Sens. Mark Warner (left) and Richard Burr have long eyed next week's first congressional primary as their ideal date to release election protection recommendations. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Senate intelligence panel may miss target for election security recommendations

The Senate Intelligence Committee may miss its target for making election security recommendations to states facing potential Russian disruption during the midterms — but its GOP chairman is eyeing a contingency plan.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and the panel's Democratic vice chairman, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, have long eyed next Monday — the day before the year's first congressional primary — as their ideal date to release election-protection recommendations. The intelligence committee's counsel to states would amount to the first formal fruits of their yearlong bipartisan investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.


Burr told POLITICO on Monday that he remains "hopeful" of getting the election security recommendations out before Texas holds its March 6 primary. But he acknowledged that despite the progress made at a staff level, "it's reasonable to believe that we can't have it declassified" in time for a wide release.

Even so, Burr added, "that's not to say that we can't take from a classified document and write a comprehensive overview that we can share with states."

"[If] I don't believe we're going to make it — and it's tough to believe that we can make it for Texas right now — then we may verbally call the states and share with their election folks what we might make as recommendations," Burr said, with the caveat that he has yet to discuss that approach with Warner.

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The committee will then have a bit more breathing room, Burr suggested, given that Illinois holds its primary two weeks after Texas. Following that, he said, "there's not another one until May."

Congressional Democrats are pushing for more than $300 million in March's forthcoming government funding bill that would be targeted to safeguarding the midterm elections against Russian interference.

But Burr shrugged at that request, saying that "no state’s screaming for money." Extra funding wouldn't necessarily combat the misuse of social media and other risks the committee's inquiry has identified, he said, and one of the committee's suggestions may end up being that states "have a paper backup" for electronic voting.

States should expect "a broad recommendation to them as to vulnerabilities that we think exist, based upon everything we saw tried," Burr said.