Democrats: Our elections are the safest and most secure in the world. Don’t you dare suggest otherwise, else you’re a QAnon-adjacent consp...
Democrats: Our elections are the safest and most secure in the world. Don’t you dare suggest otherwise, else you’re a QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theorist trying to disenfranchise minority voters.
Also Democrats: We need $5 billion in election security grants because elections won’t be secure enough if they’re run like they were run in 2020.
In a letter to President Joe Biden authored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and signed by almost three dozen Democrat senators, upper-chamber party legislators argued because of the record number of voters in the last presidential election “to help both state and local election officials modernize their voting equipment, improve the administration of elections, and strengthen cybersecurity for election systems.”
In the Tuesday letter, Klobuchar — along with 32 other senators, representing the vast majority of the Democratic senatorial caucus — argued that $5 billion in funding is needed for election security grants in the 2023 budget.
The letter was also signed by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois and Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Chris Coons of Delaware, Dianne Feinstein of California, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Raphael Warnock of Georgia, and Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who caucuses with the Democrats.
The reason was the roughly 160 million Americans who voted in 2020, numerically the most in American history. Again, the letter parroted the line from Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity expert Christopher Krebs that the election was the “most secure in American history” — but the senators said that was only because of 2018 and 2020 election security grants from Congress as well as CARES Act funding.
This, the letter claimed, “provided election officials with resources to take on the additional obstacles of administering safe and secure elections during the coronavirus pandemic.”
“While past funding has been critical, we must continue to help both state and local election officials modernize their voting equipment, improve the administration of elections, and strengthen cybersecurity for election systems,” the letter read.
“Six states still widely use voting systems that do not produce paper ballots. The EAC also recently approved an updated version of the voluntary voting system guidelines that will lead to investments in more modern voting systems.
“In addition, election officials are facing a surge in threats and harassment that have left many worried for their safety, raising concerns about the ability of state and local governments to retain and recruit officials, workers, and volunteers for future elections.”
The letter cited an analysis that stated that, over the next 10 years, “$50 billion would be needed for election administration and security. Based on this analysis, a group of Secretaries of State and Chief Election Officials have also requested that the federal government provide $5 billion in election grants for FY 2023.”
On Klobuchar’s Senate page, she linked to a study by the Election Infrastructure Initiative, which says America needs the money to “modernize our election administration and operations, bolster cybersecurity, replace voting machines, update voter registration systems, and strengthen post-election audits.”
This includes “[p]atching critical cybersecurity vulnerabilities” and “[i]nvesting in election management equipment, including ballot sorters, envelope openers and stuffers, and ballot verification technology.”
And what missive on elections proffered by a Democrat would be complete without some mention of the party’s proposed federal voting overhaul legislation? Not this one, at least.
“While funding is not a substitute for Congress passing comprehensive legislation to protect the freedom to vote and stop the ongoing attacks on our democracy, we must ensure that state and local election officials continue to receive the resources needed to administer, improve, and modernize our elections,” the letter read.
Never mind that legislation would substantially weaken voting security in numerous ways, we’re apparently going to flog that dead horse until it gets up and gallops.
In the end, though, we’re faced with two mutually exclusive scenarios: We either have an electoral system that safely and securely handled the 160 million votes that were cast in 2020 or we need tens of billions in grants over the next decade to protect it from cybersecurity threats, among other things. The system was apparently watertight just a year and three months ago, but is now so desperately leaky it needs $50 billion over 10 years.
Democrats can’t live in the Christopher Krebs world where an election contested with a high percentage of mail-in ballots was the “most secure in American history” while asking for funding to patch security holes — and then arguing the rules need to be looser and that a bogus, Democrat-friendly “voting rights” package needs to be passed which would make our elections less secure and cancel out many serious election security initiatives undertaken by Republicans at the state level.
It’s one or the other. Democrats can’t have both.
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