INTERVIEW – HANS VON SPAKOVSKY – A former counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Justice Department, former commissioner for the Federal Election Commission from 2006 to 2007 and senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation discussed the hacker breach election systems in Illinois, Arizona.

• Homeland eyes special declaration to take charge of elections. (By Paul Bedard/Washington Examiner) — Even before the FBI identified new cyber attacks on two separate state election boards, the Department of Homeland Security began considering declaring the election a “critical infrastructure,” giving it the same control over security it has over Wall Street and and the electric power grid. The latest admissions of attacks could speed up that effort possibly including the upcoming presidential election, according to officials. “We should carefully consider whether our election system, our election process, is critical infrastructure like the financial sector, like the power grid,” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said. “There’s a vital national interest in our election process, so I do think we need to consider whether it should be considered by my department and others critical infrastructure,” he said at media conference earlier this month hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. DHS has a vital security role in 16 areas of critical infrastructure and they provide a model for what the department and Johnson could have in mind for the election.