It’s quite remarkable, really. A bill that would have significantly bolstered the nation’s defenses against electoral interference has been held up in the Senate at the behest of the White House. The very administration under investigation by a special counsel looking at Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The Secure Elections Act, introduced by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., had co-sponsorship from two of the Senate’s most prominent liberals, Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., as well as from conservative stalwart Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and consummate centrist Susan Collins, R-Me.
Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., was set to conduct a markup of the bill this morning in the Senate Rules Committee, which he chairs. The bill had widespread support, including from some of the committee’s Republican members, and was expected to come to a full Senate vote in October. But then the chairman’s mark, as the critical step is known, was canceled.
As it currently stands, the legislation would:
- Grant every state’s top election official security clearance to receive threat information.
- It would formalize the practice of information-sharing between the federal government—in particular, the Department of Homeland Security—and states regarding threats to electoral infrastructure.
- A technical advisory board would establish best practices related to election cybersecurity.
- Perhaps most significantly, the law would mandate that every state conduct a statistically significant audit following a federal election.
- It would also incentivize the purchase of voting machines that leave a paper record of votes cast, as opposed to some all-electronic models that do not. This would signify a marked shift away from all-electronic voting, which was encouraged with the passage of the Help Americans Vote Act in 2002.
“Paper is not antiquated,” Lankford says. “It’s reliable.”
A paper record could prove effective against hackers if they tried to change the reporting of votes on the internet, as opposed to altering the votes themselves. Election officials needs to be able to say, “‘Nope, we can check this,’” as Lankford puts it. “Here’s the paper, here’s the machine, here’s our poll count.”
In a statement to Yahoo News, White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters says that while the administration “appreciates Congress’s interest in election security, the Department of Homeland Security has all the statutory authority it needs to assist state and local officials to improve the security of existing election infrastructure.”
The Trump administration has been unable to settle on how elections should be secured, and whom they should be secured against. Despite consensus from the nation’s intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in 2016, President Trump has dismissed the threat, even as others in his administration have issued unambiguous warnings. Trump has instead asserted that millions voted fraudulently in New York and California for Hillary Clinton, thus giving her an edge of some 3 million votes in the 2016 presidential race. No evidence of statistically significant voter fraud has been uncovered.
Lankford, a rising young Republican legislator, vowed to press on. “The issue of election cybersecurity is very important and more must be done now,” he said in a statement. “Congressional inaction is unacceptable.”