Yesterday the Associated Press posted an article about a proposal to designate election systems as critical infrastructure. On the surface this sounds like a really good idea, but when you examine the idea closely, there are some problems with it.

But first, let’s look at the article, which states:

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.

Officials at both agencies are criticizing the department for what they said was a failure to work with state officials to fully answer their questions about the designation before making the change.

“We’re having trouble understanding exactly what they’re going to do, that we’re not already doing,” Connecticut Secretary of State Denise W. Merrill, who heads the national secretaries association, told The Associated Press. “States were already doing much of this (security work) themselves using very different products.”

The U.S. Constitution states in Article I Section 4:

The times, places and methods of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, will be decided by each State legislature. Congress may override these regulations at any time by  Law.

The U.S. Constitution states in Article 2 Section 2:

Each State, (and Washington D.C.), must appoint a number of electors equal to the total number of Senators and Representatives which that State (or District) is entitled to in Congress. The legislator of each State may determine the manner in which the electors are chosen. No Senator or Representative, or person holding an official position under the United States, may be appointed as an elector.

What is illustrated here is the fact that the individual states control elections within their states–the federal government does not. One reason it is difficult to ‘hack’ voting machines is that they are often not networked–they are individual machines and must each be ‘hacked’ individually. Although this suggestion by the Obama Administration sounds like an idea that would protect our elections, it would, in fact make hacking easier for hackers by centralizing the voting machines on one network.

Aside from being a federal power grab, this is a really bad idea. The goal here is federal control of elections. This will no longer limit corruption to some of our major cities–anyone will be able to be able to participate!