OPPOSITION GROWS TO FEDERAL ELECTIONS TAKEOVER
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
The Obama administration’s DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson announced on
January 6 that he had determined that U.S. elections “should be
designated as a subsector of the existing Government Facilities critical infrastructure sector.” Johnson’s statement went on to say:
storage facilities, polling places, and centralized vote tabulations
locations used to support the election process, and information and
communications technology to include voter registration databases,
voting machines, and other systems to manage the election process and
report and display results on behalf of state and local governments.
In other words, DHS would assert its authority over virtually all
aspects of elections. The memo also had assurances that this would not
be a federal takeover, but the cosmetic assurances contradict the memo’s
wording, particularly the self-declared, open-ended definition of what
would comprise the election infrastructure. Also fueling the fires of
concern is the history of federal takeovers. Federal takeovers in the
past have been replete with soothing statements saying they are not
takeovers during the initial phases.
Within days, the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) issued a statement
describing DHS’s announcement as “legally and historically
unprecedented, raising many questions and concerns.” NASS’s statement
went on to say:
is our greatest asset against malicious cyberattacks and manipulation.
Our decentralized, low-connectivity electoral process is inherently
designed to withstand such threats.
Further reaction by state election officials has been overwhelmingly in opposition to this federal takeover. Numerous posts on the website electionline.org indicate widespread opposition by Secretaries of State and other voting officials, both Republican and Democrat.
The opposition to this attempted federal power grab is gratifying to
those who oppose encroachment by the federal government into what is
clearly the domain of the states. Particularly gratifying is the
statement explaining that decentralization of the electoral processes
and low levels of electronic connectivity are actually security
strengths in our elections. These statements by NASS are a welcome dose
of electoral sanity compared to recent advocacies for Internet voting
and secure transmission of precinct vote counts, both of which increase
centralization and electronic connectivity.
The New American has published numerous articles with
criticisms of Internet voting and, in reporting from Iowa at last year’s
Republican presidential caucuses, questioned the wisdom of secure transmission of precinct results:
and accurate reporting, there is no reason given why this app should
work “securely.” Why should publicly disseminated information be
transmitted securely? If everyone has a right to know this information,
why should it be secured? The answer is, it shouldn’t.
There is a possibility that this growing opposition may lead to a
resolution against the power grab at next month’s NASS Winter Conference
in Washington, D.C.
But one argument that is missing from the debate is
constitutionality. This attempted federal action is blatantly
unconstitutional. Apologists for federal intervention in state elections
have quoted Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, which says:
Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each
State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by
law make or alter such Regulations except for the Place of Chusing
Senators.
Alexander Hamilton, in The Federalist, No. 59, addressed the
intent of this provision in the U.S. Constitution. It does allow for
Congress to alter state election laws, but as Hamilton explained, this
was primarily to ensure the states would hold elections for federal
offices thereby ensuring there would not be a coalition of states
over-powering the Congress by failing to elect Congressmen :
Representatives, there is intended to be a general election of members
once in two years. If the State legislatures were to be invested with an
exclusive power of regulating these elections, every period of making
them would be a delicate crisis in the national situation, which might
issue in a dissolution of the Union, if the leaders of a few of the most
important States should have entered into a previous conspiracy to
prevent an election.
Hamilton further explained that the power to alter state election
laws was not intended to allow the federal government to stretch it so
far as to allow Congress to pass laws making the federal government the
regulator of state elections:
into the Constitution, empowering the United States to regulate the
elections for the particular States, would any man have hesitated to
condemn it, both as an unwarrantable transposition of power, and as a
premeditated engine for the destruction of the State governments?
Hopefully, the opposition to this attempted federal takeover of
elections will not only be stopped, but will lead to eventually
dismantling such unconstitutional federal bureaucracies as the Federal
Election Commission (FEC) and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission
(EAC), which are currently assuming regulatory authority over state
elections.