Every state but a handful have now asked the Department of Homeland Security to help them monitor their electronic voting systems to prevent cyberattacks, the government has reported.
According to a source at DHS, fully 46 states have now petitioned the agency to help keep their electronic election systems true, leaving only eight trusting to their own resources, CNN reports.
By the end of October 13, more states requested that DHS monitor their systems, meaning most states have decided to seek a second opinion on the integrity of their electronic election systems.
Over 20 states have already reported attempts from outside sources to hack into their voting systems or voter databases, but only Illinois has reported that hackers were able to successfully gain access to the data.
But not everyone feels that allowing the federal government to come in to “monitor” elections is a good idea.
According to Barbara Hollingsworth, allowing DHS to involve itself in state-based election systems is actually unconstitutional and should be avoided lest our legal, state-controlled elections become usurped by federal interlopers.
“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 Law Professor John Yoo recently told Hollingsworth for her CNSNews.com article.
“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,” Yoo added.
With this reasoning, allowing DHS to come into the states and interfere in elections sets a bad precedent and may lead to the federal government attempting to wrest control of elections from the states.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.