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State Election Systems to Get More Federal Aid for Security
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of ABC News/Associated Press
Posted: January 16th, 2017
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/state-election-syst...
Citing increasingly sophisticated cyber bad actors and an election infrastructure that's "vital to our national interests," Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson is designating U.S. election systems critical infrastructure. 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. A 2013 presidential directive identified 16 sectors as critical infrastructures, including energy, financial services, health care, transportation, food and agriculture and communications. Discussions about whether to designate elections systems as critical infrastructure surfaced after hackers targeted the voter registration systems of more than 20 states in the months prior to the November election. While the designation puts responsibilities on the Department of Homeland Security, it does not require entities that are determined "critical infrastructure" to participate. Much of the nation's critical infrastructure is in the private sector. The designation allows for information to be withheld from the public when state, local and private partners meet to discuss election infrastructure security - potentially injecting secrecy into an election process that's traditionally and expressly a transparent process.
Note: It doesn't take much to read between the lines on this one and see this claim that elections are vital to the national interest as the first step in the DHS taking power away from the states and getting directly involved in US elections. Pay close attention to this one. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing elections corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.