Mitch McConnell is a victim of a “modern-day McCarthyism,” he claimed on Monday, after people on Twitter called him “Moscow Mitch” simply because he has spent a week blocking legislation intended to protect American elections from foreign interference. The Senate majority leader spent 30 minutes complaining on the Senate floor about the unfairness of it all, though it’s hard to judge the sincerity of his umbrage; he’s been called far worse, for doing far worse. But if McConnell really is hurt by Dana Milbank calling him a “Russian asset,” it does seem like one simple way to make Milbank stop would be to pass legislation designed to secure our elections.

The entire suite of Democratic proposals to improve election security are of course a nonstarter in a Republican-run government, and not just because Republicans have chosen to strategically believe or disbelieve in Russian election interference depending on the president’s moods and ever-shifting statements. Many of the Democratic proposals involve barring candidates and people associated with campaigns and political committees from receiving contributions, monetary and otherwise, from foreign nationals, and Republicans principally oppose most attempts to interfere in any form of influence-peddling. Some of them basically conceded as much, whispering on background to The New York Times that McConnell, as reporter Carl Hulse wrote, “is leery of even entering into legislative negotiation that could touch on fund-raising and campaign spending.”

I wouldn’t lose too much sleep over these proposals being blocked, as I imagine they’d be enforced with as much vigor as the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which is to say not really enforced at all. But it is notable that the most potentially helpful reform proposal the Democrats put forth, which has very little to do with the specter of “foreign interference,” was blocked along with all the rest. The main feature of the Securing America’s Federal Elections (SAFE) Act is a requirement that all federal elections use paper ballots.

Paper ballot requirements are one of those issues various Republicans and conservatives, even quite extreme ones, occasionally voice support for in order to sound Reasonable. Mark Meadows of the House Freedom Caucus introduced a bill requiring paper ballot receipts last year, which anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist and former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff approvingly mentioned in a Washington Post op-ed. The op-ed also mentioned another Senate bill requiring paper ballots, introduced by Democrats and Republicans (including Trump ally Lindsey Graham) in 2017 and 2018.



So far, McConnell and his allies have explained their opposition to the Democrats’ SAFE Act mainly by sidestepping the content of the legislation entirely. McConnell’s central opposition is that the bill is “partisan,” which is to say that Democrats want to pass it, which means, by definition, that McConnell cannot allow it to pass. (Or even be voted on: It might then attract some Republican support, which would make the bill less partisan, removing the basis of his opposition.)