US designates election infrastructure as 'critical'

Associated Press ^ | January 6th, 2017 | By TAMI ABDOLLAH

[Mariner]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Citing increasingly sophisticated cyber bad actors and an election infrastructure that's "vital to our national interests," Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced Friday that he's designating U.S. election systems critical infrastructure, a move that provides more federal help for state and local governments to keep their election systems safe from tampering.

"Given the vital role elections play in this country, it is clear that certain systems and assets of election infrastructure meet the definition of critical infrastructure, in fact and in law," Johnson said in a statement. He added: "Particularly in these times, this designation is simply the right and obvious thing to do."

The determination came after months of review and despite opposition from many states worried that the designation would lead to increased federal regulation or oversight on the many decentralized and locally run voting systems across the country. It was announced on the same day a declassified U.S. intelligence report said Russian President Vladimir Putin "ordered" an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election.

[Ragnar54]

Actually, another way that this makes sense is to block an investigation of the election (e.g., by DHS seizing and destroying voting and registration records in certain states). Congress should be curious about how (not if) massive numbers of illegals voted, especially in California: the 500,000 online registrations in the last 48 hours (more than 10,000 per hour) might have been bumping the computational limit of the state’s computers. It would not be surprising to find that large numbers of registrations originated from a few IP addresses.

[tbw2]

Imagine if he’d thought to do this in 2014.

[tbw2]

Or kicking out Chinese diplomats.

[AllAmericanGirl44]

bkmk