[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 181 (Thursday, October 22, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6383-S6384]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           Election Security

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, yesterday evening the Directors of 
National Intelligence and the FBI updated the public on foreign efforts 
to influence our election and our government's work to prevent them. 
They announced that Iran and Russia exploited voter information to send 
misleading emails. This is just another reminder that multiple 
different adversaries with multiple different objectives want to fuel 
divisions among Americans and create chaos. Iran, China, Russia, and 
other adversaries may have different goals, but they all share the same 
primary objective of undermining America's confidence in our democracy, 
and they are thrilled when their disinformation causes us to point 
fingers at each other rather than at them.
  The good news is that we have spent the last 4 years gearing up for 
this. Unlike the Obama-Biden administration, on whose watch even 
Democrats admit we were caught flatfooted, the Trump administration has 
worked overtime with Congress and other actors to get us ready.

[[Page S6384]]

  The White House has imposed harsh new sanctions on Russians who 
interfered in 2016. The Department of Justice, Department of Homeland 
Security, and the intelligence community have led efforts to strengthen 
and coordinate our defenses. Here in the Senate, the Intelligence 
Committee spent years studying what went wrong in 2016 and published a 
1,300-plus-page report with recommendations.
  In the last 2 years alone, we passed more than $800 million to fund 
and support secure elections. The Iranian and Russian operations 
described last night are being combatted by the Federal Government in 
close coordination with State and local officials and the private 
sector. Details are being shared with Congress and the public, as 
appropriate.
  This is precisely how the process should work. We are literally miles 
ahead of where we were.
  Even the Washington Democrats who spent years talking up the threats 
to our election infrastructure are now admitting that we have made huge 
strides. Just a few days ago, the junior Senator for Connecticut 
admitted: ``We are going to have a free and fair election . . . because 
we have spent significant money from the Federal Government, and 
through States, to beef up protections of our voter lists and our 
voting systems.''
  It is a separate question whether Democrats' ability to express basic 
patriotic confidence in our institutions should be so contingent on 
whether their preferred candidate seems to be up in the polls. But, 
regardless, that is the truth.
  I will close with one point I keep making. The work of protecting our 
democracy is not just the job of experts and government buildings. This 
is also a duty that falls upon every one of us, every single citizen. 
At this point, it is a patriotic duty for Americans to be educated 
consumers of information.
  Citizens who need information about voting should look to their local 
official sources, and all of us on all sides should take a deep breath 
and realize division, disinformation, and chaos are exactly what our 
adversaries want. We are all in this together. All of us Americans are 
in this together