Title : WHY WOULD TRUMP OBJECT TO A BILL TO STRENGTHEN ELECTION INTEGRITY?
link : WHY WOULD TRUMP OBJECT TO A BILL TO STRENGTHEN ELECTION INTEGRITY?
WHY WOULD TRUMP OBJECT TO A BILL TO STRENGTHEN ELECTION INTEGRITY?
White House blocks bill that would protect elections
By: Alexander Nazaryan
Yahoo News
24 August 2018
WASHINGTON — A bill that would have significantly bolstered the nation’s defenses against electoral interference has been held up in the Senate at the behest of the White House, which opposed the proposed legislation, according to congressional sources.
The Secure Elections Act, introduced by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., in December 2017, had co-sponsorship from two of the Senate’s most prominent liberals, Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., as well as from conservative stalwart Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and consummate centrist Susan Collins, R-Me.
Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., was set to conduct a markup of the bill on Wednesday morning in the Senate Rules Committee, which he chairs. The bill had widespread support, including from some of the committee’s Republican members, and was expected to come to a full Senate vote in October. But then the chairman’s mark, as the critical step is known, was canceled, and no explanation was given.
As it currently stands, the legislation would grant every state’s top election official security clearance to receive threat information. It would also formalize the practice of information-sharing between the federal government—in particular, the Department of Homeland Security—and states regarding threats to electoral infrastructure. A technical advisory board would establish best practices related to election cybersecurity. Perhaps most significantly, the law would mandate that every state conduct a statistically significant audit following a federal election. It would also incentivize the purchase of voting machines that leave a paper record of votes cast, as opposed to some all-electronic models that do not. This would signify a marked shift away from all-electronic voting, which was encouraged with the passage of the Help Americans Vote Act in 2002.
“Paper is not antiquated,” Lankford says. “It’s reliable.”
A paper record could prove effective against hackers if they tried to change the reporting of votes on the internet, as opposed to altering the votes themselves. Election officials needs to be able to say, “‘Nope, we can check this,’” as Lankford puts it. “Here’s the paper, here’s the machine, here’s our poll count.”
In a statement to Yahoo News, White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters says that while the administration “appreciates Congress’s interest in election security, [the Department of Homeland Security] has all the statutory authority it needs to assist state and local officials to improve the security of existing election infrastructure.”
Under current law, DHS is already able to work with state and local authorities to protect elections, Walters wrote. If Congress pursues the Secure Elections Act, it should avoid duplicating “existing DHS efforts or the imposition of unnecessary requirements” and “not violate the principles of Federalism.”
“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,” she added. However, the White House gave no specifics on what parts of the bill it objected to.
In a statement, Klobuchar thanked Blunt and Lankford, making clear that they were both allies in the effort. “They tried valiantly to salvage the votes for this bill on the Republican side,” Klobuchar’s statement 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.”
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