Republicans and Democrats agree the government should takes steps to ensure Russia cannot meddle in the next election, but the parties can’t find enough common ground to advance legislation.
Democrats accuse the GOP of refusing to take election security seriously and even of blocking legislation in order to benefit President Trump and other Republican candidates. Presidential contender Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., claimed the Trump administration pressured Senate GOP leaders last summer to reject an election security bill she authored with Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma.
“Just as we were on the verge of getting a markup in the Rules Committee, getting it to the floor where I think we would get the vast majority of senators, the White House made calls to stop this,” Klobuchar told Attorney General William Barr at a Senate hearing this month.
Republicans say the Democratic Party is seeking to use election security to force a broad overhaul of the nation’s election system that would federalize elections, favor Democratic candidates, and encourage voter fraud.
[Related: FBI’s Foreign Influence Taskforce readies for 2020 while Russia is ‘upping its game’]
House lawmakers are urging the Senate to take up H.R. 1, the comprehensive election and campaign overhaul bill authored by the Democratic majority. The measure, which passed the House in March, aims to bolster election security by requiring paper ballots and mandating the federal government take certain steps to ensure the integrity of the election system. For example, the president would have to devise “a national strategy” to protect democratic institutions.
But the House measure goes much further than election security. It would broaden voter registration by forcing states to employ online, automatic, and same-day voter registration, and it would make it harder for states to purge voter rolls of ineligible voters. It would also restore ex-felon voting rights and appoint “redistricting commissions” to redraw voting maps. The bill also changes campaign finance laws by broadening disclosure requirements and establishing a public finance system for candidates.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., denounced H.R. 1, which he has dubbed the “Democrat Politician Protection Act,” based on his belief that the measure favors Democratic candidates. He said the bill would federalize the election process and hold taxpayers responsible for bankrolling campaigns.
Senate Republican leaders aren’t interested in taking up the Klobuchar-Lankford bill, either. The measure would require backup paper ballots and other security initiatives, including mandatory audits of every election, aimed at bolstering voting system integrity. The White House warned it would strip away state authority over elections.
[Opinion: Georgia needs election security, not more bickering]
Top Rules Committee Republican Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri said he plans to hold an election advisory committee hearing next week to address election security issues, but he does not anticipate new legislation. “I think our focus now is going to be making sure the federal government is creating all the backup and information that state and local officials need, rather than getting into trying to manage state and local elections,” he said.
“I believe that the extreme positions the House took in H.R. 1 makes it even less likely the majority leader would be willing to commit floor time to this particular issue,” Blunt added.
Congress has already passed legislation to bolster election security, providing $380 million in 2018 for states to secure their elections. The Homeland Security Department offers free services to states and local governments that were widely used in the 2018 midterm elections, and Homeland Security officials told Congress last year that they do not need new mandates to improve election security.
But other lawmakers are pushing for Congress to do more, pointing to the newly released Mueller report on Russian interference in the 2016 election to make the case for new election security legislation.
[Also read: Republicans demand answers on what the Obama administration knew about Russian election interference]
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., last week reintroduced a measure that would prevent foreigners who have tried to meddle in U.S. elections from obtaining visas to enter the country. Graham says he will hold a committee vote to advance the measure this week along with a bill that would ban tampering with voting systems under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
“In 2016, Russia committed an act of cyberwar against our country,” Durbin said. “Unfortunately, Congress has done little to prevent future efforts by Russia or others to influence and disrupt the 2020 elections.”
Lankford, who co-sponsored the election security bill with Klobuchar, said he is trying to win broader bipartisan support for the bill and hopes to reintroduce the measure this year.
“The things that are in it are pretty common sense,” Lankford said, noting that many provisions in the bill mirror steps taken by the Department of Homeland Security to shore up election security in 2018. “The fear of this is always that we get complacent and we stop doing the things we should do, and the way to do that is to codify it.”
