Obama wants to federalize US election system

[From an original post by BZ at BloviatingZeppelin.net.]

                                 Obama's last chance to wear his finest powder blue uniform.

And anyone with half a wheelhouse would think this is an excellent reason, why?

From the AP.org:

US MOVE TO SECURE ELECTION SYSTEMS MEETS CRITICISM 

by Tami Abdollah

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A last-minute decision by the Obama administration to designate election systems as critical infrastructure drew intense criticism from state and federal elections organizations on Monday.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced the move Friday with 30 minutes' notice to the National Association of Secretaries of State and U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an independent bipartisan federal agency that develops voluntary voting guidelines and certifies voting systems.

If you're a Leftist, perchance this sounds like a wonderful idea whose time has come. Who wouldn't want to federalize the election system, right?

Christy McCormick, a commissioner for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, said the decision potentially gives significant authority to numerous federal agencies. "We don't know how this will work. This has not been thought out (and) the scope of what they're speaking about is huge," she said.

Huge in what fashion? What would be affected?

Election infrastructure that would fall under the designation as defined by DHS includes storage facilities, polling places and vote tabulation locations, plus technology involved in the process, such as voter registration databases, voting machines and other systems used to manage the election process and report and display results.

Centralizing a system that is pretty much decentralized?

The election process in the U.S. is highly decentralized, with voters casting ballots in 185,000 precincts spread over 9,000 jurisdictions during the 2016 presidential election. It is also subject to rigorous and elaborate rules that govern how and what equipment is used.

But wait. Isn't it Mr Obama and Demorats and Leftists who are insisting that the Russians hacked the elections and, by doing so, manipulated the system and the American electorate into installing Donald Trump as president-elect?

 And, if so, centralizing our elections would therefore make them eminently more hackable because, absent centralization, in order to be effective, outside agents and actors would have to hack each and every one of the 185,000 precincts in order to acquire the greatest influence.

 A move to centralize the election system is the equivalent of handing over our national voter system to the most efficacious of digital villains. What part of this makes any sense whatsoever?


Further -- wait -- wasn't it the federal government that hacked into the Georgia state system?

With the stroke of a pen and a phone call -- customary tactics for a president who knows his mandates won't occur otherwise -- Obama has "designated" that election systems are "critical infrastructure" and therefore subject to an unabashed power grab.

Just as, with the stroke of a pen and a phone call, Mr Obama "designated" 1.6 million acres of land in Utah and Nevada as "national monuments," making it part of the largest federal land grab -- over 260 million acres -- in US history, all under Obama.

This is a huge, massive issue. With explosive potentialities. And it only lends credence to what many already suspected about the federal government under Obama and Leftists.

It is the job of the federal government to grow, to become expansive, invasive, expensive, intrusive. Government under Leftists wants to remove your freedoms and sell them back to you at wildly inflated rates and social costs.

Ask yourself: what is the benefit of a centralized election system in the digital era?

I think you have your answer.

Cui bono?

BZ