(PresidentialHill.com)- The federal government is continuing to try to reach its hands into local elections, with a most recent example being that the Department of Homeland Security is helping county elections offices pay for cybersecurity services.
In response, many national Republicans as well as local and state officials are saying that the administration of elections should remain local.
The Center for Internet Security, a non-profit agency that played an integral role in labeling certain election “misinformation” for censorship for Big Tech companies, are providing “cybersecurity services” that are quite ambiguous for free to many different county election offices around the country.
The CIS has also collaborated with many other liberal non-profit groups, as well as CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm that’s connected with many Democrats.
CIS has been providing these services to some counties because the funding they receive is coming from the DHS.
The DHS CISA – the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency – recently commented to Just the News:
“Pursuant to direction from Congress, [DHS] has a cooperative agreement with the Center for Internet Security to provide cybersecurity services to state, local, tribal and territorial governments.”
DHS is required to coordinate on its cybersecurity efforts with what’s known as the MS-ISAC, or the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which is a part of the CIS. This practice began in June of last year, after the State and Local Government Cybersecurity Act of 2021 was passed on a bipartisan basis.
Agreements written up between CIS and some counties show that CIS provides “Endpoint Detection & Response Services” as well as “cybersecurity service” to some county election offices. This is being done through MS-ISAC as well as EI-ISAC, the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing & Analysis Center.
EI-ISAC was a key integral part for CIS in the referral chain for routing any election “misinformation” that was alleged by people and sent to censorship groups at Big Tech companies during both the 2020 and also 2022 election cycles.
Following the election in 2020, the Election Integrity Partnership, or EIP, issued a report about the election. The group is a private consortium that ultimately played a huge role in helping to censor content on social media platforms during that year’s elections.
The report read:
“EI-ISAC served as a singular conduit for election officials to report false or misleading information to platforms. By serving as a one-stop reporting interface, the EI-ISAC allowed election officials to focus on detecting and countering election misinformation while CIS and its partners reported content to the proper social media platforms.”
“Election Security” has been listed as a national priority by the Homeland Security Grant program, which is a $1.12 billion program launched by FEMA and DHS. Local and state governments can receive these grants, as long as they spend 3% of it, at least, on “enhancing election security.”
That is what’s concerning to many people, as it’s an overreach into local elections. As the chair of the House Administration Committee, Republican Representative Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, said:
“It’s important to support state and local election officials as we work to secure our elections, including in the cyberspace. However, these efforts should be administered by the nonpartisan Election Assistance Commission, an independent agency, not Biden’s DHS.”
