Internet voting requires more fine tuning – especially when it comes to eliminating security risks – before it can be widely used in provincial and municipal elections, says an independent report released Wednesday by British Columbia’s elections agency. The report, produced by a panel appointed by Elections BC, also warns that online voting may not necessarily lead to higher voter turnout and cheaper elections. The 100-page report concludes it is still too early to move to Internet voting in B.C., including for next year’s municipal elections, with security remaining the top barrier. “At the current time, we’re not there yet for universal Internet voting,” B.C.’s chief electoral officer, Keith Archer, told a news conference in Victoria. “The overall conclusion that people will likely draw from this report is it’s cautionary. It suggests that there are still lots of challenges to be worked out in the application of Internet voting in a public election in B.C.”
The panel’s preliminary report, which kicks off six weeks of public consultations, recommends provincial and municipal governments launch a provincewide examination of Internet voting. It says such a process should include creating a technical committee to evaluate online voting systems. The panel concluded providing secure Internet voting is the “most significant of all the challenges.”
The report identifies three potential security concerns for Internet voting systems: the
voters’ own device; the transmission of votes to the server; and the election server itself.
It cites a July 2013 letter written by a group of American computer scientists to a Virginia state legislative commission. The scientists wrote: “The technology necessary to support Internet voting while also protecting the integrity of the election and voter privacy does not yet exist.”
Full Article: B.C. isn’t ready for Internet voting: report.