Senator and presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) took to the Senate floor to call for passage of the Honest Ads Act as well as election security generally.
Her bill would mandate disclosures on online political ads similar to those for broadcast and MVPD ads and newspapers.
Intelligence officials are once again sounding the alarm that adversaries are using social media to undermine the upcoming elections," she told her colleagues in her floor speech. "Just yesterday, Facebook announced that it removed a network of Russian back accounts posing as locals weighing in on political issues in swing states. It never ends. Russia has a playbook that they and they are using it to attack us.
“We have to stop them. So how do we do this? Well, I have a very good solution. The Honest Ads Act, my bill with Senators Graham and Warner. The goal is simple, bring our laws into the 21st century to ensure that voters know who is paying to influence our political system.”
Last week, Klobuchar called on Republican chairman of the Senate Rules Committee Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) to schedule an "immediate" markup of the bill.
Klobuchar's call for action came in the wake of a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report released two weeks ago that concluded Russians used social media posts and ads to try and get Donald Trump elected in 2016 and would be trying to meddle in the 2020 election as well, where Klobuchar hopes to be running against the President.
