With their quaint faith that throwing money at a problem shows you care, Democrats got $425 million into the new budget deal to bolster local “election security.” As usual, it’s the wrong answer.

For starters, no one can point to a successful hacking of any voting system in America. Second, the main idea for security amounts to a vast switch to paper ballots — a direct reversal of the last big national “election security” drive after the 2000 presidential vote mired down in Florida’s butterfly ballots and chads.

And grants to local governments to create “foolproof” systems is about as foolhardy a project as you could imagine. No amount of cash alone, for example, will ever inflict competence on New York City’s Board of Elections — and the same is true of similar officials in much of America. These are patronage jobs, or positions won in the most idiosyncratic of local elections.

Perhaps some federal drive could change that, despite all manner of constitutional difficulties. But it’d take far more than the $1 billion Democrats actually wanted to throw at it this year, and far longer.

Better to focus on measures to detect suspicious activity or anomalous results — and, especially, clear procedures for resolving claims of interference as well as how to proceed if (say) the results from all of Ohio have to be thrown out as hopelessly tainted.

For a bonus, Congress might declare that foreign hacking of federal-election voting will be treated as an act of war. Sometimes, deterrence is the best defense.