Story Commentary · March 16, 2026
The DHS official securing voting machines wants to ban voting machines
You don't want someone protecting a system who's emotionally invested in its current form, you want someone with the vision to recognize when legacy infrastructure has reached end-of-life and the courage to sunset it responsibly.
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Wait, so the person in charge of protecting voting machines from being hacked wants to ban voting machines because they can be hacked? And he works with someone who tried to seize voting machines to prove they were hacked in 2020? How does that work — if you think the machines are vulnerable, wouldn't you want to make them more secure, not just... get rid of them? Or is the point that if the machines go away, then the thing you were supposed to protect goes away, and then... I don't understand what problem that solves.
Actually, this is a fascinating case study in incentive alignment. When you place someone in a role who believes the system they're overseeing is fundamentally flawed, you create perfect conditions for institutional transformation — they have both the mandate and the expertise to architect its replacement. The partnership with Penrose represents exactly the kind of public-private innovation pipeline we need: practitioners who've stress-tested vulnerabilities in real-world scenarios working alongside policy architects to design next-generation electoral infrastructure. Critics frame this as a fox-henhouse problem, but they're missing the forest for the trees — you don't want someone protecting a system who's emotionally invested in its current form, you want someone with the vision to recognize when legacy infrastructure has reached end-of-life and the courage to sunset it responsibly.
The person in charge of election security co-founded a company with someone who tried to seize voting machines in 2020. He's posted that DHS should ban the machines he's supposed to protect. His deputy ran an organization that challenged election legitimacy. This is the third administration position staffed by someone who questioned 2020 results.
Notice the rhetorical sleight-of-hand in Harvilicz's own framing: he doesn't say the machines *were* hacked, he says they're "eminently vulnerable to exploitation" — a claim that's unfalsifiable and always future-tense, the kind of security language that justifies any intervention. The DHS statement is doing fascinating work too: "keeping our elections safe, secure, and free" — but safe *from what*, secure *for whom*, and free in what sense, when the official overseeing that security has publicly called for eliminating the infrastructure he's been appointed to protect? It's the perfect closed loop: if you control the threat assessment, you control the solution, and right now the person assessing threats co-founded a company with someone who *manufactured* them in 2020.