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Declassified US files say China gathered US voter data, not 2020 vote meddling
The White House-linked records describe Chinese acquisition of about 204.8 million voter records from 2016, including names, ages, phone numbers and addresses.
Newly declassified US intelligence records say Chinese actors collected or acquired voter information covering millions of Americans, and that Beijing developed capabilities that could be used to influence political opinion.
The documents do not substantiate US President Donald Trump’s claim that China stole the records of 220 million voters or manipulated the 2020 election. According to SCMP Economy, Trump made the allegations in a nationally televised address on Thursday, describing a sweeping effort to interfere in the election he lost to Joe Biden.
The White House released records that add detail on how the information was collected and analyzed, including internal disagreement among US intelligence officials over whether China’s broader political activities amounted to election influence.
Some records characterize the voter data as publicly available, commercially obtained, or drawn from data sets that may already have been leaked, complicating the White House’s argument that the records were compromised by China, SCMP Economy reported. One intelligence report cited an unidentified Chinese entity that had a document listing datasets believed to have been leaked or compromised, including a collection of about 204.8 million US voter records from 2016.