Partisan Congress resists election security upgrades for 2020 | Kansas City Star

That’s a major setback for the bipartisan bill authored by Lankford with Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Kamala Harris of California, both 2020 presidential candidates. The Secure Elections Act would streamline cybersecurity information-sharing between federal intelligence agencies and state election authorities and provide security clearances to state election officials. It also makes grants eligible to local jurisdictions.

The legislation has drawn support from across the political spectrum, including GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina., Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine and Harris, a liberal Democrat.

”I don’t see any reason in this case to mark up a bill that can’t possibly be voted on on the the floor,” he said.

Blunt, who served as Missouri’s top election official before running for Congress, does plan to hold an oversight hearing on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, likely in May. The focus will be on lines of communication between local and federal officials, as well cybersecurity.

“That will be a hearing with the people whose job it is to do those things, rather than have a hearing on legislation that’s not going to the floor,” he said.

Klobuchar, the top Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, wasn’t happy with the news that GOP leadership isn’t planning to move forward with the election security bill she’s cosponsoring with Lankford.

“They’d better move forward,” said Klobuchar. “And wait ‘til they see that report (from Mueller) and they’ll see why.”

There is no evidence that Russian hackers or spies managed to change a single vote in 2016. But Mueller’s indictments of Russian actors describe alleged efforts to hack a U.S. voting software company. The Department of Homeland Security also reported that Russian agents tried to penetrate 21 state election systems in 2016.

Blunt and other Republican lawmakers in Congress have said they agree with U.S. intelligence agencies’ assessment that the Russian government directed hacks of U.S. political organizations in an effort to interfere with the election process.

That assessment also noted that some states noticed scanning and probing of their election-related systems, “which in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company.”

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats warned Congress in January that foreign adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran are likely already planning ways to disrupt next year’s presidential election through “online influence operations” on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

They also “may seek to use cyber means to directly manipulate or disrupt election systems—such as by tampering with voter registration or disrupting the vote tallying process—either to alter data or to call into question our voting process,” he wrote in a threat assessment submitted to the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence.

Last year, after then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen warned that the lack of paper trails in some states was a national security concern, Congress approved $380 million in federal funds to upgrade election systems and boost cybersecurity.

Since then, the political landscape has changed. Democrats won control of the House, and with it, more power to shape federal election policy .

“It’s beyond me that Congress can’t have hearings on developing good policy around what should be and has been a bipartisan response to protecting our elections,” said Matthew Weil, director of the Elections Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “They’ve done it before and they’ve done it again. It’s going to take a bipartisan response.”

States cannot protect elections on their own, Weil said.

“We don’t ask the Maryland State Guard to defend against a foreign army,” he said. “There’s a need for the federal government to be involved when it comes to the bad intentions of foreign bad actors … This needs to be viewed more as national infrastructure.”

McConnell’s approach is puzzling, said Michael McDonald, an associate professor at the University of Florida who specializes in elections and runs the United States Election Project, a resource on election laws and statistics.

As Democrats gear up to run on election security and voting rights as part of their 2020 platform, McConnell could neutralize the issue by offering a GOP alternative to H.R. 1 that includes some of the election reforms Republicans want, McDonald said.

”Republicans are being short-sighted,” he said.

For his part, Lankford said he and Klobuchar will continue to partner on their election security bill in the Senate. They are working with the White House counsel to agree on language the administration can accept — and that President Donald Trump would sign.

The Oklahoma Republican has not talked to McConnell or Blunt about concerns with the legislation, and was surprised by Blunt’s clear statement that no such bill will even get a hearing.

Like Blunt, Lankford blames House Democrats for creating an environment that will make it hard to pass any election changes in the Senate.

“It’s made the environment so toxic,” Lankford said.

He called H.R. 1 a “wish list” for federal takeover of elections and complained that tax dollars would be used to pay for the campaigns of candidates taxpayers philosophically oppose.

McConnell’s hostility toward H.R. 1 is intense. He has taken to the Senate floor at least eight times since late January to rail against H.R. 1. He’s dubbed it the “Democrat Politician Protection Act” and vowed to prevent it from coming law, casting it as a violation of states’ rights.

He called it a “one-sided power grab” and warned it would federalize elections.

“Hundreds of pages are dedicated to telling states how to run their elections, from when and where they must take place, to the procedures they have to follow, to the machines they have to use,” he said.

Even in the unlikely event that McConnell relented and allowed a Senate vote on Lankford’s election security bill, the Democrat-led House likely would give it a lukewarm reception.

The House is moving instead take up a more ambitious piece of legislation authored by Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security and served as co-Chair of a Task Force on Election Security last year.

Thompson’s Elections Security Act would require paper ballots and set standards for election technology vendors. It also would provide an initial $1 billion in federal funding for states to replace outdated voting equipment and to cover the costs of hiring IT staff, training election officials in cybersecurity, and performing risk assessments of election systems.

In addition to the initial influx of $1 billion, the bill would create dedicated pools of money to help states maintain election security into the future.

Some of the bills provisions were included in H.R. 1.

Thompson hopes to reintroduce his legislation in the coming weeks or months. He believes the bill does more than Lankford’s and has funding behind it to make it effective.

“There is no reason that election security should be a partisan issue,” Thompson said in a statement.

“All sides have a clear vested interest in ensuring our elections are secure and free from foreign influence,” he said. “Republicans often speak of the need to further secure our elections, now they must turn those words into action or the American people will realize they are not acting in good faith.”