Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) expressed potential concerns over future Russian interference in U.S. elections during an interview that aired Friday on “Rising.”
“Well, so far, so good. There [are] not any obvious examples yet,” Warner told Hill.TV’s Alison Spann when asked if he believed if there was any Russian interference in Tuesday’s midterms.
“I have two worries. One worry is with so many races that are so close still, could you have Russian or other intervention that starts questioning the results? Remember the Russians don’t have to necessarily change the results, they just have to try to, frankly, get Americans to trust our process less,” he continued. “So far, we have not seen that, but let’s keep our fingers crossed.”
“The second is that I’ve been very disappointed that we’ve not passed the bipartisan election security legislation that Sen. [James] Lankford [(R)] from Oklahoma put together that would have required that every state have, in a sense, a paper ballot audit trail so that if a machine was broken into, you could go back and check your results,” he said.
“I think that bill would have gotten 90 votes in the Senate, but the White House didn’t want it to come to the floor before the elections. I found that very disturbing, and my hope is while that election security bill obviously won’t be in place before 2018, I sure as heck hope and pray it’ll be in place before 2020,” he said.
Warner is the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and has been a central figure in the committee’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
His comments come as various midterm races remain undecided or headed toward recounts days after Tuesday’s races.
The Senate and gubernatorial races in Florida are tightening, heightening the chances for recounts, and late Thursday, Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D) took the lead in Arizona’s too-close-to-call Senate over Rep. Martha McSally (R).
In Florida, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and his challenger, Gov. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), were within 0.22 percentage points of one another on Thursday, while former Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) and Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum (D) were within 0.47 points of one another.
— Julia Manchester
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