evidence: The Senate will not vote on any legislation to protect US elections from foreign interference, a Republican committee chair said, despite the consensus of the intelligence community that Russia will once again seek to hack election systems and manipulate American voters in 2020. [...] Blunt also acknowledged that it was McConnell who stopped the Rules Committee last year from advancing the Secure Elections Act, a bipartisan bill to protect elections from interference. The committee was poised to mark up that bill last August when the hearing was mysteriously canceled the same morning that it was set to begin. The decision by Republicans not to consider election security bills is frustrating to Democrats who have been cranking out bills to stop foreign interference and increase security ahead of the 2020 elections. In addition to the Secure Elections Act, the Rules Committee has failed to take up the Protecting the Right to Independent and Democratic Elections (PRIDE) Act, the Protecting American Votes and Elections (PAVE) Act, and the bipartisan Honest Ads Act, which would give online political ads the same disclosure requirements as political ads on television and other media. All three bills were introduced last year and reintroduced this year after no action was taken in the previous Congress.