Senate Republicans Block Bill To Fortify Election Security Amid Growing Hacking Concerns

Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked an attempt by Democrats to pass legislation aimed at bolstering the country’s election infrastructure as threats of possible hacking by foreign countries loom, reports The Hill.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) tried calling up the Election Security Act, a bill which would require backup paper ballots and provide election security grants to U.S> states, before it was blocked.

“We know there’s a continued threat against our democracy. What we need to do now is address these facts with a common purpose, to protect our democracy, to make sure that our election systems are resilient against future attacks,” Klobuchar said from the Senate floor.

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) objected to Klobuchar’s unanimous consent request, arguing that he and Klobuchar were trying to draft separate legislation together and that he didn’t want to see election security become a partisan issue.

“I find myself at odds today with a partner in this … we have worked together in a very nonpartisan way to be able to resolve this issue. I think we still can resolve this and we can actually get a result, but a partisan proposal will not get us an end results where both parties come together and get to resolve this,” Lankford said from the Senate floor.

“There is a presidential election before us and if a few counties in one swing state or an entire state get hacked into there’s no backup paper ballots and we can’t figure out what happened, the entire election will be called into question,” Klobuchar said Tuesday.