ELECTION SECURITY GETS A BOOST

A House Appropriations subcommittee approved a bill Monday night that includes $600 million in funding for the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) meant for states to bolster election security, with the money specifically earmarked for states to buy voting systems with “voter-verified paper ballots.”

The approval comes as recent remarks by special counsel Robert Mueller emphasizing the dangers posed by foreign interference in U.S. election systems injected new life into the election security debate on Capitol Hill.

The Senate already approved a bill Monday night to ban foreign individuals who meddle in U.S. elections from entering the country.

The funds are part of the Financial Services fiscal 2020 budget, and were approved by voice vote by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government.

The bill now goes to the full House Appropriations Committee for consideration.

Should the funding bill be signed into law by President Trump, it would be nearly double the amount of the most recent election security funds states receive from Congress.

The EAC last received these funds as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018, which set aside $380 million to assist states in updating and securing their voting systems.

This new potential election security funding is designated “for necessary expenses to make payments to States for activities to improve the administration of elections for Federal office, including to enhance election technology and make election security improvements.”

But subcommittee members added clauses to the bill that require the money to be used by states to replace voting systems which use “direct-recording electronic voting machines with a voting system which uses an individual, durable, voter-verified paper ballot which is marked by the voter by hand or through the use of a non-tabulating ballot-marking device or system.”