2020 Dems take on election security
Democratic presidential candidates are seizing on election security to attack Republicans for not doing enough to safeguard the country against foreign interference.
The attacks were part of last week’s Democratic debates, when a few candidates cited the threat posed by Russia, including their interference in the 2016 election as spelled out in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report released earlier this year.
The calls for action come as Mueller prepares to testify before Congress next month and as Democrats’ push for enhanced election security has stalled because of Republican opposition.
What they’re saying: Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), at the Democratic debate on Wednesday, blamed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for preventing passage of election security legislation.
“We let the Republicans run our elections, and if we do not do something about Russian interference in the election, and we let Mitch McConnell stop all the back-up paper ballots, then we are not going to get to do what we want to do,” Klobuchar said.
McConnell has consistently refused to allow Senate floor votes on a number of election security bills in recent weeks, citing concerns that these bills would federalize elections and take oversight away from states.
On Thursday night’s debate, technology entrepreneur Andrew Yang echoed Klobuchar’s concerns about foreign interference in elections, naming Russia as the greatest geopolitical threat to the United States, while noting the country “has been hacking our democracy successfully.”
“They’ve been laughing their asses off about it for years,” Yang added. “We should focus on that before we start worrying about other threats.”
Similarly, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said during the debate that Russia poses a greater threat to the U.S. than China “because of what they’ve done with our election.”
Beyond the debates: Meanwhile, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released a plan on how she will address the topic if elected president. The proposal came the day before she appeared on the debate stage on Wednesday.
House vs. Senate: This week, the House approved the fiscal 2020 Financial Services and General Government funding bill with a provision granting the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) $600 million that would be handed over to states to shore up their voting infrastructure.
The bill comes after Congress appropriated $380 million to the EAC last year for the same purpose.
However, this year’s bill has little chance of being approved by the Senate. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), the chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over this funding bill, told reporters this week that he is “very, very skeptical about the wisdom of including” the $600 million in funding to states.
“I admire their zeal, but I’m not certain about their wisdom,” Kennedy said of House efforts to pass election security funding.
