Secretary of State Calls Out Feds on Overreach
Running and regulating elections has always been a power of the states, but the Department of Homeland Security has expressed its desire to work with states on voting security. The Secretary of the DHS, Jeh Johnson, has even suggested that it “should carefully consider” the matter of reclassifying the voting system as “critical infrastructure.” Such a move would give unprecedented federal authority over the nation’s election system, and Secretary Kemp contends it would allow the government to subvert the states’ ability to run elections effectively federalizing the system. Mr. Kemp had this to say:
“It seems like now it’s just the D.C. media and the bureaucrats, because of the DNC getting hacked — they now think our whole system is on the verge of disaster because some Russian’s going to tap into the voting system…And that’s just not — I mean, anything is possible, but it is not probable at all, the way our systems are set up.”
“The question remains whether the federal government will subvert the Constitution to achieve the goal of federalizing elections under the guise of security.”
Electronic voting in Georgia is a closed system and does not use the internet. Plus the machines undergo inspection and are sealed when not in use. Georgia and other states also already work with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Election Assistance Commission. Following a conference call with Secretary Johnson and other Secretaries of State, Kemp believed that this was a regulatory push that had “been in the works.”
In the end, Mr. Kemp said he would accept help from the DHS if all they did was identify threats and warn the states, but he still argues that the media and federal bureaucrats are just raising unnecessary fears and alarm. He contends that it is highly improbable that the voting systems could be comprised to the point of swinging an election.
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First!…….after all, Kemp is the expert leaked data.
Still would be better to use scannable paper ballots. Paper trail and all that.
“Electronic voting in Georgia is a closed system and does not use the internet.”
I’m not sure this is true. Doesn’t each voting location transmit its totals to a central location electronically?
The voting machines themselves are not connected to the Internet, nor is there a need to connect them to the internet. Once all the voting is over, the totals from all the machines in use are transmitted to the county elections office, and eventually to the Secretary of State’s office. There really isn’t a lot of data to be transmitted, when you think about it. It could easily be done with a dial-up connection.
The key point is that the voting machines themselves aren’t connected to a public network, so they can’t be compromised from outside. Even if somehow the vote totals sent to the elections office were modified, the original totals would still be available for audit.
Au contraire, I don’t think a hacker would bother with individual machines anyway if the vote totals were available. Wholesale vs. retail. Someone would pick a few key precincts in a few key states and flip jut enough votes so no one would even notice. And no one wants to check against the pre-transmitted totals, it would be nothing but embarrassing and chaotic if a problem were discovered, aside from it being like looking for a needle in a haystack anyway.
I don’t know if the feds or the states would be better at securing the system, but I am pretty sure the current system is vulnerable. If Mr. Kemp is to be the one in charge of securing the system in Georgia, I think I’ll side with the feds.
without paper, you couldn’t even effectively audit a precinct’s votes without surveying every voter.
I was a poll watcher once and the precinct manager wouldn’t even let us look at the tapes to verify that the machines had been zeroed out before the polls opened. Not a confidence builder.