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Comment by Globz | Hacker News Reader

"Still, the FBI warning seems likely to ramp up pressure on the Department of Homeland Security to formally designate state election systems as part of the nation’s “critical infrastructure” requiring federal protection"

I can't believe what I am reading!

What are they waiting for ? For the Russians to rig the election? seriously...

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Legal consensus? De-centralised elections are not something we should give away in a panic. The costs and benefits need to be weighed before a prudent plan is developed and implemented.

Rushing to put the nation's electoral system under the federal guidance of an organisation not precisely lauded for its transparency or democratic values is at least a bit troubling.

They could at least provide help to properly secure the state election systems instead of reacting after a breach. Why not try to secure the systems to a higher standard and be proactive?

"Securing" as in reaching in and making changes? Or "securing" as in publishing guidance around best practice?

Latter, I'd be fine with. I'd even go so far as to requuire it by law. The former amounts to an unelected federal body with a nasty history tampering with election electronics.

Publishing guidance around best practice should be mandatory when dealing with government infrastructure, these election systems are not "low level" target they can potentially influence the course of history if they are rigged.

This is why groups like 18F are very important and need to be really well supported by the American People. IMO 18F shouldn't be a part of GSA and should live on it's own.

18F is too small to live on its own in the federal beuracracy. GSA is the correct parent org by alignment. Mandating it's existence in US Code would be helpful, though it may be premature to define it's scope yet.

That's fair, and I agree today it's not appropriate for it to live outside of GSA, I more meant in a perfect world it would be the office of the CTO or something similar where they had real mandate and power to improve things, that being said I'm relatively new to this government stuff so I'm not sure what can and cannot be done.

The racial dimension should not be overlooked: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-voting-observ...

The plain facts are that a substantial number of people in and out of US politics do not want elections to be as fair as possible if that would interfere with white supremacy.

Elections are ran at the state level. There's always opposition to moving state responsibilities over to the fed.

And a good thing - else a badly-designed system would make every state and locale vulnerable.

Right, and you lose nearly all ability to change it later as there will be no basis for comparison.

Yep. It's bad enough when the democrats and republicans rig elections.

The FBI wants to rig the elections. No need to think as far ahead as Russia.

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