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White House, congressional allies kill bipartisan bill designed to improve election security

The Trump administration and Mitch McConnell partner to torpedo latest effort to combat Russian interference.

Then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, second from right, and his wife Melania fill out their ballots at a polling station in a school during the 2016 presidential elections on November 8, 2016 in New York. CREDIT: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images
Then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, second from right, and his wife Melania fill out their ballots at a polling station in a school during the 2016 presidential elections on November 8, 2016 in New York. CREDIT: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Bipartisan legislation designed to help secure the integrity of future elections stalled in Congress this week after the White House and some Republican senators came out forcefully against it this week.

The GOP-sponsored Secure Elections Act would allow state election officials to receive classified threat information, require them to audit their federal election results, and promote the use of voting machines that produce a paper record.

Despite broad support from several Republicans, the Senate Rules Committee canceled an important markup session on the bill Wednesday at the behest of the White House, unnamed sources told Yahoo News and Reuters.

“Elections are the responsibility of the states and local governments,” White House spokesperson Lindsay Walters said in a statement. “We cannot support legislation with inappropriate mandates or that moves power or funding from the states to Washington for the planning and operation of elections.”

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Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) introduced the bill, with other sponsors including Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Susan Collins, (R-ME). But some Congressional Republicans also opposed the legislation, which they said usurps state powers and creates an unfunded mandate.

“I have problems with that,” Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) told reporters on Wednesday. “My problem is that heretofore, for the most part, the states and the counties and some local governments have funded and taken control and run the ballot box, so to speak, state-by-state.”

The blow to election security came the same day that senators got a closed briefing on Russian interference in the upcoming midterm elections.

“Everything we’ve done on Russia has not worked,” Graham told reporters after the meeting.

Democrats wanted to include a $250 million allocation in the bill to fund the state audits. On Aug. 1, Congressional Republicans shot down a separate amendment to direct $250 million in grants to states for election security through the Election Assistance Commission. In March, Congress appropriated $380 million for the Election Assistance Commission which included grant funding for election security, but that only covers fiscal year 2018, which ends on September 30.

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Blunt opposed the Aug. 1 funding amendment, telling The Wall Street Journal it was “another step maybe towards convincing the states that somebody besides them is going to be responsible for elections in their state.” Nevertheless, Klobuchar, the Secure Elections Act’s Democratic co-sponsor, thanked both Blunt and Lankford for their support of the bill in a statement to Yahoo News.

“They tried valiantly to salvage the votes for this bill on the Republican side,” Klobuchar said. “In the end we had every single Democrat on the committee committed to vote for the bill. Any changes that were recently made to the bill were made to accommodate the Republican leadership.”

As the bill languishes in committee, the White House is adamant that the federal Department of Homeland Security has everything it needs to tackle threats to U.S. elections from Russia and other hostile actors.

“While the Administration appreciates Congress’s interest in election security, DHS has all the statutory authority it needs to assist state and local officials to improve the security of existing election infrastructure,” Walters, the White House spokesperson, said in a statement. ““DHS is exercising its existing authority to help state and local authorities confront known challenges and build up the structural resilience to face emerging threats.”

Cybersecurity experts continue to warn of the threats posed by Russian interference in U.S. elections, including this November’s midterms. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) was reportedly targeted by Russian operatives as she began her reelection campaign, and several states are reportedly at risk of similar intrusions by foreign actors.

Neither Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) nor his office would say whether he supported the legislation, according to Yahoo News and Reuters.