The Senate Rules and Administration Committee abruptly deferred a bipartisan election cybersecurity bill slated to be discussed Wednesday, postponing a previously scheduled markup hearing over lack of Republican support.
A hearing regarding the Security Election Act sponsored by Sens. James Lankford, Oklahoma Republican, and Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota Democrat, was “postponed until further notice,” the committee said on its website.
“We didn’t have the level of Republican support we needed, and we didn’t have some secretaries of state that had raised real concerns the last three days and [there was] no reason to go forward if we’re not going to have enough bipartisan support to get a bill on the floor,” said committee Chairman Roy Blunt, Missouri Republican, CNN reported.
Introduced in December, the Secure Elections Act would “streamline cybersecurity information-sharing between federal intelligence entities and state election agencies, provide security clearances to state election officials and require adequate post-election auditing procedures so each election can be double-checked and verified,” according to Mr. Lankford’s office.
Despite bipartisan support, the bill faced opposition after Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos, the president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, recently called the bill “problematic,” opposing the stringent post-election audits as an”unfunded mandate.”
“It’s important that any legislation passed by Congress regarding election administration includes funding for states to have the resources which are necessary to continue our work protecting the integrity of our electoral process,” Mr. Condos, a Democrat, said Wednesday. “While I applaud the intent behind the Secure Elections Act, I believe that it was correct to delay a vote today as the legislation needs to be worked further.”
The bill’s authors were less enthusiastic about deferring discussion. Ms. Klobuchar said she was “disappointed” the markup hearing was delayed, and Mr. Lankford added that “congressional inaction is unacceptable,” FCW reported.
“With only 76 days before the election, with cyberattacks from Russia and other countries and criminal enterprises being revealed every day, with no national requirement for critical security protocols such as audits or backup paper ballots for our nation’s election infrastructure, we must take action before the next election,” Ms. Klobuchar said in a statement. “To do nothing before the next election would be irresponsible.”
Russian state-sponsored hackers interfered in the 2016 election, according to U.S. federal law enforcement and intelligence officials, and Moscow is believed to be responsible for several supposed cyber operations revealed as recently as this week, including disinformation campaigns and apparent phishing attempts disclosed Tuesday by Facebook and Microsoft, respectively.
“They are all trying to outdo one another with their statements which all look like carbon copies of one another,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Wednesday. “There is no supporting explanation and we do not understand on what they are based.”
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