President Donald Trump said Tuesday his administration is vigilantly preparing to protect the 2018 and 2020 elections from foreign interference.
At a press conference with Swedish Prime Minister Kjell Stefan Löfven, Trump took a question about what both countries could do to ensure election integrity in 2018. Trump said Russian interference "had no impact" on votes in 2016 but that they did meddle in the election.
"The Russians had no impact on our votes whatsoever, but certainly there was meddling and probably there was meddling from other countries and maybe other individuals, and I think you have to be really watching very closely," Trump said.
"You don't want your system of votes to be compromised in any way," Trump said. "And we won't allow that to happen. We're doing a very deep study and coming up with some very strong suggestions on the '18 election."
The questioner later asked whether Trump is worried about Russian influence in the 2018 election.
"No, because we'll counteract whatever they do," Trump answered. "We'll counteract it very strongly, and we are having strong backup systems, and we’ve been working actually—we haven't been given credit for this, but we've actually been working very hard on the '18 election and the '20 election coming up."
He also noted that paper ballots are a way of dealing with potential hacking from overseas.
"You have to be very vigilant. One of the things we’re learning is that it’s always good, it’s old-fashioned, but it’s always good to have a paper backup system," he said. "Not highly complex computers. Paper. A lot of states are doing that, they’re going to a paper backup. and I think that's a great idea."
"We're studying it very closely," he added. "Various agencies, including Homeland Security, are studying it very carefully."