The Department of Homeland Security took the crucial step Friday night of designating voting machines as critical infrastructure, and subject to federal protections.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson made the announcement soon after the release of a declassified intelligence report showed that Russian hackers had sought to undermine the 2016 elections by seeking to "denigrate" Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

"Given the vital role elections play in this country, it is clear that certain systems and assets of election infrastructure meet the definition of critical infrastructure, in fact and in law," said Johnson. "Particularly in these times, this designation is simply the right and obvious thing to do."

The determination had been in the works by the agency for months. Many states opposed the action, fearing it would lead to increased federal regulation and oversight of locally run and managed voting operations.

Most of the "critical infrastructure" that the agency designates resides in the private sector and includes things like pipelines, water utilities and transmission lines. The voting infrastructure designation includes storage facilities, polling places and vote tabulation locations, along with technology like voter registration databases, voting machines and systems used to manage elections and display voting results.

"The designation allows for information to be withheld from the public when state, local and private partners meet to discuss election infrastructure security — potentially injecting secrecy into an election process that's traditionally and expressly a transparent process," the Associated Press reported.