A bipartisan group of senators leading an inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 US election called on Tuesday for urgent action by Congress to help states protect their voting systems from future threats of foreign interference.
With the 2018 congressional primaries already under way, members of the senate intelligence committee outlined a series of recommendations – the first public release from the panel’s yearlong investigation – that they say will help improve the cybersecurity of the nation’s election infrastructure.
“We’re now at a point where we’ve wrapped up one piece of our investigation, which deals with election security,” said Republican senator Richard Burr, the chairman of the committee, who spoke alongside the Democratic vice-chair, Senator Mark Warner, and members of the committee. By and large, he said, “we need to be more effective at deterring our adversaries.”
“The Russians were relentless in attempting to meddle in the 2016 elections and they will continue their efforts to undermine public confidence in western democracies and in the legitimacy of our elections,” Senator Susan Collins, another Republican member of the committee, added during the press conference.
The election security recommendations were released a day ahead of full committee hearing to discuss the attempted hacks of several state voting systems in 2016 and federal and local response. Jeh Johnson, the former homeland security secretary and Kirstjen Nielsen, the current homeland security secretary, are scheduled to testify.
The suggestions include more federal funding for states to replace outdated voting systems and improved information sharing between local and state agencies. At a minimum, the committee said, machines should have “a voter-verified paper trail and no wifi capability” that would make them more vulnerable to being hacked. There are currently 14 states that lack a paper trail of votes cast.
“Look at where we are now in this year of our Lord 2018, we’re talking about paper ballots,” said Kamala Harris, a Democratic committee member. She added: “Russians cannot hack a piece of paper the way they can a computer system connected to the Internet.”
The panel was careful to stress that states should remain firmly in control of their election systems, adding that the role of the federal government should be to “ensure they receive the necessary resources and information”.
They also called on the US government to “clearly communicate to adversaries that an attack on our election infrastructure is a hostile act, and we will respond accordingly”. The committee’s suggestions will be outlined in more detail in a report expected to be made public in the coming weeks.
While Burr emphasized that his committee has not committed to any deadline, the panel said it prioritized their election security recommendations because of the urgency of the situation. Top intelligence officials have warned that the US election infrastructure remains vulnerable to foreign intrusion.
“The last time it was the Russians, it may not be the Russians next time,” Senator James Lankford, a Republican of Oklahoma, said. “They have set a pattern that others can follow. It could be the the North Koreans, it could be the Iranians, it could be a domestic hacktivist group that uses that same playbook to try to seek chaos.”
The findings do not address the committee’s investigation into whether Trump colluded with Moscow on its disinformation campaign.
The bipartisan nature of the Senate committee sharply contrasts with a parallel investigation in the House, which the Republicans recently ended after concluding that there was no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. The Republicans’ report also contradicted a conclusion by the US intelligence community that Russia meddled in the election to help sway support for Trump.
Separately, special counsel Robert Mueller, is leading an investigation into whether Trump campaign associates coordinated with the Kremlin during the 2016 election.
Last month, in indictments handed down by a grand jury, Mueller alleged that 13 Russian citizens and three Russian organizations had sought to disrupt the 2016 election.
Mueller’s inquiry has also resulted in criminal indictments and guilty pleas of former Trump campaign aides. The president has repeatedly disparaged the inquiry as a “witch hunt” and denied that there was any collusion between his campaign and Russia.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders called the inquiry “absurd” at her press briefing on Tuesday, saying: “To pretend like going through this absurd process over a year would not bring frustration seems a little ridiculous.”
On Tuesday, Trump said he called to congratulate Vladimir Putin on the leader’s controversial re-election on Sunday. Trump said the leaders planned to meet in the “not too distant future” to discuss “the arms race”.
Asked during the White House briefing if Trump raised the issue of Russian meddling on the call, Sanders said she did not believe he had.