DHS Responds to Media's Sensationalism on Russian Election Interference

Last week, NBC News ran a "news" story that was picked up by other outlets about how the Russians had penetrated U.S. voter systems.  The only problem?  This "news" was released last summer, when National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD) Assistant Secretary for the Office of Cybersecurity and Communications Jeanette Manfra testified before Congress about attempts to access state voter registration systems.  Today, Ms. Manfra issued an official statement rebuking NBC News' misleading reporting:

“Recent NBC reporting has misrepresented facts and confused the public with regard to Department of Homeland Security and state and local government efforts to combat election hacking. First off, let me be clear: we have no evidence – old or new - that any votes in the 2016 elections were manipulated by Russian hackers. NBC News continues to falsely report my recent comments on attempted election hacking – which clearly mirror my testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee last summer – as some kind of “breaking news,” incorrectly claiming a shift in the administration’s position on cyber threats. As I said eight months ago, a number of states were the target of Russian government cyber actors seeking vulnerabilities and access to U.S. election infrastructure. In the majority of cases, only preparatory activity like scanning was observed, while in a small number of cases, actors were able to access the system but we have no evidence votes were changed or otherwise impacted. 

"NBC’s irresponsible reporting, which is being roundly criticized elsewhere in the media and by security experts alike, undermines the ability of the Department of Homeland Security, our partners at the Election Assistance Commission, and state and local officials across the nation to do our incredibly important jobs. While we’ll continue our part to educate NBC and others on the threat, more importantly, the Department of Homeland Security and our state and local partners will continue our mission to secure the nation’s election systems. 

"To our state and local partners in the election community: there’s no question we’re making real and meaningful progress together. States will do their part in how they responsibly manage and implement secure voting processes. For our part, we’re going to continue to support with risk and vulnerability assessments, offer cyber hygiene scans, provide real-time threat intel feeds, issue security clearances to state officials, partner on incident response planning, and deliver cybersecurity training. The list goes on of how we’re leaning forward and helping our partners in the election community. We will not stop, and will stand by our partners to protect our nation’s election infrastructure and ensure that all Americans can have confidence in our democratic elections.”

Similarly, DHS spokesman Tyler Houlton tweeted:

The repeated inaccurate reporting by @NBCNews that government officials stand idly by is a disservice to every state and local election official across this great nation.

The National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) and National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) both issued statements correcting the facts of the "Russian hacking" narrative.

The facts are worth repeating here, given that the media wishes to newly sensationalize this story, perhaps fearing that the "Russians stole the election" narrative is collapsing.  1. There is no evidence that any votes were changed or even that any vote tallying systems were accessed.  2. There were scans or attempted hacks of 21 state systems, some of which were not even voter registration systems but other state systems like Department of Transportation systems.  3. Only one state voter registration system was accessed, that of Illinois, and no records were changed.  

As all these people and organizations point out, there are real cybersecurity concerns facing election officials across the country, and election officials are working hard to secure their systems against the latest threats.  The media is quick to sensationalize the issue, such as when DEF CON's efforts to hack electronic voting machines was major news last year, in the interest of clicks and page views, but America is ill-served by the "Russian hacking" narrative.  It feeds liberals' anti-speech agenda, undermines confidence in our election system (which, despite the threats, is remarkably secure), and ignores the hard work that election officials are doing to ensure that our elections are secure.

Conservatives Respond to End of Election Integrity Commission

On Wednesday, President Trump ended the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (PACEI), which had been plagued by lawsuits from liberal organizations and even one of the Commission's own Democratic members.  Liberals are touting their victory in "resisting" an initiative started by President Trump, but conservatives have also responded.

RNLA Executive Director Michael Thielen wrote today in The Hill:

Why is this hatred so strong? Besides that it is the liberal election administration community’s way of participating in the Trump “resist” movement, they feared the PACEI because the last two presidential election commissions have recommended corrective measures that go against the liberal agenda. . . . Contrary to the liberal’s narrative, the PACEI disbanding does not prove there is no vote fraud; rather, it proves liberals fear looking into this issue because things such as illegal non-citizen votes favor the Democratic Party in elections. . . . 

In the end, liberals won this battle to prevent any inquiry into fraudulent votes and messy elections, but may lose the war. When the President disbanded the PACEI, he also “asked the Department of Homeland Security to review these issues.” . . . If DHS reviews the issues that the PACEI was tasked with studying, it could use the SAVE database to help states fix their voter registration lists and find non-citizens registered and voting much more efficiently than an advisory commission ever could, as election officials have been clamoring for for years. . . .

So Democrats have “resisted” the bipartisan efforts, in the fine tradition of the last two presidential election commissions, to study and propose solutions to fix our elections. Sadly, the American people are those who lose the most whenever the liberal election world is “successful.” Every illegal vote cancels out the vote of an American citizen, who has lost the right of self-government due to the political agenda of liberal activists. But the left may lose the war, as their victory may hurt their real goals and make it easier to stop non-citizens from registering and voting. 

Former PACEI member Hans von Spakovsky issued the following statement:

While I am disappointed about the dissolution of the Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, I understand President Trump’s action.  The ability of the Commission to research, review, and examine the integrity and security of the American election process was made almost impossible by the unprecedented and unjustified obstruction by many state election officials who defiantly refused to cooperate with the Commission.

The Commission was also hampered by the almost dozen meritless lawsuits that were filed against the Commission by progressive advocacy groups that were solely intended to prevent its work and take up the time of the Commission’s staff with frivolous litigation. 

The American people understand how important it is that we have a secure system in which everyone who is eligible is able to vote and their vote is not diluted or stolen by fraudulent votes or administrative errors and mistakes by election officials.

The obstacles and impediments used to hinder the work of the Commission is evidence that there are many politicians and activists who want to prevent the American people from finding out the truth.

Fellow former PACEI member Christian Adams also issued a statement:

Foes of election integrity lost their seat at the table.  Now the important work of improving the integrity of the election process will be done by people who believe in election integrity, not by those who seek to preserve vulnerabilities in the system. Over the years, demonstrable and empirical data has been developed showing noncitizen voting, double voting, and defects in the election system that no credible observer could deny. Some news outlets and activists have decided to ignore those facts, as if they do not exist.  Unfortunately, there are plenty of well-funded groups, activist academics and individuals who are not credible who sought to undermine and sabotage the Commission’s work.  They may delight today in the dissolution of the Commission, but before long they’ll realize that advocates of election integrity have more stamina, support and perseverance than they realize.

We thank the members of the PACEI for their work and look forward to future efforts to improve the integrity of elections and voters' confidence in election systems and their outcomes. 

Part 1: Top Blog Posts of 2017 - Gorsuch and Fake Election Law News

Today and next Friday, the RNLA will highlight the top blog posts of the Republican Lawyer Blog for 2017.  This is part 1: Top RepLawyer Posts for 2017, numbers 10-6.  Today’s post will focus on Justice Neil Gorsuch and election law.  No reasonable lawyers’ group can look back on 2017 and not celebrate the confirmation of Justice Gorsuch.  On elections, it is unfortunate that Democrats continue to use the race card and fight against those trying to make elections more open, fair, and honest for all.  

10.  April 10: "Congratulations to Justice Gorsuch"  Excerpt:  
RNLA Co-Chair John Ryder agreed: “Judge Gorsuch is a worthy successor to Justice Scalia. I am delighted that President Trump has delivered on his promise to the American people to nominate someone who fits the mold of Justice Scalia. I am equally pleased that the Senate saw fit to honor the will of the people by confirming Judge Gorsuch."

9.  January 13: "EAC Commissioner Questions Extension of DHS' Power to Elections"  Excerpt:  
Election Assistance Commissioner Christy McCormick stated: “This action politicizes elections. There is a reason that the Founding Fathers gave the authority of conducting elections to the States. There is a reason that when Congress set up the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), they made it a bipartisan, independent agency and gave it no regulatory authority.” 

8.  March 27: "ICYMI, Study Showing Voter ID Suppressed Minority Turnout Was ‘Fake News’"  Excerpt:
“Many federal courts have been asked to do the same: Find a causal link between voter ID and intentional decreases in minority turnout,” [Logan Churchwell, spokesman for the Public Interest Legal Foundation] said. “All eventually failed. Despite this, too many in the media are willing to report an initial study as gospel before peer reviewers can weigh in. It should have struck many news editors weeks ago that it took until 2017 to provide proof to a belief that could have been confirmed a decade ago, if true.”

7.  January 5: "Sessions' ‘Racist’ Vote Fraud Prosecution Was to Protect Black Voters' Voting Rights"  Excerpt:
“As Craig Donsanto says, this was a prosecution intended to preserve and protect the right to vote, something to which he dedicated his entire professional career. Anyone who claims this was a racist prosecution by Jeff Sessions is, according to Donsanto, “a liar and a political opportunist of the worst kind.”

6.  April 18: "Justice Gorsuch Asks at First Oral Argument, Why Not Follow ‘Plain Text of the Statute'?"   Excerpt:  
Gorsuch focused his first line of questioning on the wording of the statute, asking the employee’s attorney, Christopher Landau, several questions about where in the law it says district courts have jurisdiction to hear civil service claims.   “Wouldn't it be a lot easier if we just followed the plain text of the statute?” asked Gorsuch.

Look for part 2 next Friday.  Happy Holidays!

Liberals' Russia Narrative Crumbles as They Rush to Regulate Online Speech

The narrative of Russian interference with the 2016 election that has been one of liberals' favorite tools to attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the Trump Presidency continues to crumble.  

Last week, we noted how the Department of Homeland Security had finally notified 21 states where they had evidence of Russian activity regarding their election systems.  Except now California and Wisconsin have been told that this was not actually true, and the election hacking narrative, which started with the Obama DHS, may collapse even further.

Now, Facebook has delivered ads purchased by Russians to Congress and issued some FAQs about them, including these revealing facts (emphasis added):

• An estimated 10 million people in the US saw the ads. We were able to approximate the number of unique people (“reach”) who saw at least one of these ads, with our best modeling [RNLA note: The number of registered voters during the 2016 election was over 157 million and the total citizens of voting age was over 224 million.] 

• 44% of total ad impressions (number of times ads were displayed) were before the US election on November 8, 2016; 56% were after the election. 

• Roughly 25% of the ads were never shown to anyone. That’s because advertising auctions are designed so that ads reach people based on relevance, and certain ads may not reach anyone as a result. 

• For 50% of the ads, less than $3 was spent; for 99% of the ads, less than $1,000 was spent.

But, before their narrative completely crumbles, liberals are rushing to use it as an excuse to regulate online speech, which has long been a goal of campaign finance "reformers" such as former FEC Commissioner Ann Ravel, who advocated overturning the FEC's longstanding exemption of internet activity from certain regulations to apply the regulations to conservative YouTube videos ex post.  Liberal outlet Quartz recently demonstrated how the "reform" community is using the Russian Facebook ads as a pretext to argue for government control of speech by American citizens on the internet (while non-ironically lamenting that Facebook had failed to reach out to any "experts" in the "reform" community as it amended its ad policies).  And Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mark Warner are expected to introduce legislation to regulate political advertising online soon (more on that here once it is introduced).

FEC Commissioner Lee Goodman's TechFreedom podcast on these issues, that we highlighted on Monday, summarizes the serious constitutional dangers with the liberals' rush to regulate and what factors should be considered in a more measured approach that respects Americans' important political speech rights on the internet.

Concerns with Klobuchar-Graham Election Security Amendment

Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have co-sponsored an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act providing for federal funding for state election security measures.  While the security community has embraced this amendment, and we thank Sen. Graham for taking the problem of election security seriously in a way that attempts to respect state power, we have some concerns about this measure:

• It is a serious amendment of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) that should be approached carefully, and the process should include hearing where various stakeholders testify.
• It places enormous new responsibilities on the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), an agency which has struggled to fulfill its existing mandate and operate its existing advisory boards, which faces a budget crisis, and which may not have the authority to accomplish what the amendment requires.
• The EAC already accomplishes many of the functions in this amendment, but the amendment adds more bureaucracy and spends more money to do it.  It is an enormous aggregation of federal power.
• It formalizes the role of the Department of Homeland Security and the Executive Branch to set standards, which the states are required to meet to receive federal funding.  Currently, the EAC is the only federal standard-setting standard entity for elections, and it is an independent agency.
• An existing voluntary program to certify voter registration systems appeared to be working well, aside from DHS withholding important security information from the states last fall.  States are agreeing to this new measure because they are already doing these things on a voluntary basis and need the funding, but a voluntary program and a mandatory (at least, from the perspective of funding) program are vastly different in terms of who is controlling the election security standards and systems.
• It excludes states that use direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machines.  While there have been some serious problems with DRE machines (and Virginia decertified all DREs in the state last week), DREs are the only machines many localities have and they make voting easier for voters with disabilities.
• It would allow states to implement mandatory voter registration and other progressive reforms with federal funds.

This amendment needs some serious study and input from election administration experts--not just computer, national security, and cybersecurity experts--before it moves forward in the Senate.

Among other burdens placed on the EAC, the amendment requires it and a commission to conduct an investigation of the foreign interference in the 2016 election and the potential for interference in future elections.  An existing commission, the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, is already investigating election security and voting machines as part of its mission to study the U.S. election system and what promotes or decreases voter confidence in the system.  The next meeting of the commission is tomorrow, from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM Eastern.  RNLA will be live-tweeting the meeting.

The Truth About Hacking Election Machines

RNLA's Executive Director Michael Thielen wrote today in the Daily Caller about one of the hot stories of this week, how hackers were able to gain access to voting machines at the DEF CON conference.  While this made for sensational headlines, the truth is a little more nuanced:

The first and most obvious problem is hacking the machines required physical access and proximity.  One of the beauties of partisan poll watchers, let alone election officials, is they would all notice and immediately raise an alarm if someone were taking a screwdriver to a voting machine or standing close to one for a long period of time. . . . But what about physical access before election day?  States have laws and procedures to physically protect voting machines, and machines are always checked before voting begins to ensure their vote tallies are zero.     

Second, the hacks were done on machines purchased on eBay that were scrapped or decommissioned.  In other words, the hackers proved with sufficient physical access to a machine they could go back in time and hack a prior election.  

So what does this mean?  The elite hackers were not able to change votes or gain access to the machines remotely.  Unlike modern light switches, refrigerators, cars, and door locks, voting machines are never connected to the internet. While our current system of voting machines is far from perfect, it would be very difficult for a Russian, a teen techie in his mother’s basement, or a political operative to alter votes for an election. But a possible solution to the problem of hacking could change all this: the federal government’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) declaring elections “critical infrastructure.”  

Let’s be clear: the word is “could.” The designation of critical infrastructure is very ill-defined, especially as to what DHS has unilaterally asserted jurisdiction over and what it may do about it. At a meeting last month, DHS officials spoke with state officials, but according to Republican Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett, it cleared up nothing and he was “disappointed” by how unprepared the DHS officials were. Democrat California Secretary of State Alex Padilla echoed Hargett in calling the generic quality of the conversation “disappointing,” as it was months after the designation and DHS officials could not provide details.

As Thielen points out, while real threats to the security of our elections exist, the mainstream media's hysteria over election hacking, reignited this week, and the Department of Homeland Security's designation of elections as critical infrastructure do not help election officials do their important job and further erode the American people's confidence in our election system.

Does the Real Election Interference Involve the Democrats?

In May, RNLA Executive Director Michael Thielen recounted the Obama administration’s long held propensities for election tampering, the latest effort being the DHS’s bid under former Secretary Jeh Johnson to infiltrate numerous state election voter databases during the 2016 election cycle.

Johnson testified last week before the Senate Intelligence Committee, however, that, even though he did not believe that “votes were altered or suppressed in some way,” his organization did not report on potential Russian hacking for the sake of non-partisanship.

David Warrington, RNLA Vice President for Election Education, highlights the Democratic Party’s herculean attempt during this hearing to scapegoat anyone else for its own illegal forays into elections:

Leaving aside for a minute that Russia ‘hacking’ the 2016 election is a wildly inaccurate portrayal of Russia's digital meddling — which to date are only allegations, nothing proven — there's likely another reason Johnson wasn't quick to cry foul: some of the known, legitimate attempts to hack into state election databases were perpetrated by Johnson's own organization, the Obama-led DHS.

DHS is not alone.  As we detailed Friday, even Democrats are raising questions of interference with the election regarding Obama Administration Attorney General Loretta Lynch. What does all this mean?  As Warrington concludes the continued fixation on Russia:

They are little more than an attempt to protect the previous administration from being exposed as election meddlers, albeit unsuccessful ones. But Hillary Clinton's leaked emails, which showed the Democratic National Committee colluding with her campaign to ensure she won the nomination over Bernie Sanders, have already proven that meddling in democratic processes is a strategy the left employs to win. 

Partisan politics in the end is driving this Russia hacking myth. And as Michael Thielen put it, “the reality is that there’s more evidence linking a US federal agency under Obama to state election hacking than there is linking Russia to the presidential election.”

The Russian Distraction

Both houses of Congress held hearings today on Russian interference in the 2016 election.  What did we learn?  Not much.  Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.  A variety of officials testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.  

Indiana Secretary of State, incoming President of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), and member of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, Connie Lawson, testified to separate fact from fiction in the Russia hysteria (and warn about the problems with the Department of Homeland Security's designation of election systems as critical infrastructure) (emphasis in original):

As Senator Warner noted in a letter sent yesterday (June 20, 2017) to Homeland Security Secretary Kelly, we have not seen any credible evidence that vote casting or counting was subject to manipulation in any state or locality in the 2016 election cycle, or any reason to question the results. While still alarming, there is a big difference between manipulating VOTERS and manipulating VOTES.  

Here is what chief state election officials know about documented foreign targeting of state and local election systems in the 2016 election cycle, as confirmed by DHS: No major cybersecurity issues were reported on Election Day: November 8, 2016. . . . We also learned that foreign-based hackers were able to gain access to voter registration systems in Arizona and Illinois last summer, prompting the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to warn state election offices to increase their election security measures for the November 2016 election. To our knowledge, no data was deleted or modified as part of the breaches, and these are not systems involved in vote tallying. . . . Of course, in more recent days, we have learned from a top-secret NSA report that the identity of a company providing voter registration support services in several states was compromised, and some 122 local election offices received spear phishing emails as a result. . . .  

While there is clearly a pattern of foreign targeting of election systems in the last cycle, it is also very important to underscore that voting machines are not connected to the Internet or networked in any way. I say this not only for the benefit of this Committee, but for the media as well. We must understand how to label, describe and discuss election infrastructure responsibly and accurately when informing the public about elections, because there has been a great deal of misinformation publicized, including statements from the federal government. . . It is gravely concerning that election officials have only recently learned about the threat referenced in the leaked NSA report, especially – and I emphasize this – given the fact that DHS repeatedly told state election officials no credible threat existed in the fall of 2016. 

The media's and Democrat's continued focus on Russian interference in the 2016 election is distracting the nation from addressing some of the important issues facing it, as even Democrats are starting to realize.  Indeed, it is even distracting election officials from important work to address real cybersecurity concerns, such as the actual penetration of voter registration systems by both Russia and the DHS.  With every new revelation and in every new hearing, the same facts are established: no vote was changed through hacking by Russia or any other person or entity; there is no evidence of Trump campaign or administration collusion with Russia; Russia and DHS did hack or attempt to hack voter registration systems, but no voter records were changed; and Russia has long attempted to influence U.S. elections, just as the U.S. attempts to influence elections in other countries.  

Chillingly, the unswerving focus on Russia means that Russia has won, according to some observers:

Some Russia-watchers believe that the goal of the 2016 Russian campaign shenanigans was not to elect Trump but to damage Clinton before her election. That would make a certain kind of sense: Putin does not want a President Trump or a President Clinton — he wants an American president so hamstrung by political rancor, personal weakness, and petty venality that American leadership around the world is compromised. 

Mission accomplished. 

“Russia” is now shorthand for what will be an open-ended investigation of Trump and everybody around him, one that probably will last throughout his term. That may not have been part of Putin’s plan, but it unquestionably serves Putin’s interests. That is something worth keeping in mind.

We hope that Democrats and the media can put aside this hysteria over Russia to focus on real policy issues and the actual threats to election security that come from places like Russia.

Forget the Russians: According to Democrats, Microsoft Word Hacked into States

RNLA Executive Director Michael Thielen wrote today about the election hacking story that has largely been ignored by the media:

Cybersecurity experts have confirmed that the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security attempted to hack into states’ voter registration systems in Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, and West Virginia. . . . Back in December of 2016, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp went public with findings from his office that a “third-party cybersecurity provider detected a ‘large unblocked scan event’ on the morning of Nov. 15, several days after the election.” He further alleged that the event began as far back as February of that year.  The “scan event” turned out to be one of 10 unsuccessful attempts to penetrate Kemp’s firewall, the same one protecting his election systems. 

What’s more, the hacking attempts occurred on key election dates and also happened to coincide with Kemp’s public statements pushing back against a DHS plan to designate state election systems “critical infrastructure.” . . . Kemp felt the effort was an intrusion into the sovereignty of state elections and said so publicly. The timeframe for the hacking attempts matched up with key dates in the 2016 electoral process and with Kemp’s pushback, including when he testified to Congress about election security and against the critical infrastructure designation. 

The Obama adminstration attempted to deny this but kept changing their story, at one point blaming an old version of Microsoft Word:  

Most damning? The cybersecurity firm discovered the hacking attempt originated not from some foreign country far away but from a workstation located under the umbrella of DHS . . . .  Federal agencies were not allowed to access state databases at the time without permission from the state. . . . All of this led to an investigation by the DHS Inspector General and a series of different explanations from DHS.  On December 9, DHS suggested the attempted hack originated with an employee’s misconfigured workstation.  On December 12, Sec. Johnson wrote that the attack was nothing more than a contractor accessing public portions of the Georgia Secretary of State’s website through “normal Microsoft Internet Explorer interaction” and that no scanning occurred. On December 16, DHS held a conference call with all state election officials and claimed the attack against Georgia was caused by a contract employee at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers using an older version of Microsoft Word that created an open option call against the Georgia firewall.  In other words, Microsoft Word did the hacking?  These excuses rank up there with the dog ate my homework excuse of a child. 

Kemp found these varying explanations unsatisfactory and wrote a letter to Trump asking for a review.  Likewise, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform called for an investigation by the DHS Inspector General. 

While the media speculates and focuses on what influence Russia may or may not have had in the 2016 election (which is a serious problem worthy of inquiry, as Thielen notes), there are verified instances of attempted hacking of state election systems by the federal government under Obama that have been largely ignored.  The results of the congressional inquiry and DHS IG investigation remain to be seen, but we trust that DHS under Secretary Kelly and President Trump will respect state sovereignty and state power over administration of elections and not threaten the integrity of state election systems through unauthorized and unlawful attempts to hack into them.

House Panel Demands Explanation of DHS' Attempted Hack of GA Election Systems

A House Committee has asked the Department of Homeland Security to explain attempts to breach Georgia's election systems from a DHS IP address last year:

The leader of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform wants a fuller accounting from the Department of Homeland Security about complaints of the agency "rattling of doorknobs" on the state of Georgia's network firewall. 

Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) sent letters on Jan. 11 to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and DHS Inspector General John Roth asking about "unauthorized scans" and "unsuccessful attempts to penetrate" the Georgia Secretary of State's  firewall from last February into November's election season. . . . 

In his letter to Roth, Chaffetz requested the IG open an investigation into DHS' activities with the Georgia system. In his letter to Johnson, Chaffetz requested all of the DHS secretary's correspondence with [Georgia Secretary of State] Kemp. 

According to Chaffetz' letter to Roth, Johnson informed Kemp the attempt to gain access to the state's network had been "normal…interaction" by a DHS contractor with the Georgia Secretary of States' website." Johnson, according to Chaffetz, assured Kemp that "'there was no scanning,'" or security assessment of the network by DHS. . . . The official explanation, Chaffetz wrote, is dubious and requires an independent investigation.

We thank Rep. Chaffetz for taking this issue seriously and trust that DHS under the newly confirmed Secretary Kelly will fully investigate this attempted breach and reign in DHS' overreach into state election administration.

EAC Commissioner Questions Extension of DHS' Power to Elections

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it was designating election systems as "critical infrastructure," thereby bringing elections under the purview of DHS.  EAC Commissioner Christy McCormick raised serious questions and concerns about this extension of federal power over elections:

1. The scope and effect of this action is unknown. There was not a thorough discussion or review of what the designation means. . . . The so-called benefits of a critical infrastructure designation provided by DHS appear no different than those that have already been provided. . . . I am still unconvinced that a declaration of critical infrastructure status is necessary for DHS to help the States with security efforts, because we’ve already seen them do so.

2. This action politicizes elections. There is a reason that the Founding Fathers gave the authority of conducting elections to the States. There is a reason that when Congress set up the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), they made it a bipartisan, independent agency and gave it no regulatory authority. Our nations elections should not be handled or governed by a partisan branch of the Federal Government. The party that occupies the White House singularly controls the DHS and other Federal agencies in the Executive Branch.

Pick which party you want driving the security of our elections--are you comfortable with the other party doing so? It's important that we maintain the decentralized nature of our elections so that our voters and citizens can maintain faith and confidence that our elections are run freely and fairly, and that they can depend on the integrity and accuracy of the outcomes. 

3. The designation creates a layer of non-transparency and unnecessary Federally controlled bureaucracy. . . . 

[4.] The technical explanation for this designation is insufficient. . . .  

[5.] The critical infrastructure designation opens the States to legal, financial and privacy liabilities. . . . 

[6.] The process leading up to this designation has been disingenuous, at best. . . .

Commissioner McCormick concluded by requesting that President-elect Trump reverse the action and provide for productive, non-instrusive federal-state cooperation on election security:

Elections officials asked for more time, conversation, and discussion and a thorough understanding of the scope and benefits of the critical infrastructure designation. That request was flat out denied by the unilateral action of Secretary Johnson. I ask that President-elect Trump and his designated DHS Secretary General Kelly immediately reverse this unjustified and unsupported critical infrastructure designation, as well as Executive Order 13694, review the actions of DHS, provide a non-intrusive way for our intelligence community to provide information and resources to our election administrators, and leave the conduct of elections to the States as mandated in our Constitution. Thank you. 

Thank you, Commissioner McCormick, for standing up for election administrators across the country and fighting this federal intrusion into election administration.