Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Amy Klobuchar (MN) discussed election security with Jake Tapper on CNN's "State of the Union." According to Klobuchar, President Donald Trump is not serious about protecting future elections from foreign interference.
"Are you suggesting Trump wants foreign election interference in 2020?" Tapper asked.
"First of all, we've had ample evidence that he has not been responding to protect our election security. And you know what? Russia, they didn't use a tank, they didn't use a missile, but they used a computer, and they invaded our democracy all the same," Klobuchar replied.
"In the past, he's the word 'meddled.' Well, meddling is what I do when I call my daughter on a Saturday night. This was actually an invasion of our democracy, okay? This isn't asking your kid, 'Oh, what are you doing tonight?' This is an invasion of our democracy," Klobuchar explained.
"He wants that again?" Tapper asked.
"I don't know what he wants. All I know is he's not acting like the leader to protect our national security," she replied. "Because if he wanted to do that his administration wouldn't be stopping the Secure Elections Act in its tracks."
According to Klobuchar, her bi-partisan bill with Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) was blocked by the White House.
This is what the Secure Elections Act summary says:
This bill gives the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) primary responsibility within the federal government for sharing information about election cybersecurity incidents, threats, and vulnerabilities with federal entities and election agencies.
DHS shall establish an advisory panel of independent experts to develop guidelines on election cybersecurity, including standards for procuring, maintaining, testing, auditing, operating, and updating election systems.
DHS shall award election system cybersecurity and modernization grants to states to implement the advisory panel's guidelines. Grants shall be awarded to: (1) remediate vulnerabilities identified by a cybersecurity evaluation, (2) replace electronic voting systems that are not optical scanners that read paper ballots, and (3) reimburse states for the inspection of marked paper ballots.
DHS shall establish a Hack the Election program, including a recurring competition, to facilitate and encourage the identification and reporting of election cybersecurity vulnerabilities by independent technical experts.
There are so many assumptions made here.
President Trump has absolutely no reason not to denounce foreign interference in our elections. He spent the last two years constantly saying he didn't collude with Russia. The last thing he could possibly want is to have to deal with two more years of these crazy news stories. If anything, Trump is probably the biggest supporter of getting Russia out of our elections for that very reason.
Conservatives need to prepare themselves though. Should Trump win in 2020, Democrats will automatically blame Russia, saying they successfully hacked our elections. But if a Democrat wins, you know they'll say a foreign entity did absolutely no meddling.
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