National: Democracy Live Internet Voting System Can Be Hacked, Researchers Warn | Lucas Ropek /Government Technology
An online voting platform that has seen recent adoption by numerous state and county governments has vulnerabilities that could be exploited to change votes without the knowledge of election officials, a new report alleges. The OmniBallot, which is a product of Seattle-based tech firm Democracy Live, purports to offer “secure, accessible remote balloting for all voters” and is being used by state or county governments in Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Ohio, Florida, New Jersey and West Virginia. The company developed a number of contracts for limited Internet voting pilot programs with states earlier this year, after COVID-19 threatened to disrupt primary elections nationwide. These programs are fairly limited in scope and largely focus on overseas voters and the disabled. However, computer science researchers say what the company really offers is an insecure platform. The recently published report from professors Michael J. Specter, of MIT, and J. Alex Halderman, of the University of Michigan, states that the company “uses a simplistic approach to Internet voting that is vulnerable to vote manipulation by malware on the voter’s device and by insiders or other attackers who can compromise Democracy Live, Amazon, Google, or Cloudflare [its partners].”