[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 167 (Tuesday, October 22, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5935-S5937]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Election Security
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to urge the
Senate to take action on election security legislation immediately.
It has been 1,005 days since Russia attacked our elections in 2016,
and we have yet to pass any kind of comprehensive election security
reform. The next major elections are just 378 days away, so the clock
is ticking. We must take action now to secure our elections from
foreign threats.
Let's review what happened.
In 2016, Russia invaded our democracy. They didn't use bombs, jets,
or tanks. Instead, they spent years planning a cyber mission to
undermine the foundation of our democratic system. This mission has
been called ``sweeping'' and ``systematic'' by many, including Special
Counsel Mueller. Our military and intelligence officials from both
Democratic and Republican administrations, as well as Special Counsel
Mueller, made clear and confirmed over and over again that Russia
launched sophisticated and targeted cyber attacks that were authorized
by President Putin. This includes former Director Coats, President
Trump's former intelligence head; Director Wray, the head of the FBI;
and the head of Homeland Security. One by one, officials in the Trump
administration have confirmed that this happened.
What exactly did Russia do? They conducted research and
reconnaissance against election networks in every single State. We used
to think it was just 21 States, but this year, the FBI and the
Department of Homeland Security under the Trump administration issued a
report that confirmed that all 50 States were targeted.
Russia was successful in hacking into databases in Illinois. The
Chicago board of elections reported that names, addresses, birth dates,
and other sensitive information on thousands of registered voters were
exposed. Russia launched cyber attacks against U.S. companies that made
the software we use to vote, and they tried to hack into the email of
local officials who have elections in their purview.
Investigations are ongoing, but we know Russia hacked into election
systems in the Presiding Officer's home
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State of Florida. Senator Rubio has publicly confirmed that Russian
hackers not only accessed voting systems in Florida but were in a
position to change voter rolls.
These are just the attacks on our election infrastructure.
So we should look at it this way: No. 1, they tried to get into the
infrastructure. No. 2, we know they spread propaganda about things. One
of the main ways they did that was through social media. This month,
the Senate Intelligence Committee released a bipartisan report
detailing Russia's widespread social media campaign to spread
disinformation and divide our country. Remember, you have hacking into
things at the local level and at the State levels, and then you have
this disinformation campaign. These are two things with the same
intent--to interfere in our democracy.
Think about what I just described. A foreign country attacked our
democracy in multiple ways. Our military leaders and law enforcement
officials all say that Russia hasn't paid a sufficient price for the
attack, so they are now ``emboldened,'' in the words of former Director
Dan Coats--a former Republican Senator--in continuing efforts to
undermine our political system.
Congress hasn't passed a law--aside from providing election equipment
funding with no strings attached--to address the problem. This isn't
just wrong; this is legislative malpractice. We have a common set of
facts about what happened. Now we need commonsense solutions to make
sure it doesn't happen again.
This week, a number of us are coming to the floor to urge the
Republican leader to bring election security legislation to a vote.
That must happen, but much more must happen as well.
Today, I am going to focus on the need to improve transparency and
accountability for online platforms like Facebook and Twitter, but
before I turn to that, I would like to take a moment to describe why it
is imperative that we update our election infrastructure.
Right now, the majority of States rely on electronic voting systems
that are at least 10 years old. In 2020, voters in eight States will
cast their ballots on machines with no paper trail, so there will be no
reliable record to go back and audit the election results. So if
something goes wrong, if they hack in, there will be no paper ballots
to back up what actually happened. Problems for that State or that
county? Yes. Well, how about problems for our national Presidential
election?
By the way, am I telling any secrets? No. Russia knows exactly which
States and counties don't have backup paper ballots.
Sixteen States have no statewide audit requirement to confirm the
results of the election. These statistics are alarming because experts
agree that paper ballots and audits are the baseline of what we need to
secure our election system.
FBI Director Wray recently testified in the Senate. I asked him
whether he thinks having things like paper ballots makes sense in the
event that Russia--or any other foreign country, for that matter--
decides to go at us again. He said, yes, that would be a good thing.
Maybe we should think of listening to the head of the FBI and figure
out what we can do to make this better. Even the President has
expressed his support for paper ballots. But I think we need more than
words; I think we need action. We need this body to say to those
States: It is time to get your act together now and get those backup
paper ballots.
I have introduced multiple pieces of legislation--some of them
bipartisan--that would secure our election by requiring paper ballots,
mandating postelection audits, and modernizing our election
infrastructure. One of those bills, the Secure Election Act, is
cosponsored by my colleague Senator Lankford and also by the head of
the Intelligence Committee, Senator Burr, and Senator Warner, the
ranking member, as well as Senator Graham, the chair of the Judiciary
Committee, and Senator Harris is also a cosponsor. In spite of all of
these leaders being on this bill, it was blocked last year by Senator
McConnell, who made calls, along with the White House general counsel,
to Republican Senators asking them not to support the bill. This is
wrong.
I am glad that my colleagues Senators Wyden and Durbin will be coming
to the floor this week urging the Senate to take up the bills, such as
the bills I introduced, the SAFE Act and the Election Security Act,
that would modernize our election infrastructure.
Remember, Russia didn't just try to hack into our elections system;
they also launched an extended and sophisticated information war
designed to divide our country and destroy America's confidence in our
political system. Russia also knew that our social media platforms
would be easily exploited for that purpose.
I am going to ask unanimous consent to pass this bill, which is a
bipartisan bill that I lead along with Senator Graham, the Republican
chair of the Judiciary Committee, and that is also cosponsored by
Senator Warner, the ranking leader on the Intelligence Committee.
Why are we doing this bill about the social media platforms? Well,
the place where Russia was most successful in undermining our democracy
was right there in front of you on your Facebook page. We know that
some of the brightest minds in our country built remarkable platforms
where people can share information, like Twitter, Google, and Facebook.
Unfortunately, these platforms failed to build adequate protections
against the bad guys, kind of like building a bank but not putting any
locks on the doors, and our democracy is worse because of it.
Our social media platforms are not well regulated. In fact, they are
hardly regulated at all and are ripe for exploitation. Countries like
Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China are taking advantage of that as we
speak.
The Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Chairman Burr and Vice
Chairman Warner, recently released its second report on Russian
interference in the 2016 election. This wasn't a partisan report. No
one could call it that at all.
The first report details attacks and threats to election
infrastructure. This second report details the sophisticated
disinformation campaign Russia used to pit Americans against each
other, and the committee found that Russia's targeting of the 2016 U.S.
Presidential election was ``part of a broader, sophisticated, and
ongoing information warfare campaign designed to sow discord in
American politics and society.'' The report notes that Russia conducted
``a vastly more complex and strategic assault on the United States than
was initially understood.''
What did they do? They hired trolls. They hired buildings full of
people to go online and pretend to be Americans and then submit things
and buy things and buy ads that ended up on your Facebook pages and
your Twitter feed. Russia specifically focused on hot-button issues and
used falsified stories and memes to foster distrust of our democratic
institutions. So maybe they would target a conservative person and put
up a bunch of things that would make that person mad, but they were
fake or maybe they would target a liberal person, and they would put up
a bunch of ads about rallies and about things like that which were
actually fake.
They targeted African-Americans more than any other group through
individual posts, location targeting, Facebook pages, Instagram
accounts, and Twitter. Their internet research agency focused on
stoking divisions around race.
One of my best examples is an ad that they bought in rubles. Facebook
let them buy it in rubles. It was an ad that we didn't even see until
months after the election. It had an innocent woman's face on it. I
know because she called our office later when it came out in Judiciary.
She was just a woman. They found her face--an African-American woman--
and put it on the ad. The ad reads: Why wait in line on election day?
You can text your vote for Hillary Clinton. They gave the text number.
That is a lie. It is more than a lie. It is a crime. They are trying to
suppress people's votes and make them not go vote, and instead, text to
a fake number. That is a crime. People have gone to jail for simply
jamming the lines on election day. That is what this is. It is a high-
tech version of a crime. No one was prosecuted because we didn't even
know the ad existed that was targeting African-American Facebook pages
in
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swing States until way after the election. They could do the same thing
on the conservative side of the aisle.
That is why I am simply asking for some solution, because one time it
is going to be one side, and the next time it will be the other. Why
would the people in this Chamber let this go on? Why would we do that?
We have sworn and taken an oath--an obligation--to stand up for our
country. That is what this is about.
It continues. Intelligence officials are once again sounding the
alarm that adversaries are using social media to undermine the upcoming
elections. Just yesterday, Facebook announced that it removed a network
of Russian-backed accounts posing as locals weighing in on political
issues in swing States. It never ends. Russia has a playbook, and they
are using it to attack us. We have to stop them. How do we do that?
Well, I have a very good solution. It is not the only solution. There
are a lot of other bills we can do too.
But this is called the Honest Ads Act, which I am leading with
Senator Graham. I want to thank Senator Warner for all the work he did
on this bill as well. The goal is simple: Bring our laws into the 21st
century to ensure that voters know who is paying to influence our
political system. Right now, the political ads that are sold on TV,
radio, and newspapers are disclosed so that the public knows what they
are. They are actually kept in an archive so campaigns and reporters
can go over and see what they are. They can actually figure out what
this ad is and why somebody was putting this ad against me. I believe
in the competitiveness of our election system, and if you disclose
things, then, you are going to get more information about what is wrong
with those things.
The ads also have to say who paid for them. That is why you see those
little disclaimers at the bottom or you see elected officials or their
challengers saying who paid for this ad: My name is this; I paid for
this ad. That is what that is.
Guess what. If those things go on radio, TV, or newspaper, you have
to follow all those rules. If they end up on Facebook or Twitter or
another large social media platform, there are no rules in play. Sure,
a few of those companies right now are voluntarily disclosing it, but
there are no actual rules in place about how it should be done.
When I asked them why they wouldn't favor the bill, some of them have
since changed their minds and do favor it, but when I asked at the
beginning, they said they couldn't figure out what an issue of Federal
legislative importance is. That is what the standard is. It is about
candidate ads and the issue ads that you see on TV that bug you all the
time. When asked about ads and why they couldn't do it, they said they
couldn't figure out what that was. I said: Really? My radio station in
Deep River Falls, MN, can figure it out. These are some of the biggest
companies in the world. Please tell me you don't have the expertise to
figure that out.
That is why it is important that we pass this bill. It is about issue
ads, and it is also about candidate ads. All it does is this. As we
look at where the money is going to go in advertising, in the last 2016
Presidential election, $1.4 billion was spent online on these kinds of
ads. It is supposed to go to $3 billion or $4 billion in 2020, and
there are no rules of the road. It is not only unfair, but it is
criminal if this continues.
It is so easy to do. This is something we could fix right away. This
is why John McCain led this bill with me. When we introduced it, he
said:
I have long fought to increase transparency and end the
corrupting influence of special interests in political
campaigns, and I am confident the Honest Ads Act will
modernize existing law to safeguard the integrity of our
election system.
This Congress, as I mentioned, Senator Graham took his place. It is
time to get this done. There are many other bills that I will come back
and discuss in the next few weeks that would help on foreign influence
in our elections, but, today, I want to focus on this one because
election security is national security, and it is well past time that
we take action. The American people should expect nothing less from us.
We should be able to get this done.