A startling new report surfaced this week revealing that China’s communist regime hacked into U.S. voter registration databases in 2020 and planned to use the information to produce thousands of fake American driver’s licenses in order to obtain mail-in ballots, with the purpose of casting fraudulent votes for former President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Just the News reported Monday on the recent reemergence of a highly redacted formerly classified memo produced by the National Intelligence Council in April 2020, which stated, “[Redacted] Chinese intelligence officials analyzed multiple U.S. states’ [Redacted] election voter registration data, [Redacted] to conduct public opinion analysis on the 2020 US general election.” Two years after it was produced, the memo was quietly declassified by former Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.

But even after it was released, Just the News noted that the memo failed to gain attention, in stark contrast to the aftermath that occurred in March 2024 after it was discovered that Beijing had hacked into the U.K.’s databases and accessed the personal files of millions of Brits, causing widespread outrage. Now, the rediscovered memo could have significant implications for U.S. lawmakers as they consider the SAVE America Act, a bill currently being debated in the Senate that would require potential voters across the nation to present identification and proof of citizenship before being allowed to vote in federal elections.

The data that was reportedly obtained by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) operatives included driver’s license data and partial Social Security numbers, which can be used to make absentee ballot requests and to cast fraudulent ballots in person. According to Just the News, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is currently “working to declassify raw reports” on the CCP’s breach “for potential public dissemination.”

In June of last year, FBI Director Kash Patel made public an intelligence report from 2020 that warned the CCP was planning to mass-produce fraudulent U.S. driver’s licenses to obtain mail-in ballots, which the communist regime planned to cast for Biden, since he was considered more favorable to Beijing’s interests. According to a report from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from July 2020, the CCP’s plan seemed to be taking shape as CBP officers “seized 1,513 shipments with fraudulent documents — a total of 19,888 counterfeit US drivers’ licenses” at the Chicago O’Hare International Airport, with “the majority of these shipments … arriving from China and Hong Kong.”

Experts like author Gordon Chang, who serves as a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, say they are not surprised by reports of the CCP’s hacking efforts to subvert U.S. elections.

“They are in virtually every network in the United States that they want to be,” he told The Washington Stand. “So of course they’re messing in our elections. This should not be considered news. This is something we should have been acting on a long time ago.”

Chang went on to observe that legislation like the SAVE America Act will help to strengthen election integrity but argued that more fundamental reforms of the U.S.’s election processes are needed.

“The SAVE America Act will help, of course, but only marginally,” he contended. “It basically relates to people who actually show up and vote, so maybe it’ll help. Maybe China could manipulate voting rolls and orchestrate people to show up. But I don’t think that’s the issue. I’ve always thought that we should have paper ballots. We shouldn’t have election stuff online. It’s just an invitation to have the Chinese or others mess with our elections. The Taiwanese run nearly flawless elections because they just use paper ballots, and they count the votes in front of everyone. Why can’t we do this?”

Chang concluded by emphasizing that while U.S. networks could be better defended from CCP cyberattacks, “ultimately our election machinery should not be online. And if it takes a couple days more in order to determine who the winner is, well, that’s fine, because that’s the cost of having election integrity.”

“This is just us opening up our electoral system to interference not only by domestic parties, but by foreign parties as well,” he added. “So this is on us.”