The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded Thursday that Russia targeted the election systems of all 50 states in 2016, an effort that both state and federal officials failed to detect at the time.
The report by the bipartisan committee warns that election systems in the country continue to be vulnerable to potential Russian influence in 2020, but it redacts some key recommendations, as well as much of the rest of the report, at the behest of American intelligence agencies.
Only a day before the report, the first one in a series to follow, was released, former special counsel Robert Mueller warned that Russia was preparing to meddle in next year’s presidential election again. The panel’s report also detailed “an unprecedented level of activity against state election infrastructure” in all states, not just Illinois and Arizona, as was previously known.
The effort was aimed at discovering vulnerabilities in the election systems’ security.
According to The New York Times, the Intelligence Committee concluded that no votes were altered in actual voting machines, but “Russian cyberactors were in a position to delete or change voter data” in the Illinois voter database.
Mueller, who testified before two House committees on Wednesday, stressed that other countries were likewise “developing capability to replicate what the Russians have done,” posing a similar threat to U.S. election security.
The same day the bipartisan report was released, several key Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, blocked a bill on election security put forward by Democrats. McConnell, who has long refused to give the federal government greater control in the matter, claims that enough has been done already by passing $380 million worth of grants for states to update their election systems.
A number of administration officials believe that the issue has been put on the back burner because President Donald Trump sees any discussion on the matter as putting in question his own election victory.
“It’s just a highly partisan bill from the same folks who spent two years hyping up a conspiracy theory about President Trump and Russia and who continue to ignore this administration’s progress at correcting the Obama administration’s failure on this subject,” McConnell said of the Democratic bill.
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the issue should not be treated as a partisan one, stressing that it is a matter of national security.
“This is not a liberal issue, a moderate issue, a conservative issue. This is an issue of patriotism, of national security, of protecting the very integrity of American democracy, something so many of our forbears died for,” he said, criticizing Republicans for remaining inactive on the matter.
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