WikimediaBefore he traveled to Louisiana to survey the flood damage and work with Gov. John Bel Edwards recently, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was floating the idea of designating electronic voting machines as “critical infrastructure” as a way to combat potential cyberthreats.
After Democratic campaign systems were hacked, Johnson was asking whether voting systems should be on par with power grids, for example, in terms of protection.
Secretary of State Tom Schedler took part in a call to state officials around the country recently and asked Johnson if there was a credible threat. The answer was no, according to coverage in The Conservative Review.
Some election officials around the nation aren’t warming to this idea, worrying that they could lose some control to the federal government.
Plus, some election officials argue, most electronic voting machines aren’t connected to the internet. They are, instead, standalone machines.