The Erosion of State Control Over Elections
The founding fathers of our great country knew the inherent dangers of a strong, centralized government and that the separation of powers was essential to prevent the consolidation of government and the formation of centralized, authoritarian tyranny to which all governments are prone.That is why the U.S. constitution is clear that while certain powers are granted to the federal government, when it comes to conducting elections, that power is specifically reserved for the states.​
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However, over the past twenty years, there has been a steady encroachment by the Federal Government to take control over and centralize the mechanisms by which states run their elections. Another way to look at it is that the states have been too compliant in allowing this Federal overreach, so the blame falls primarily on the states.
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1. (2002) The Federal Government subsidizes the purchase of voting machines. On the heels of Al Gore’s contentious defeat of George Bush in 2000, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to subsidize the cost of states making the transition from electromechanical “punch card” voting machines to all electronic voting machines. So, why would the federal government be so eager to promote a particular method of voting and subsidize its cost when it is the state’s responsibility for choosing the method of conducting their elections and paying for it themselves? The Short Answer: it was the first step toward the Federal government gaining control over the voting process and states were all too eager to accommodate. In 2019, Ohio received over $114 million in HAVA grant funding to purchase new machines.
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2. (2002) The Federal Government establishes a bureaucracy to oversee the voting process and to certify voting machines.
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3. (2017) Under the veil of "National Security", the Federal Government declares voting systems as critical infrastructure. After the 2016 presidential election when foreign national actors allegedly hacked into state voter roll databases, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) declared the country's voting systems as critical infrastructure.
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4. (2019) The Federal Government rolls out network sensor devices to monitor all election data going into and out of Board of Elections. Once the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) designated the U.S. election system as critical infrastructure, it wasted no time offering Board of Elections (BOEs) across the country “free” network intrusion detection devices nicknamed “Albert” to protect its networks from being hacked by nefarious actors. It is ironic that network intrusion devices are being used to protect voting machines that supposedly aren’t connected to the internet.As it turns out, some cyber experts have made the assertion that although the Albert sensors were sold to the BOEs as only monitoring for malicious malware attacks, it has the capability to manipulate the data as well. No one has provided proof that this is happening, but like the machines being shielded from scrutiny because they contain proprietary software, the Albert sensors are shielded from scrutiny because they are designated part of national security.​​ In addition, the organization that controls this data flow is a non-governmental organization (NGO).
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