What Will It Take for Congress to Protect America’s Elections?

Testifying before Congress this week about his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections, Robert Mueller, the former special counsel, seemed eager — desperate, even — to drive home one message: foreign adversaries are intent on undermining American democracy, and the United States is still vulnerable to them.

Even as Mr. Mueller declined to elaborate on most of his findings, he was unequivocal in warning that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential race, that it aims to do so again — “They’re doing it as we sit here,” he said — and that “many more countries” are developing similar capabilities. Declaring foreign interference “among the most serious” challenges to American democracy, he urged those with “responsibility in this area” to act “swiftly.”

Mr. Mueller is right to be worried. While progress has been made in safeguarding the nation’s electoral system, partisan bickering has impeded Congress from enacting a range of important reforms, from improving coordination between state and federal authorities to upgrading election infrastructure to closing loopholes in campaign finance laws. As is often the case, the legislative bottleneck is in the Republican-controlled Senate, but both parties have done their part to politicize the issue.

Last year, Congress distributed $380 million to help states with election-security upgrades such as strengthening cybersecurity, updating voting equipment and improving postelection audits. This was a critical step. But, as the Brennan Center for Justice noted in March, it “only scratches the surface.” For instance, of the 121 election officials in 31 states who reported the need to replace aging equipment before the 2020 election, two-thirds said they lacked the funding to do so.

It’s tempting to blame the lack of progress on President Trump, in whose mind the topic of election security has become tangled with questions about the legitimacy of his 2016 win. White House aides have learned to avoid this sore subject with the president, rendering his administration unwilling and unable to prioritize it. In some cases, members of Mr. Trump’s team have sought to derail reform legislation, and many Republican lawmakers are loath to venture into such unstable territory.

But causes of this stalemate stretch far beyond the president’s fragile ego. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, has long opposed federal involvement in election management. During the debate over the Help America Vote Act of 2002, a reform package sprung from the vote-counting failures of the 2000 presidential race, Mr. McConnell repeatedly spoke out against a one-size-fits-all approach in favor of leaving election matters up to the states.

Mr. McConnell also may be the Senate’s fiercest crusader against regulating the flow of campaign cash. It is thus unsurprising that he has not embraced proposals such as the bipartisan Honest Ads Act, which would require funding transparency for online political ads, nor the Disclose Act, a version of which has been introduced in every Congress since 2010, aimed at exposing the “dark money” flooding groups like labor unions, trade associations and super PACs.

Even absent a president who considers election security a personal affront, Mr. McConnell most likely would be stonewalling, accusing Democrats, as he did recently, of trying to “nationalize everything” and wanting “the federal government to take over broad swaths of the election process because they think that would somehow benefit them.” As things stand, he is happy to exploit tensions, spinning the calls for reform as an example of how the president “gets picked at every day” by Democrats. “They’re trying to keep the 2016 election alive,” he contended last month. “They just can’t let it go.”

He may have a point. Mr. McConnell is not the only lawmaker playing politics. Democrats have aggressively pushed multiple bills that would require campaigns to notify federal authorities of any offers of foreign assistance. This might be a useful tightening of election law, but it is also a rebuke of President Trump, whose campaign team failed to report overtures by the Russians in 2016 and who recently expressed an openness to future offers.

Such a measure has no chance of passing the Senate and serves only to harden partisan divisions. In June, Senate Democrats attempted to push through a bill to this effect using a unanimous consent request. This Wednesday, in the aftermath of Mr. Mueller’s testimony, they tried again with not one but two bills.

Democrats are understandably frustrated by the foot-dragging of the White House, Mr. McConnell and other reform opponents. But for reform to make any further progress in Congress before the 2020 election, both sides must focus on minimizing, not stoking, the tension between them. Abusing the cause of election security to score political points is no way to safeguard the nation.

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