Last month, when Congress authorized three hundred and eighty million dollars to help states protect their voting systems from hacking, it was a public acknowledgement that, seven months out from the midterm elections, those systems remain vulnerable to attack.
Texas counties have doled out millions of dollars in recent months to replace thousands of old touch-screen voting machines that lack a paper record – a weakness security experts warn could allow Russians or other hackers to rig U.S. elections without detection.
The problem is, many of the new machines have the same vulnerability. So do similar machines in more than a dozen states across the country.
A pair of senators from each party is introducing legislation meant to deter foreign governments from interfering in future American elections.
The bill represents the latest push on Capitol Hill to address Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election and counter potential threats ahead of the 2018 midterms.
A bipartisan group of six senators has introduced legislation that would take a huge step toward securing elections in the United States. Called the Secure Elections Act, the bill aims to eliminate insecure paperless voting machines from American elections while promoting routine audits that would dramatically reduce the danger of interference from foreign governments.
The U.S. Senate should enthusiastically pass the Graham-Klobuchar amendment to H.R. 2810, the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2018.
The amendment would enormously strengthen defenses against cyber attacks that could compromise the integrity of elections in the United States and undermine legitimacy of government. Public confidence in the reliability of elections is a cornerstone of national security—the willingness of the people to fight and die for their country.
McClatchyDC.com
Under fire from the left and the right, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday he’ll back a measure to give states another $250 million to upgrade their voting systems to fend off foreign intervention.
McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who has maintained for months that Democratic election security proposals are largely a sham, announced the move on the Senate floor on Thursday, saying he was “proud” to have helped develop the amendment to a federal spending bill.
CNN.com
Conservative activists are calling on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to support funding to upgrade voting machines across the country that critics argue are out of date and insecure.
Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and Freedomworks President Adam Brandon issued a call Wednesday for Congress to allocate additional money for election equipment upgrades and to mandate that elections use paper ballots that can be used for an independent audit.
WashingtonExaminer.com
On Election Day 2016, President Trump offered an unequivocal statement on how our elections should be run: “There’s something really nice about the old paper ballot system,” he told Fox News. “You don’t worry about hacking.”
Trump’s view is increasingly becoming the consensus position. There’s growing agreement that the United States needs action to ensure verifiable elections with paper ballots and audits — as well as to patch cybersecurity vulnerabilities and to upgrade dangerously old election infrastructure.
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