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In Case You Thought the Next Elections were Safe... [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-09
… they’re already compromised.
Before I get to the surprisingly balanced but paywalled CNN story below, I’ll get to the point:
Unless you are mailed a ballot, don’t assume that you are still registered to vote
“Souls to the Polls” must happen again, for everyone in a vulnerable voting bloc
Vote Early wherever possible
After voting, confirm that your vote was counted — check online to see how to do this
The events in the article cover reveal many of the actions already taken by the Maladministration to un-protect our election systems and expose them to bad actors domestically and abroad.
In early February, Musk’s team laid off 130 staffers at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, including 10 regional security specialists who worked with local and state election officials. The Trump administration is also advancing plans to strip civil service protections from 80% of the remaining CISA workforce, potentially allowing them to be fired for political reasons.
..
Attorney General Pam Bondi that month disbanded the Foreign Influence Task Force a key FBI task force charged with investigating foreign efforts to influence elections. She also left in the wind the fate of another FBI task force that investigated threats against election workers and polling places.
..
In early February, CISA acting director Bridget Bean fired 130 employees and, in a memo first obtained by Wired, put all election-security and counter-disinformation work on hold pending an internal review. The agency hasn’t revealed the outcome of that review, which was completed March 6. A CISA spokesperson said the review “is not planned to be released publicly.”
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Noem also ordered CISA in February and March to cancel more than $9 million in annual contracts with the Center for Internet Security, a non-profit group. Many of the cuts imposed by DHS targeted the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or EI-ISAC, which brought together more than 1,300 election and law enforcement officials around the country to help monitor and share information about threats to voting.
In a letter last month to state and local partners, the Center for Internet Security said it would try to figure out “how best to support these critical services without federal funding.” But 28 states have adopted laws in recent years that bar election offices from accepting private donations and privately funded services – which could apply in this instance, officials said.
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Election officials and CISA employees say the loss of that center raises alarm bells.
Rahn: “The election integrity ISAC is gone,”
“That just blows my mind. … Intentionally, unintentionally, they’re creating holes.”
Bellows: “What made EI-ISAC special was that collaboration of election officials directly with each other all across the nation. We’ve lost information sharing among election officials nationwide.”
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CISA was “privy to information from so many sources,” said Kim Wyman, CISA’s former elections security lead. “They had this bird’s-eye view of the national security elections subsector in a way that didn’t exist before. They could take this information and analyze it in ways to make it accessible to state and local election offices.”
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A person familiar with the situation at CISA said as many as 1,300 additional positions are expected to be cut this month. “I’m worried that there are folks in the state and federal government who want to completely dismantle the election security infrastructure,” said [Arizona Secretary of State] Fontes.
Thanks to
https://12ft.io for the assist in reading this article.
I subscribe to the CISA mailing lists, and much of the info from this org is now endangered because of the kakistrophic termination of human knowledge capital in our government.
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