Colorado is turning to the federal surveillance state to safeguard the upcoming election.
Controversial Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold — who infamously called on the media not to report results on election night — created the Rapid Response Election Security Cyber Unit (RESCU), a group of local law-enforcement agents who plan to coordinate with federal intelligence and Homeland Security agents to protect “Colorado’s elections from cyberattacks, foreign interference, and disinformation campaigns.”
The Government Technology blog published the following description of Colorado’s election security detail:
The five-person team is staffed with cybersecurity experts with significant backgrounds in national security — most notably [Nate] Blumenthal who, prior to RESCU, spent a long career in counterterrorism at the likes of the Department of Defense (DoD), Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the National Security Council.
Among the tactics to be used by RESCU is coordination of reports of threats with the federal government through communication with the state’s fusion center.
Trevor Timmons, CIO of the Secretary of State’s office, reassured his state’s voters that the joint operation with the federal surveillance apparatus will allow threats on all levels to be detected and defeated.
We have individuals in our offices that have clearances at the secret level, so that we can have conversations with DHS, FBI, with ODNI, so that we can get that information, even before it may have been declassified and made available publicly. We’re able to get that information and just sort of factor it into how we think about things.
There are many in Colorado and beyond who may find troublesome this transfer of supervision of election from the state legislature to the federal intelligence and surveillance bureaucracy.
In fairness, the U.S. Constitution does grant to Congress substantial power over suffrage.
Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution reads:
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing [sic] Senators.
The effect of that enumeration of authority is that states possess power over elections only to the extent that Congress allows.
Such an arrangement did not fail to attract the attention of those who at the time of the ratification debates recognized the potential for abuse latent in such power, particularly as pertains to the right to vote.
The Anti-Federalist known as “Brutus” points out the existential threat posed by this grant of power. In his fourth letter he writes:
By this clause the right of election itself, is, in a great measure, transferred from the people to their rulers. — One would think, that if any thing was necessary to be made a fundamental article of the original compact, it would be, that of fixing the branches of the legislature, so as to put it out of its power to alter itself by modifying the election of its own members at will and pleasure. When a people once resign the privilege of a fair election, they clearly have none left worth contending for.
In the case of Colorado, the state official tasked with protecting the election process has invited the federal government to not only oversee the election process, but play a critical role in identifying threats to the process. The primary federal player will be the state’s fusion center.
For nearly a decade, the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been silently and gradually converting local police agencies into regional subdivisions of the surveillance state through the establishment of fusion centers, such as the one that will be coordinating election-night safety in Colorado.
The fusion center program was created at a globalist confab held in 2012.
In 2012, a special white paper was submitted to the House of Representatives wherein the DHS was encouraged to embark on an “evolving mission” away from its ostensible purpose of fighting terrorism, toward becoming the administrator of an enormous domestic intelligence agency resulting from an integration of the country’s local and state law-enforcement agencies.
This report was written by the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group, co-chaired by former DHS chief Michael Chertoff.
The establishment of fusion centers is a key component of this plan. The following information is taken from a fact sheet on fusion centers posted on the DHS website:
A fusion center is a collaborative effort of two or more agencies that provide resources, expertise and information to the center with the goal of maximizing their ability to detect, prevent, investigate, and respond to criminal and terrorist activity.
A description of the functioning of these incubators for the forthcoming federal police force is also provided on the DHS site:
State and major urban area fusion centers (fusion centers) serve as primary focal points within the state and local environment for the receipt, analysis, gathering, and sharing of threat-related information among federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) partners…. Fusion centers conduct analysis and facilitate information sharing, assisting law enforcement and homeland security partners in preventing, protecting against, and responding to crime and terrorism.
Citizens should be concerned about the consolidation, as it will result in their loss of direct control over their neighborhood law enforcement and, as the Colorado RESCU program demonstrates, over their elections, too.
The further away elections are from the direct involvement of the local citizen, the less republican the government is, a direct violation of Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees a republican form of government to every state in the union.
Should the federal intelligence establishment — a bureaucracy that is neither elected by nor accountable to citizens — begin exerting substantial control over the election process, the states will become nothing more than subdivisions of an oligarchical empire.
I’ll end with the warning words of “Brutus,” also taken from “Brutus” No. 4:
If the people of America will submit to a constitution that will vest in the hands of any body of men a right to deprive them by law of the privilege of a fair election, they will submit to almost any thing.
