The Illusion of Democracy

How Our Country Was Hijacked By Our Election System

There has recently been a rash of revelations providing us more context to the politically biased censorship activities related to the 2020 election. Much of the recent exposure has come from the efforts put forth by Michael Shellenberger and his team over atPublicin what they are calling the “CTIL files:”

Reading through the CTIL files revealed just how much Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 disrupted the status quo of the entrenched bureaucracy within the administrative state, as well as how desperate they were to remove him from the equation. The censorship campaign was just one part of what appears to be a much larger, but coordinated effort to prevent another Trump victory, and the genesis of this effort came from the Obama White House just before Trump’s inauguration.

On January 6th, 2017, Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, released a statement designating “Election Infrastructure” as a “critical infrastructure.” In their September of 2020 Election Infrastructure Security Resource Guide, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) explained what that designation enabled:

The critical infrastructure designation led to the creation of the EIS GCC and EISCC. They state it was for the purpose of “information sharing” but it’s really much more sinister than that. These are the entities who told us “the November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.”

If you questioned the statement above, it was these entities who assisted in shutting you down.

Understanding these two entities is crucial because as I said, something more sinister is happening with their roles in our election infrastructure, beyond the censorship.

I have already covered the EISCC in detail in a previous article, so I won’t elaborate much on them here. It is made up of the private sector companies actually administering our election, companies like Dominion and Smartmatic. They are tasked with advising on how our elections should be administered. Here is a brief summary on the EISCC:

Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic were two of the members of the EISCC which “advises and assists” our government with election security by “coordinating with the DHS to develop, recommend, and review sector-wide plans, procedures, and effective practices in support of infrastructure protection, including training, education, and implementation”. They were also making “recommendations to appropriate authorities to mitigate impediments to effective critical infrastructure security”.

The EISCC operates under the framework of CIPAC and is exempt from Public Law 92-463 (exempt from oversight), they are classified as “Special Government Employees” and they have been certified that their “services outweighs the potential for a conflict of interest created by the financial interest involved.”

This means our government knows there is a “potential for a conflict of interest created by the financial interest involved” for members of the EISCC because the “official responsible for the employee’s appointment” has to certify it. They know there is a conflict of interest for members of the EISCC yet they allow it to operate without oversight.

The EIS GCC is made up of government agencies and entities and they are tasked with implementing the election security recommendations put forth by the EI-SCC (the companies administering our elections like Dominion and Smartmatic).

In order to implement that election security, the EIS-GCC partnered with an outside organization called the Center for Internet Security (CIS).

The EIS-GCC and CIS would establish the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center" (EI-ISAC). The entire purpose of the EI-ISAC was to promote the cybersecurity of our elections.

Both CIS and the EI-ISAC were mentioned by the CITL files:

There were two roles that CIS played when it came to “election security.” One of those roles was with the censorship. We will get to the other role they played shortly but before we do, it’s important to understand just how big their role was with the censorship, and just how biased it was.

One of the sources for the CITL files is a November 6th, 2023 report from the House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government titled “THE WEAPONIZATION OF “DISINFORMATION” PSEUDO-EXPERTS AND BUREAUCRATS: HOW THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PARTNERED WITH UNIVERSITIES TO CENSOR AMERICANS’ POLITICAL SPEECH.”

This report provides excruciating detail of CIS’ role in the “censorship industrial complex.” It was through its EI-ISAC that they actually served as “the singular conduit for election officials to report” what they deemed as election misinformation:

CIS worked directly with social media companies in getting content removed from platforms.

They also worked to take down posts on behalf of Democrat candidates, including posts sent to them directly by Katie Hobbs.

CIS targeted “former, current, and prospective” Republican legislators as well as many other accounts who were considered conservative and pro-Trump at the time.

The highly partisan nature of the censorship went as far as targeting Donald Trump himself.

Understanding the active role in censorship by CIS and the EI-ISAC, which was clearly biased against President Trump, is important context because as mentioned earlier, censoring conservatives was not the only role that CIS played in the 2020 election. The second role they played is far more disturbing.

The Center for Internet Security also provided cybersecurity for our election infrastructure.

CIS created an “elections-focused cyber defense suite,” and then give it away for free to anybody who becomes a member of the EI-ISAC. :

This free membership, entailing an “elections-focused cyber defense suite” allowed for a mass rollout across the United States. The access given to CIS in order to “defend the nation’s election systems from cyberthreats” is pervasive and concerning.

The Center for Internet Security was rolling out EDR software to be installed on laptops and servers at election offices, with the stated aim of “detecting malicious activity.” What’s worse is that the Center for Internet Security wasn’t actually using its own software for this endpoint detection. Instead, they contracted out a third party and used tools provided by that third party to identify and respond to malicious activity surrounding our election infrastructure.

That third party is Crowdstrike.

To further prove this, here is a contract proving Crowdstrike was providing EDR services for the 2020 election. If you would like more detail on this topic, read this article of mine from 2021.

This will likely not be new to anybody but Crowdstrike has close ties to the democrat party and has been involved in questionable cyber-related analysis in the past:

Crowdstrike performing any role in the cybersecurity efforts of our elections is something any objective person should consider to be inappropriate or at the very least a cause for concern.

Keep in mind who actually brought them into the picture.

The Center for Internet Security already proved too biased against Trump with how they dictated the flow of information in the public sphere by censoring conservative voices questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

Is it possible they were dictating the flow of information privately too?

Executive Order 13848 required the intelligence community (IC) to assess whether there was interference in the election or not. This assessment told us that there is “no evidence” of shenanigans surrounding the 2020 election:

This conclusion by the intelligence community has not only been repeated ad nauseum by the media, but it has also been mentioned multiple times throughout Trump’s J6 case. Donald Trump questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election is what has ultimately led to the political persecution he has faced since 2021.

The question I’m not seeing asked is what specific sources was the IC using to state there was no evidence of a compromised election?

This is what the ICA claimed was their “source of information:”

We know CIS and Crowdstrike were the ones monitoring the election systems. We know both Crowdstrike and CIS have a proven history of bias against one of the candidates on the ballot of the election they were tasked with securing from cyber threats in 2020.

Was the actual source for the conclusions found in the ICA Crowdstrike and/or the Center for Internet Security?

Maybe it’s just a coincidence that the conclusion found in the ICA was the exact conclusion CIS was censoring people for questioning.

We can even further prove the biased nature of the Center for Internet Security.

Check out this bio:

Do you believe this individual could be unbiased?

Would you want him to be involved in any aspect of the 2020 election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, having served on the Obama-Biden Transition Team?

His name is John Gilligan, and he has been the President and CEO of the Center of Internet Security since 2018:

The man in charge of the Center for Internet Security, the non-profit which is responsible for the cybersecurity of our nations elections (including the 2020 election between Trump and Biden), has direct ties to Obama and Biden.

Remember that right before leaving office, Obama’s DHS designated our election infrastructure as critical infrastructure, a designation which directly led to the Center of Internet Security’s involvement in “cyber security” for our elections.

Remember it was at Obama’s White House in 2017 that instructions were received to "create a counter-disinformation project to stop a "repeat of 2016.""

Under the guise of “free election cyber-security,” the Center for Internet Security has been placed in the position of being the most powerful non-profit in the world. With the level of access they have to our election infrastructure, they could theoretically dictate the outcome of every election they come in contact with. I’m not making accusations here, but with a topic as important and divisive as this one, these questions must be asked.

Look at the bigger picture that appears to be forming here.

The administrative state Trump was up against, was tasked by Obama to “prevent a repeat of 2016.” They had direct access to our election infrastructure through CIS and then controlled the flow of information using coordination between multiple agencies and the media, big tech, and social media companies that defend them.

The CTIL files revealed what essentially was a narrative clean-up crew, and they were only cleaning up after one political party.

It’s nearly impossible for anybody in the public domain to know with any certainty whether or not there were cyber threats to the 2020 election, because none of that information is public.

Instead, we are forced to rely on our intelligence agencies and those who actually monitored our election infrastructure for answers on whether the 2020 election was “the most secure election in American history.”

We can’t trust that conclusion if it comes from Crowdstrike or the Center for Internet Security.

If there were bad actors attempting to switch votes from Trump to Biden, can you trust that Crowdstrike or CIS would attempt to stop it?

If Crowdstrike and/or CIS software was downloaded onto our election infrastructure, can you trust that they didn’t switch votes themselves? Who would be able to stop them and who would ever find out if they are the ones in charge of detecting and preventing malicious cyber activity?

Technology is supposed to make life easier, but when it comes to our elections, it has done the opposite. Our current system forces us to “trust the experts” and pray they will be honest and unbiased. We aren’t even allowed to question them.

What a terrifying thought.

The only way I see us out of this stranglehold created by the administrative state is through complete transparency.

Voting is the most important and impactful thing that a legal American citizen can do. It must therefore be the most transparent process imaginable. Everything should be on paper. Everything should be recorded on camera. Everything should be verifiable by anybody interested in doing the work to verify it.

Nothing should rely on experts.

Until we get to a system that doesn’t rely on experts, we don’t have a democracy.

We have the illusion of one.

Jon Herold

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