GOP divided on election security bills

A renewed push to pass election security legislation ahead of the 2020 vote is putting a spotlight on divisions among key Republicans.

GOP senators say they want to protect U.S. election infrastructure from a repeat of Russia’s 2016 meddling, but they are deeply split over how far the federal government should go to try to secure the ballot box and what, if any, new legislation that requires from Congress.

Battle lines drawn: On one side of the divide are Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who have backed passing additional legislation. On the other side are powerful figures including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Rules Committee Chairman Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who have signaled election security bills are going nowhere anytime soon in the Senate.

Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 GOP senator, argued that while Republicans support secure elections, most of the caucus believes the issue has been handled by previous bills and state action.

“I think it would depend entirely on the bills and what they purport to do but I think most of our members think that that issue is being adequately addressed,” he said, when asked about members of the caucus who support additional legislation.

But the divisions have spilled over into the Senate committees with jurisdiction over the issue, where the Rules Committee and Judiciary Committee chairmen have taken different tracks on election-related legislation.

Blunt, who is also a member of GOP leadership, told The Hill that he did not “have anything new” on this topic. He previously told members of his committee that he would not hold votes on election security bills because McConnell “is of the view that this debate reaches no conclusion.”

Graham, by comparison, co-sponsored legislation approved by the Senate earlier this year that would block individuals who meddled in elections from entering the United States, and he supports passing additional legislation.

“I think there’s some other things that we can do. The two that we did are good starts, but there are other things,” Graham told The Hill.

Senate at odds with Trump officialss: The inaction in the Senate is at odds with warnings from some Trump administration officials including FBI Director Christopher Wray, who said earlier this year that Russia was “upping their game” when it comes to meddling and that the FBI is “very much viewing 2018 as just kind of a dress rehearsal for the big show in 2020.”

Secure Elections Act: GOP proponents of passing new election security legislation are preparing another push on the Secure Elections Act, which was yanked in the last Congress amid pushback from the White House and members of the Senate Republican caucus.

This bill garnered bipartisan support during the last Congress and would require all jurisdictions to perform post-election audits to verify results. This would involve checking paper ballots or paper records of votes against what the voting machines recorded to ensure the vote count is accurate.

Graham and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), two of the bill’s cosponsors last year, signaled they are open to backing the forthcoming version. Meanwhile, Burr told reporters in the wake of Mueller’s report that the Secure Elections Act would be a good starting point.

“We identified and came up with what we thought was an appropriate response, with the Elections Security Act,” he said. “I think we need to get that in place.”