lays out a framework that would classify counties by their current election processes and their ability to transition ahead of the midterms, then provide each county with implementation plans. That makes the proposal less a broad statement than a county-by-county roadmap for changing how ballots are handled and counted.
CISA sits under the Department of Homeland Security and is one of the main federal partners for states on election security. The agency shares intelligence on potential threats to voting infrastructure and provides regional support, which is why the group’s pitch targets a federal office that can shape guidance without directly running local elections.
Paper Ballots and Hand-Counts
The sharpest change in the plan is its demand that CISA move the general electorate away from ballot-marking devices to hand-marked paper ballots, then insist that certification happen only after a full hand-count of every ballot. That puts the proposal at odds with the standard use of machine tabulation systems with auditable paper trails, which the story describes as more accurate and less costly than hand-counting.
Peters also linked the plan to remarks she said came after a July 16 speech, arguing that "a lot has come out about the vulnerabilities of our election infrastructure." Whether CISA accepts the proposal, rejects it, or weighs any part of it is still the open question left by the July meetings and the website posting.
