As the mid-term election approaches, Oregon’s U.S. Senator Ron Wyden is talking up his proposed legislation to require a paper ballot for every election in the U.S.
It’s called the Protecting American Votes and Elections or the PAVE Act of 2018. Wyden, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, says his bill goes to the heart of what independent cyber-security experts say must be done to protect the voting process.
“It’s not just the Russians, you’ve got a lot of dangerous foreign hackers that are just sort of tapping on the doors,” Wyden says. “They are sort of like burglars –looking for an opening. What they want to do is infiltrate our democracy.”
Wyden says legislators from Washington, Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois are on board. He hopes to see more bi-partisan support after the November election. The democratic senator says a next step would be for other states to adopt a vote by mail system, similar to Oregon’s.