Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) stressed the need to pass the Secure Elections Act. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Klobuchar 'very concerned' midterms could be hacked

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said Sunday she is worried that upcoming midterm elections could come under digital assault.

"I’m very concerned that you could have a hack that finally went through," Klobuchar said on NBC's "Meet the Press."


"I think you also have the fact that you've got the president undermining this on national TV still after his security people ... go in front of the world and they say this is happening, he says that night at a rally in Pennsylvania that it's a hoax. So that concerns me," she added.

Klobuchar said Trump‘s comments — made Thursday in Pennsylvania and echoed at a rally Saturday in Ohio — also undercut the country's national security because “you’ve got these people that are our security people, our intelligence people, when he stood next to [Russian President] Vladimir Putin in front of the world and really sided with him over the intelligence people, it sent that same message to the world."

Klobuchar, the top Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, stressed the need to pass the Secure Elections Act. She is the chief Democratic co-sponsor of the measure, which is designed to boost coordination among federal and state agencies when it comes to sharing information about potential threats to election systems.

The legislation is due to be marked up in the Rules Committee later this month.

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the Rules chairman, stressed that Congress and election officials at all levels must work together "to be sure that whatever happens on Election Day, there is confidence that that’s what really happened."

"I think we are at that point," he added.

Blunt, a former Missouri secretary of state, said the federal government could be "more specific" about how states should spend money on election security and defended his recent vote against an amendment to a spending package that would have provided $250 million more for such efforts.

"I don't want this to become an annual entitlement," said Blunt, adding that $380 million that was approved earlier this year is "barely out the door."

Klobuchar said she would "love to see" concerns about threats to election security "broadened out so we start to discuss also the threats to our power grid system, the threats to our financial system, because the Russians aren't just stopping at the election equipment."

