Australia: Online voting system may have FREAK bug | The Register

Next weekend, voters in the Australian State of New South Wales go to the polls to elect a new government. Some have already cast their votes online, with a system that may be running the FREAK bug. So say Vanessa Teague and J. Alex Halderman, respectively a research fellow in the Department of Computing and Information Systems at at the University of Melbourne and an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan and director of Michigan’s Center for Computer Security and Society. The system in question is called iVote system and was launched in 2011 to assist voters who live 20 kilometres or more from a polling station, or those will be overseas or interstate on election day. But Teague and Halderman say their proof-of-concept probe on a “practice” system showed it is possible to “… intercepts and manipulate votes … though the same attack would also have succeeded against the real voting server,” the pair wrote in analysis.

Australia: NSW Electoral Commission scrambles to patch iVote flaw | ZDNet

The analytics service used by the New South Wales electronic voting system, iVote, left voters vulnerable to having their ballots changed, according to security researchers. The iVote system was originally implemented ahead of the 2011 state election for vision-impaired voters and those living in rural areas who have difficulty reaching polling places, but the government is expanding the use of the iVote system as part of the election on March 28, and has taken approximately 66,000 votes since early polling opened last week. Researchers Vanessa Teague from the Department of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne, and J Alex Halderman from the University of Michigan Centre for Computer Security, found that while the voting website uses a safe SSL configuration, it includes JavaScript from an external server that is used to track site visitors. This, they said, would leave the iVote site open to a range of attacks, including FREAK.

Australia: iVote flaw ‘allowed vote to be changed’; electoral commission fixes vulnerability | ABC

A “major security hole” that could allow an attacker to read or change someone’s vote has been discovered in the New South Wales online iVote platform, security experts say. The iVote system allows people to lodge their votes for Saturday’s state election online, instead of visiting a physical polling station. It aims to make voting easier for the disabled or for people who live long distances from polling booths. However computer security researchers said they found a critical issue and alerted the NSW Electoral Commission on Friday afternoon. University of Melbourne research fellow Vanessa Teague, who found the security vulnerability, said it was a difficult hack to pull off, but could potentially affect ballots en masse. “We’ve been told repeatedly that votes are perfectly secret and the whole system is secure and it can’t be tampered with and so on, and we’ve shown very clearly than that’s not true – that these votes are not secret and they can be tampered with,” Ms Teague said.

Australia: Security flaw in New South Wales puts thousands of online votes at risk | Freedom to Tinker

New South Wales, Australia, is holding state elections this month, and they’re offering a new Internet voting system developed by e-voting vendor Scytl and the NSW Electoral Commission. The iVote system, which its creators describe as private, secure and verifiable, is predicted to see record turnout for online voting. Voting has been happening for six days, and already iVote has received more than 66,000 votes. Up to a quarter million voters (about 5% of the total) are expected to use the system by the time voting closes next Saturday. Since we’ve both done extensive research on the design and analysis of Internet voting systems, we decided to perform an independent security review of iVote. We’ll prepare a more extensive technical report after the election, but we’re writing today to share news about critical vulnerabilities we found that have put tens of thousands of votes at risk. We discovered a major security hole allowing a man-in-the middle attacker to read and manipulate votes. We also believe there are ways to circumvent the verification mechanism.

Australia: Legal action considered over online voting glitch | Northern Star

Minor parties are threatening legal action after being omitted from the “above-the-line” section of the electronic ballot for the New South Wales election. About 19,000 votes were received before the NSW Electoral Commission realised the Animal Justice Party and the Outdoor Recreation Party had been left off the top section. In a preferential system, it is a major concern. Voters who do not wish to number their preferences can take the easy option and just write “1” next to the party they favour – above the line.

Australia: New South Wales online ballot error ‘disadvantaged’ parties, court action flagged | ABC

A political party accidentally left off online versions of ballot papers has indicated it could take court action after the New South Wales election. The iVote online voting system was suspended for much of yesterday after the NSW Electoral Commission was alerted to the error by the Outdoor Recreation Party’s Peter Whelan. The system is available to voters who are vision impaired, have reading difficulties, live more than 20 kilometres from a polling station or will be out of the state on election day. Mr Whelan said he was shocked when he logged on to the website yesterday. Despite his party having drawn a sought-after Group B “above the line” position on the Upper House ballot paper, it did not appear there on the electronic version. The Animal Justice party, which drew Group C on the ballot, was also omitted.

Australia: New South Wales poll result could be challenged after parties are left off electronic ballot paper | The Guardian

The result of the upper house election in New South Wales could be contested after 19,000 early voters cast their votes on electronic ballot papers that left off the names of two of the parties above the line. The Animal Justice party and Outdoor Recreation party were left out on the electronic voting site iVote. About 19,000 people cast their vote before the error was noticed, but the NSW Electoral Commission has declared their votes will still be valid. Online voting was suspended for about five hours on Tuesday when the error was discovered.

Australia: New South Wales e-vote system taken down | The New Daily

New South Wales’ online voting system was suspended for six hours because of an error on the Upper House ballot paper for the state election. The NSW Electoral Commission (NSWEC) “paused” the iVote system after two parties were omitted from a section of the paper. The iVote system is available to voters who are vision-impaired, have reading difficulties, live more than 20km from their nearest polling station or will be interstate or overseas on election day. The Animal Justice Party and the Outdoor Recreation Party were left off the “above the line” section of the paper, the ABC reports. By 5pm Tuesday the iVote website was back up and running.

Australia: NSW’s online gamble: why internet and phone voting is too risky | The Conversation

Up to 250,000 votes are expected to be cast using the iVote electronic voting system between March 16 and the close of polls on March 28 in the New South Wales election. That would represent a massive increase on the 46,864 votes at the 2011 state election and could mean about 5% of the total vote is cast electronically, using a telephone or via the internet. It looks set to be by far the biggest test of electronic voting in Australia, which has largely been limited to small trials in the past, and one of the largest online votes worldwide. If the NSW election proves to be close, those electronic votes could prove crucial. But before electronic voting begins on Monday, people in NSW should be warned: there are many unanswered questions about the integrity and privacy of those votes. Late last year, the federal Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters recommended against electronic voting in federal elections. Its report concluded that:

Australia is not in a position to introduce any large-scale system of electronic voting in the near future without catastrophically compromising our electoral integrity.

Australia: NSW state election 2015: China may seek to hack electronic votes: report | The Canberra Times

If you thought Chinese intelligence agencies had more on their minds than the NSW election, you should think again, according to a security analysis that found our key trading partner may seek to disrupt the state’s democratic big day. A report commissioned by the NSW Electoral Commission warned cyber attacks could be waged against iVote, an electronic system that will allow eligible people to vote in the March 28 election using the internet or a phone. Up to 200,000 voters are expected to register. The consultants’ report, parts of which have been labelled “silly”, lumped groups such as al-Qaeda and the governments of China, North Korea and Iran with the home-grown “threat” of anti-coal and refugee activists. It claimed covert groups with a “broad spectrum of capability” may use “offensive actions” to influence the NSW election result, embarrass authorities or gain media attention.

Australia: ‘Frankly, we don’t do it very well’: Australia Electoral Commission forced to change over WA poll | Sydney Morning Herald

The Australian Electoral Commission will outsource the storage of millions of used ballot papers, conceding its warehouse security and logistics chain is not up to task. The AEC has been forced to overhaul its processes after bungling the 2013 Senate election in Western Australia in which nearly 1400 voting papers were lost, causing the High Court to order a new poll at a cost of $23 million. Former Australia Federal Police commissioner Mick Keelty called the AEC’s handling of the election a “disaster” and the-then electoral commissioner Ed Killesteyn later resigned. On Wednesday, new commissioner Tom Rogers told a parliamentary committee that the AEC would “completely outsource” its warehouse and logistics, including the transport of ballot papers to 8000 polling stations. “Frankly, we don’t do it very well,” he told the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.

Australia: No voters prosecuted despite 7000-plus cases of suspected voting fraud in the 2013 federal election | Sydney Morning Herald

Not a single person will be prosecuted for multiple voting at the 2013 federal election – even those who admitted to casting more than one ballot paper. Australian Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers said he was “disturbed” that of the nearly 8000 cases of suspected voting fraud passed to the Australian Federal Police, not a single case has been forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions. Of the 7743 suspect cases referred to the AFP, just 65 were investigated and not one will progress to conviction. Mr Rogers told a Senate estimates committee that the file passed to the AFP included voters who had actually admitted to voting at more than one polling station and cases where the offence had been denied but there was supporting evidence that they had.

Australia: Electronic vote counting one step closer | Government News

The Australian Electoral Commission appears to be taking tentative steps towards having electronic vote scanning and counting at the next general election. The Commission has called for requests for expressions of interest (REI) for companies to provide advice on ballot paper scanning and counting technology to use in the House of Representatives ballot in the 2016 general election but the technology would not be used widely, instead being run as a pilot project in a handful of polling booths. The REI is at pains to point out: “this is not a request for tender. The AEC intends to initiate a multi-stage procurement process for the required services. “The AEC would appreciate advice from the market regarding the minimum number of tabulators to provide a reasonable (cost effective) pilot.”

Australia: Sydney’s Secure Logic signs $1m online voting contract | CRN

Sydney-based Secure Logic has signed a contract to host the NSW Electoral Commission’s iVote system for the next five years. Secure Logic will provide the NSWEC with infrastructure and platform-as-a-service in a deal worth $990,000. The platform will be able to be scaled during peak election periods, according to head of sales and marketing for Secure Logic, Fergus Brooks. Spanish company Scytl was awarded the contract to provide the online voting software for iVote in May last year, after the state government announced plans to expand iVote for the 2015 election.

Australia: Votes recounted after break in at electoral commission office | The Courier-Mail

Officials recounted all votes for the seat of Mt Coot-tha following an overnight break-in at an Electoral Commission office. Police have confirmed they are investigating the attempted burglary at an office on Lang Parade, Milton, where state election ballot papers for the seat are being counted and stored. The Electoral Commission later confirmed the security incident at the Mt Coot-tha Returning Officer’s office had been resolved and there had been no disturbance to the integrity of vote counting. “All material in the office had been counted over the weekend and today’s check count and audit confirms that figures remain unchanged,” a commission statement said.

Australia: Queenslanders now have to prove their identity to vote – but why? | The Conversation

In a first for an Australian general election, when Queenslanders head to the polls on January 31 they’ll need more than loose change for the sausage sizzle and cake stalls – they now also need to bring proof of identity. … Since passing the voter ID rules last year, as part of a suite of big changes to Queensland electoral laws, the state government has gone quiet on the issue. It has also had relatively little coverage in the media, meaning few Queenslanders even realise the rules have changed. Late last week, an Electoral Commission Queensland spokesperson said that “no-one who turns up to vote without ID will be turned away” and that voter information letters will be posted out this week, ready to scan at polling booths as a fast form of proof of identity.

Australia: Indigenous recognition vote eyed | BBC

More than a century after its constitution was drafted, Australia is edging closer to formally recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the nation’s first people. Changing the constitution to recognise the nation’s first people is not about politics, says Mike Baird, premier of New South Wales – Australia’s biggest state. It’s about righting a wrong. “It is an important part of who we are, it is an important part of our history,” he says. Earlier, this month, Mr Baird became the first state or territory leader to publicly back a federal government campaign – started by the previous Labor government and adopted by coalition Prime Minister Tony Abbott – to reverse the historical exclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people from Australia’s constitution. To do that, the public would have to vote in a referendum.

Australia: Thousands of Victorians unable to vote because of ‘unsound mind’ | The Age

Thousands of Victorians cannot vote in this year’s state election because they have been deemed to have an “unsound mind”. You won’t find a definition for the term in either the federal Electoral Act or in any of its state and territory counterparts. But since the 2010 election, 7176 people have been removed from the state’s electoral roll for this reason, according to Australian Electoral Commission figures. Anyone who is eligible to vote can object to another person being on the roll if they believe they have an “unsound mind”. There are growing calls for the law around such objections to be scrapped to avoid discrimination. Victorian Electoral Commission spokeswoman, Sue Lang, said she was still receiving requests to remove people’s elderly relatives from the roll – usually people with dementia – days before the election.

Australia: E-vote won’t happen for next Oz election | The Register

Australians won’t have the chance to vote electronically any time soon, after a parliamentary committee put the idea on ice. Beloved of netizens for at least 20 years, ‘net voting – as distinct from other ways in which IT&T change our electoral processes – was pitched to the committee on the basis that people “would rather be online than in line” (as the committee’s chair Tony Smith writes in the introduction). However, there’s no chance that with only two years remaining before the next federal election, a suitable system could be selected and rolled out, the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Matters says in the report posted here. Not only would the logistics be catastrophic, the report states: there’s no way to verify that someone voting over the Internet doesn’t have someone else standing over them, and the lack of privacy “opens up a market” for votes to be bought. The report notes that “technological convenience must be balanced against electoral integrity”. The report also makes the inevitable nod towards the risk of hacking.

Australia: Politicians unanimously vote down online voting | Government News

The prospect of online and electronic voting at Australian federal elections has officially had its plug pulled for the foreseeable future. The Parliamentary Committee tasked with investigating the feasibility of digitising Australian ballots has unanimously found that a high-tech solution is still too risky, complicated and expensive to make it a reality in the near term. The probe came after the now infamous Western Australian vote counting bungle that forced the state back to the polls after ballot papers were somehow mislaid. Now in a second interim report issued by the Electoral Matters Committee, federal politicians have concluded that although there is a raft of technological improvements that could be made to the running of elections, a fully digitised solution is still a long way off. “After hearing from a range of experts, and surveying the international electoral landscapes it is clear to me that Australia is not in a position to introduce any large – scale system of electronic voting in the near future without catastrophically compromising our electoral integrity,” said the Committee’s chairman, Tony Smith MP. The Committee’s main beef with online and electronic systems – aside from the obvious threat of hacking – is that the confidentiality of how people vote could be undermined or compromised. At the moment voters physically front-up at polling booths and have their name crossed off a roll before being given two ballot papers, or more in the case of a referendum.

Australia: MPs reject e-voting over cost, integrity fears | iTnews.com.au

A committee of Australian MPs has firmly staked its opposition to the large-scale implementation of electronic voting, pointing to expensive and embarrassing failures of the technology worldwide. The House of Representatives electoral matters committee today rushed out an interim report hosing down suggestions Australia should move to electronic polls, following the controversial loss of WA senate ballots in the 2013 federal election. The panel of MPs concluded there was no feasible way of rolling out electronic voting in Australia without undermining the integrity, security and civic importance of the process – and incurring a massive cost to the Commonwealth. The committee pointed to expensive and embarrassing mishaps across the world as other nations experimented with different versions of electronically enabled polls, from static and isolated machines to full web-based voting.

Australia: Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters rules out move to electronic voting in elections | ABC

The days of voters lining up to use a pencil and paper to cast their ballot will continue, with a federal parliamentary committee ruling out a move to electronic voting. The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters has released an interim report which finds there are too many risks associated with the move. It said shifting to electronic voting for federal elections was not feasible before the next election or in the near future without “catastrophically compromising electoral integrity”. The committee found machine electronic voting was vulnerable to hacking and measures to mitigate that risk would be costly and would still require voters to visit a polling booth. The prospect of voters being able to cast their ballot on the internet also seems a long way off, with questions about privacy for individual voters, security and potential coercion of voters.

Australia: Risks of e-voting outweigh benefits – for now | Computerworld

An interim report of a parliamentary committee tasked with examining the 2013 Senate ballot in Western Australia has concluded that the nation is not yet ready for the widespread use of e-voting in federal elections. In December last year the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters was given the job of examining the fiasco which saw Western Australian voters return to the poll after ballots were lost in the state’s tightly contested 2013 Senate race. “Ultimately, the committee has concluded that electronic voting can’t be introduced in the near future without high costs and unacceptable security risks,” the chair of committee, Liberal MP Tony Smith, said in a statement. “The Committee believes that it is likely that technology will evolve to the point that it will be possible to vote electronically in federal elections,” the interim report states. “At that stage the question for a future Parliament, and the voting public, will be whether the convenience of electronic voting outweighs the risks to the sanctity of the ballot. “The view of this Committee is that the answer to this question at this time is that no, it does not.”

Australia: Victorian state election: 200,000 eligible voters missing in action | The Age

On the last day that Victorians could enrol to vote, staff from the Victorian Electoral Commission were desperately trying to make voting seem fun to persuade holdouts to register. More than 200,000 citizens were not yet registered to vote in the final hours: numbers that could have been seriously influential. Free frisbees, stress balls and water bottles were used all day to lure passing potential voters into an inflatable marquee at City Square that had a passing resemblance to a bouncy castle. “The Victorian election is looking like it’s going to be a close one and the message of our campaign this year is that every vote does count and some elections are won on a very small number of votes,” said VEC representative Lawson Fletcher.

Australia: New South Wales government cancels debate on election bill | Sydney Morning Herlad

The state government appears to be backing away from key aspects of a bill for overhauling elections for the City of Sydney, including reconsidering a controversial proposal to give businesses two votes. Parliament was set to debate the bill on Wednesday. But it was pulled from the agenda. Last-minute changes to several of its key measures are now being considered. “There are a range of amendments being considered,” said MP Gareth Ward, who chaired the parliamentary committee that first recommended the changes.”We as a government are looking at the entirety of the legislation.” The bill was introduced by the Shooters and Fishers Party and, until now, with the government’s backing.

Australia: Politicians billing taxpayers twice for election campaign material | The Guardian

Federal MPs and senators are passing on the cost of printing election-related material to the taxpayer in a practice once described as “double dipping” by the auditor general’s office. A Guardian Australia analysis of politicians’ entitlements shows that on average claims for printing and communications materials during an election campaign are twice as high as at other times. Funds are provided separately to parties for election campaigns via the Australian Electoral Commission, so using regular entitlements for campaign material may represent a double use of taxpayers’ funds that benefits incumbent politicians.

Australia: Australian businesses get to vote: Sydney conservatives want it to be required by law. | Slate

In the United States, if the idea of letting corporations vote in elections gets talked about at all, it’s usually as the absurd logical end point of treating companies like people. Not so in Australia. In many cities across the country, business owners and landlords have long enjoyed the right to participate in local elections, even if they live out of town. (Imagine if a pizza parlor owner from New Jersey could vote in the New York City mayor’s race because he had a location in Manhattan, and you’ve got the picture.) This month, an intriguing political fight has been brewing over whether businesses in Sydney should be required to vote in municipal elections. At the moment, conservatives are pushing a controversial bill that would compel business owners and landlords to cast ballots in city council and mayoral races—a move widely viewed as an attempt to oust the current mayor, Clover Moore, a popular progressive. The controversy, to be clear, isn’t over whether businesses should still get the vote. It’s just about whether they should be forced to vote.

Australia: New election mooted to bust budget impasse Sydney Morning Herald

Former Reserve Bank board member Warwick McKibbin has suggested a new election may be needed to resolve the Senate impasse holding up key budget savings, as he lashed the political populism of the Greens and Palmer United Party. And Bank of America Merrill Lynch economist Saul Eslake has suggested a mini-budget was ”one of the options the government needs to think about” as consumer confidence falls, unemployment rises to 6.4 per cent and, if the political uncertainty continues, business confidence potentially falls. The comments came before a scheduled meeting between Joe Hockey and PUP leader Clive Palmer on Tuesday, with the Treasurer rejecting former treasurer Peter Costello’s call to drop the proposed $7 GP co-payment and declaring budget critics should not write off key measures.

Australia: Private investigators want a look at the rolls | The Australian

The Australian Institute of Professional Investigators is lobbying MPs involved in a review of last year’s election to push for restrictions on accessing the roll to be overturned. Other groups keen to see access to the roll restored include those separated by forced adoption or child removal or similar practices who are trying to track down their relatives. They have won the backing of Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews, who is calling for change. Security personnel are also lobbying to have access to the roll restored. Investigators institute president Jim Corbett said private investigators had freely used the roll in their work until the most recent changes, but now were not.

Australia: AEC concerned about safety of electronic voting | The Australian

Australians are unlikely to be able to cast their votes electronically in a federal election any time soon. Acting Australian Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers today poured cold water on the push to introduce a trial of e-voting at the next federal poll, conceding his comments risked caricaturing him as a cautious bureaucrat. Mr Rogers voiced concerns about whether the AEC could implement e-voting safely. … “I would have to be honest with you and say I’m concerned about our ability to introduce some form of electronic voting safely.