title: POLICE STATE END-RUN: DHS Wants Control of U.S. Elections
text: 21st Century Wire says Here s a classic case of Problem, Reaction, Solution How far will the federal government go to dismantle the US Constitution? Back in 2000, the establishment rigged the US Presidential Election and made Florida and its notorious pregnant chads the centerpiece of that artificial controversy. Predictably, the public reaction is outrage. Suddenly, there are calls nationwide for electronic voting as the solution to the old  inefficient  paper ballot system.Now that electronic voting is all-pervasive in the US, the next problem becomes  cyber security    which the government is referring to as the next burning national security issue.Enter the relatively new and prohibitively expensive Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which ironically (or not) was created by one George W. Bush   a president who was installed into power not by the popular vote, but by a dubious Supreme Court decision in that very same 2000 US Presidential Election. Now DHS head and Obama appointee Jeh Johnson, is nudging towards the idea of the domestic military force taking over the election process. Johnson claims that US elections are part of the country s vital infrastructure and therefore it must be under the control of an already bloated federal agency.What is wrong with a decentralized, traditional paper ballot system? If you are in the business of fixing elections, the answer is simple: paper is too difficult, sloppy and complicated... to hack.It s no coincidence at all that this latest power-grab by the federal government comes immediately after a mainstream conspiracy theory that Russia was somehow behind this week s election database  hack  in Arizona (once again, Putin did it). No proof has been offered by either politicians or media anchors presently parroting this latest sensational plot.Looking back, we can see now that years of excessive lobbying by Washington insider firms eager tosecure lucrative contracts  by implementing a myriad of fatally flawed electronic voting systems  was not a mere accident of nature. It was designed for this very police state end-run we see now.The only problem is that this would be unconstitutional, but does this government really care about constitutional law?Not when you are erecting a police state Barbara Hollingsworth CNS NewsHomeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson s suggestion that state and local voting systems be designated as  pieces of critical infrastructure  so that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can protect them from hackers is unconstitutional and would create a dangerous precedent, legal experts said. The Department of Homeland Security does not have the legal authority to interfere with states  election systems without their permission,  University of California/Berkeley School of LawProfessor John Yoo told CNSNews.com. While the federal government has the general power to protect the nation s cyber infrastructure, it cannot intrude into areas of state sovereignty without clear constitutional mandate. Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution recognizes the authority of the states to regulate the times, places, manner of elections, subject to congressional regulation. As far as I am aware, Congress has not clearly decided to regulate the information systems of state electoral systems or delegated this authority to DHS,  Yoo noted Continue this story at CNS NewsREAD MORE POLICE STATE NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Police State Files