The federal government should have a hand in helping states secure elections, within limits, according to House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La.
“If a state is having problems, the federal government ought to be able to work with them and help them,” Scalise told reporters on Capitol Hill on Friday. “We don’t run state elections. We have a secretary of state in Louisiana, who does a great job of running the elections in the state and is the custodian of the voting machines, and that’s an important responsibility, and each state does. And if a state is having problems, they ought to be able to work in sync with the federal government to try to identify and solve it.”
Concerns regarding election security surfaced during the 2016 election cycle and was one of special counsel Robert Mueller’s lines of inquiry as part of his federal Russia investigation. His report, released in April, disclosed that Russian hackers successfully infiltrated two Florida county databases. Florida’s congressional delegation this week urged the FBI to publicly name the counties after they received a classified briefing from the bureau, in which agents could not say with certainty that the hackers did not manipulate any voter roll information.
But bipartisan legislative responses have been stymied by politics, with each side arguing the other is trying to reform the system for an electoral edge. Republicans also assert Democrats are attempting to federalize elections, introducing reforms that create opportunities for voter fraud.
“I think there’s a bipartisan approach to make sure that we can identify when foreign countries are trying to interfere with our elections,” Scalise said Friday. “We know that foreign countries, including Russia, have tried to interfere with our elections, and I’m sure will try to do it again. And we need to be as vigilant as possible.”
“We had some bipartisan bills that were more on the hacking side, of countries that tried to hack into our private businesses, individuals, stealing personal information,” he added. “And we were trying to get an understanding of how to properly share information between government agencies and private companies. That interaction ought to be loud.”
