Democrats have complained that the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which the Senate is supposed to vote for this week doesn’t go far enough to protect election security, The Hill reported.
The bill includes a number of provisions that would tighten security, but Democrats — who for much of the year have targeted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on the issue of election security — say it lacks key safeguards that would help prevent foreign meddling, including post-election audits of the results and requirements for states that do not use paper ballots.
While the concerns won’t prevent the Senate from approving the massive bill, they are likely to lead to complaints as Democrats continue to press the issue of election security next year.
“We can’t mandate that, but we could say if you want to take the federal money, you’ve got to meet these prerequisites,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said of the paper ballot issue. “I still don’t think we’re as protected as we should be going into the 2020 election.”
Audits is one of the issues focused upon by critics of the bill who say it does not provide enough security.
Post-election audits are recommended ways of securing election results and ensuring interference did not occur. New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice has recommended them as an essential step to secure elections, writing in a 2018 paper that risk-limiting audits are “an easy and efficient method for verifying that vote tallies are accurate.”
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