Feds’ Unconstitutional Power Grab to Centralize Elections
As a parting shot days before Trump takes the oath of office, Obama’s DHS Chief Jeh Johnson did something very controversial: He unilaterally designated America’s election machinery a “critical infrastructure”. The move was predicated on the main stream media’s fake news stories conflating Russia as the Wikileaks’ source of the damaging Podesta emails in the final days of the campaign.
So a little known outgoing bureaucrat says our elections are “critical.” Sure America’s election machinery is a very important to the security of the vote. And the Russian hacking fake news is just that. So what’s the big deal, right?
It’s about semantics and legal definitions. Because words have legal power, the Left crafts words and definitions to effect a legal purpose often contrary to the intent of the Constitution. Recall the redefinition of the word “marriage” changed the very essence of marriage in the eyes of the law for purposes of a host of federal and state programs to redistribute taxpayer dollars. Think of it as the art of legal pretzel twisting.
The Chief Jeh Johnson’s designation “critical infrastructure” is the key phrase triggering federal power to hijack states’ elections processes. The New American explains:
In his announcement, Johnson said “election infrastructure” means “storage facilities, polling places, and centralized vote tabulations locations used to support the election process, and information and communications technology to include voter registration databases, voting machines, and other systems to manage the election process and report and display results on behalf of state and local governments” — in short, anything and everything involved in the electoral process. . . . the current legal definition of “critical infrastructure” “would allow the Department of Homeland Security or anybody else to come in and get into our systems.” . . . Furthermore . . . Johnson’s “designation allows for information to be withheld from the public when state, local and private partners meet to discuss election infrastructure security — potentially injecting secrecy into an election process that’s traditionally and expressly a transparent process.”
By invoking “critical infrastructure”, the Feds bootstrap authority to “manage” the states’ election process and systems, its voting machines, the vote tabulation and reporting, even supervising the polling places with billy club carrying All-Votes-Matter goons in official looking federal paramilitary attire (no doubt in the unifying color of purple as a hat tip to SEIU and the Clintons). Because it’s not who votes; it’s who counts the votes. This would take the power to count votes away from the states and give it to the Feds. Smacks of union thuggery or third world corruption.
The DHS action is, of course, unconstitutional. The Founding Father specifically reserved control of election machinery to the states. Therefore, to make such a radical change to our republic would require a Constitutional amendment, not a phone or a pen or even a quickie press release from a political appointee like Jeh Johnson.
Moreover, the incoming Trump administration can and likely will reverse the pronouncement it in a matter of weeks. So why do it? Why now? What does it gain liberals?
First, it’s one more thing to undo. More red tape for the Trump administration. And Trump’s undoing it becomes another media story proving how Trump is actually in league with the Russians by ensuring Russian hacking will continue in future elections (the all-important mid-terms will either erode or increase the slim Republican majority in both houses of Congress).
Second, it is yet another Liberal salvo against States’ rights — safety versus independence. Just read how a ranking Democrat Homeland Security Committee Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) described it:
In the long term, this will put our electoral systems on a more secure footing and maintain public confidence in our elections,” he said. “For future elections at all levels, State officials who want to engage with DHS on enhancing the cyber and physical security of their electoral systems will have Federal partner working with them.”
The Left has played this word game forever and they are in the long game to advance centralized government and destroy the protections of the Constitution. To sacrifice independence for security was the argument Liberals made to push Obamacare.
Finally, this is setting up the long-term argument that Trump’s election was illegitimate and that future such Republican victories are automatically suspect. This “critical infrastructure” security will become a talking point when a Liberal loses an election in a hotly contested state alleging voting irregularities. This argument will be revisited when liberal ideologues distort facts to a distracted public. And they will point back to how Trump and the eeeeeevil Basket of Deplorables seized power through hacking the elections and disenfranchising millions of voters by rolling back administrative protections that could have prevented future such breaches of the public’s sacred right to vote. For liberals, that is.
