Ask Slashdot: Should The DHS Designate Elections As Critical Infrastructure? (politico.com)

The Department of Homeland Security is reportedly looking at designating elections as critical infrastructure, on par with the electricity grid or banking system, to help protect against cybersecurity threats. DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said during a breakfast with reporters on August 3rd, "We should carefully consider whether our election system, our election process, is critical infrastructure. There is a vital national interest in our election process, so I do think to consider whether it should be considered by my department and others as critical infrastructure." Demerara writes: I'm fascinated to hear the opinions of Slashdotters on the practical implications of any decision to designate "elections" as critical national infrastructure. For those of you who have worked on systems that are already under this regime: given that there are just over 90 days to the November elections, what can be achieved with respect to elections and in particular to electronic voting machines (whether direct-recording electronic (DRE), touch screen etc., or precinct ballot scanning machines)? What might the designation require of state and county boards (the buyers of these systems) and what would the vendors have to do?

Comments

Oh, hell yeah!

[__aaclcg7560]

Not only should voting be considered critical infrastructure, it should be mandatory and a national weekend holiday.

If it just means

[DarkOx]

If it just means one more place for TSA agents to stand around and pat me down, than no thanks.

I am sure that is all that it means coming from this administration as well. I mean its the DOJ under this admin that has been basically pushing to prevent any voter id laws from staying on the books, and suing an states that try to restrict vote by mail ( a security hole you can drive a truck thru ) at all. They then insist there is not voter fraud ignoring the fact that they have pretty much prevented the implementation of any effective audit mechanisms that might detect it.

Re:If I thought it would help...

[dgatwood]

This. There are good reasons that poll taxes were found unconstitutional fifty years ago. And this is basically a poll tax. Adjusted for inflation, those unconstitutional poll taxes were about the same cost as California's ID card. If it was unconstitutional then, there's no reason it shouldn't be unconstitutional now.