Under GOP Pressure, Congress Shortchanges Election Security

After long negotiations, Democrats agree on a figure that experts say is well over a billion dollars short.

Renee Jones Schneider/TNS via ZUMA Wire

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Congress will give states an additional $425 million in election security funding as part of the budget deal reached last week, adding a much needed, but still insufficient, boost to ballot security across the country.

The funds will be disbursed through the Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency tasked with coordinating state and federal election administration. 

The $425 million is less than the $600 million House Democrats approved in June, but nearly $200 million more than the Senate Republicans’ offer, following the lead of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). McConnell, the senate majority leader, has steadfastly resisted expanding federal election security funding to aid cash-strapped states and local jurisdictions—even in his home state. After months of being accused of doing very little to stop foreign interference in elections, he relented in September, agreeing to a $250 million allocation.

The funding comes as part of an overall federal spending agreement that had been held up due to President Donald Trump’s push for money to build a border wall. Budget negotiators reportedly reached the deal last week, according to the Washington Post, which added that the House and Senate are expected to approve the deal this week. Trump will likely approve the deal, the Post reported, because it allows for some funding for his wall project.

In late November, as budget negotiations continued to drag out, a group of 38 senators wrote a letter to the leaders of the House and Senate appropriations committees urging the additional funding, along with an increased budget for the EAC. The budget deal announced Monday would increase EAC funding by $6 million to a total budget of $15.2 million. House Republicans have repeatedly tried to eliminate the agency, arguing that it is unnecessary and infringes on states’ control over elections; between 2010 and 2018 they cut its budget in half.

The $805 million is still well short of the estimated $2.2 billion needed to shore up election systems in the 10,000 voting jurisdictions around the country, many of which rely on dated or unsecure equipment. The experience of states that have worked to improve election security in the wake of the 2016 elections shows how expensive upgrading equipment can—just five states’ estimated investments totals more than $520 million:

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate