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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is defending himself against criticism by Democrats and pundits in the wake of his blockade of election security legislation.
McConnell called the criticisms a form of “modern-day McCarthyism” after MSNBC host Joe Scarborough dubbed him “Moscow Mitch” for blocking not one, but two bills aimed at beefing up election security ahead of the 2020 race.
The Hill reported the first of the two bills, a House measure, passed 225-184 with one Republican voting in favor of it. That bill would require the use of paper ballots and included funding for the Election Assistance Commission, a non-partisan federal agency created in 2002 partly as a response to the controversy surrounding the 2000 election and to “assist in the administration of federal elections.”
McConnell blocked that bill by reasoning that a bill that passed along such partisan lines could not “travel through the Senate by unanimous consent.”
The second bill, a Senate measure introduced by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., would require candidates, campaign officials and their family members to notify the FBI of assistance offers from foreign governments.
McConnell objected to that too.
Blumenthal requested consent to pass the second piece of legislation, under which, as the Hill explains, any one Senator can block the request just as any one Senator can make it.
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