One of the leading voices in Democrats’ efforts to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election is coming to the University of Pennsylvania Monday with a warning. U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, a Californian who serves as the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, says the threat of foreign interference is being dangerously downplayed by President Trump, and fears that many states are not ready to combat potential hacking during the 2018 elections. Much of Pennsylvania, he said, could be vulnerable because of a lack of a paper trail for its voting machines, leaving no physical record of votes cast. The state was among 21 that Russian hackers targeted during the 2016 campaign.
“After what we saw in the last election, it’s malpractice for any Secretary of State to not have a paper trail,” Schiff said in a telephone interview ahead of his scheduled speech Monday afternoon at Penn’s Perry World House, an international affairs research center. “Some states are better prepared than others, but the country as a whole I think (is) dramatically unprepared.”
He blamed that on Trump, who has largely dismissed the reports of 2016 election interference.
“We have a president who should be leading that national conversation who is calling it all a hoax,” said Schiff, who has taken on a national role as a Democratic voice pushing to dig into the meddling, and fighting attempts to dismiss the investigation.
Full Article: Key House Dem: U.S. ‘dramatically unprepared’ for potential 2018 election hacking.