National: Election Apps Are on the Rise, but Online Voting Is Not | Kansas City infoZine

In a buzzing and ringing world, technology has become an integral part of society, where almost anything can be done with the press of a fingertip But when voting is involved, things get a little tricky. With more than a million apps in the Google Play store and 900,000 apps in the Apple Store, users can download a variety of voting and polling apps. Several states, including Tennessee and Louisiana, have released voting apps that are free or can be purchased in the Apple and Android store for smartphones. New Hampshire is developing its own app for the midterm elections. Voters can’t cast ballots with these apps, but they can use them to find polling locations, ask for absentee ballots, look at sample ballots and more. The D.C. Board of Elections released its free app that can answer questions about the Nov. 4 election. “It’s a great trend for elections offices to be putting these kinds of tools out there. Not only does it help voters, but it can also ease some of the burden on calls coming in at busy times for finding polling places,” Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, said. Her group provides voting information and wants to make sure technology is adopted carefully.

Texas: Rice team sets sights on better voting machine | Phys.org

At the urging of county election officials in Austin, Texas, a group of Rice University engineers and social scientists has pulled together a team of U.S. experts to head off a little-known yet looming crisis facing elections officials nationwide. According to a January report from the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, U.S. elections officials are facing an “impending crisis” as they look to replace the aging voting systems they purchased after Florida’s flawed 2000 election. The commission concluded that elections officials “do not have the money to purchase new machines, and legal and market constraints prevent the development of machines they would want even if they had the funds.” But a STAR (Secure, Transparent, Auditable and Reliable) voting system is on the horizon.

Canada: Rise of e-voting is inevitable, as is risk of hacking | The Globe and Mail

It took just one typo in one line of code to elect a malevolent computer program mayor of Washington, D.C. In the fall of 2010, the District staged a mock election to test out a new online voting system, and invited hackers to check its security. A team from the University of Michigan took them up on the offer. They quickly found a flaw in the code and broke in. They changed every vote. Master Control Program, the self-aware software that attempts to take over the world in the film Tron, was a runaway write-in candidate for mayor. Skynet, the system that runs a robot army in the Terminator franchise, was elected to Congress. And Bender, the hard-drinking android in the cartoon Futurama, became a member of the school board. Incredibly, it took D.C. officials two days to realize they had been hacked. …The use of Internet voting is exploding. Nearly 100 Ontario municipalities are using it in Monday’s election – including one that will even ditch paper ballots entirely. Proponents contend it is not only more convenient, but more equitable, giving people who cannot get to physical polling stations the same opportunity to vote as everyone else. But the expansion of e-voting has also caused consternation for some security researchers and municipal officials. They worry that entrusting this pillar of democracy to computers is too great a risk, given the potential for software problems – or hackers determined to put beer-swilling robots on the school board.

Editorials: Democracy gets a facelift | Zev Yaroslavsky

Envisioning a future that would make the founding fathers proud, Los Angeles County is investing $13.6 million to revolutionize its voting system and possibly set the standard for the rest of the country, too. After decades of putting up with the clunky InkaVote and its even clunkier predecessors — Votomatic punch cards, anyone? — the Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to develop a prototype with a touch screen and other high-tech innovations designed to serve the different needs of the county’s nearly 5 million registered voters. Barring any serious glitches, the new “ballot marking machine” will be field tested in 2017 and mass produced in 2018, in time for the gubernatorial election. “If this works well in L.A. County, it could be a game changer for the nation,” said Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan organization that advocates election accuracy, transparency and verifiability. Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan said the machine’s engineering specifications, intellectual property and functional prototypes would be nonproprietary and remain in the public domain. “From the beginning, we’ve adopted the principle of doing this in a very transparent manner so other jurisdictions can take advantage of the data,” he said. The project’s first priority is to upgrade the county’s voting system but Logan added, “If we can do that in a way that is transferrable to other jurisdictions, that can advance voting systems across the country, it would be icing on the cake.”

California: Paper is Still the Tech of Choice for California Elections | KQED

In a state that that takes pride in being on the technological cutting edge, most California voters will mark paper ballots with ink by Nov. 4, whether they vote at their polling place or by mail. The state’s reliance on paper would have seemed unlikely 15 years ago. California’s then-Secretary of State Bill Jones floated a radical idea in 1999: let people vote online. He convened task force to look into the possibility. “Here we are in the dot com boom,” said David Jefferson, a computer scientist who chaired the task force’s Technology Committee. “It’s an exciting thing. Of course we would all like to vote online. Let’s just figure out how to deliver it to the people of California.” Jefferson now works on one of the world’s fastest computers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He recalls when the online voting project started to fall apart. “In the course of that study, which took place over several months, doubts began to creep in,” he said. “And then we began to find more and more flaws.”

National: Online voting not ready for worldwide roll-out, study concludes | AFP

Online voting has the potential to boost election participation around the world, but is not yet ready to be widely rolled out due to security risks, a study released Wednesday said. The research, produced by the Atlantic Council think tank and the online protection firm McAfee, concluded that “security will need to be vastly improved” before it becomes feasible to adopt Internet voting on a large scale. According to the study, online voting faces more complex obstacles than electronic commerce, where a customer can be reimbursed in the case of fraud or theft. “Online voting poses a much tougher problem” than e-commerce, the report said. “Lost votes are unacceptable… and unlike paper ballots, electronic votes cannot be ‘rolled back’ or easily recounted.”

National: Paper: Great promise for online voting if security, verification challenges met | FierceGovernmentIT

Without a vast improvement in security, privacy and verification protocols, broad adoption of online voting – which has the potential to make voting easier and more accessible, improve turnout and reduce costs – is unlikely to take off, a new paper argues. For example, if a hacker steals money from a bank, retailer or another company, then the theft can be easily discovered and customers compensated for any loss. “Online voting poses a much tougher problem: lost votes are unacceptable,” writes the paper’s author, Peter Haynes, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security. “And unlike paper ballots, electronic votes cannot be ‘rolled back’ or easily recounted. The twin goals of anonymity and verifiability within an online voting system are largely incompatible with current technologies,” he adds. The paper (pdf), which was released Oct. 8 and sponsored by Internet security company McAfee, spells out the pitfalls and advantages of online voting.

Canada: Latest Internet voting reports show failures across the board | Al Jazeera

Internet voting, a technology often cited as a solution to the United States’ problematic voting machines, received failing security and accessibility grades in the latest in-depth audit conducted by the City of Toronto. Two of the three vendors audited by the city currently have contracts with over a dozen U.S. jurisdictions for similar technologies. The accessibility report, prepared by researchers at the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University, and the security report, prepared by researchers at Concordia and Western universities, were obtained by Al Jazeera America through a Freedom of Information Act request. … The reports highlight the difficulty in creating a voting system that isn’t more susceptible to corruption than existing voting technology and that is easy enough to use for voters with a variety of personal computer setups, including those with disabilities who often use alternatives to traditional mice, keyboards and screens. …  “It’s clear from the report for Toronto that the systems being considered don’t meet the minimum accessibility standards required,” said Barbara Simons, a board member of Verified Voting, and co-author of the book “Broken Ballots: Will your Vote Count?” who also obtained the reports through a Freedom of Information request.

National: Privacy advocates sue Pentagon over Internet voting test results | The Washington Post

Privacy advocates, worried that the Defense Department is sinking millions of dollars into unproven online voting systems, are suing the Pentagon for the release of long-promised test results on whether Internet-based voting is safe. The subtext of the lawsuit is that after spending millions on online voting experiments — in 2010 alone, the Defense Department’s Federal Voting Assistance Program received $9 million from Congress to design and test Internet-based voting — privacy advocates worry that online voting could spread in the United States without proper vetting. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a D.C.-based advocacy group, filed a lawsuit last month against the Pentagon, under the Freedom of Information Act, to compel the release of the results of the department’s test of its online voting system. Ginger McCall is the director of EPIC’s open government project. “Voting is an integral part of our democratic system,” she said, “and it is imperative that the public have information about whether or not e-voting systems are really secure and reliable before they are used or more money is spent on their acquisition.”

National: New online tool helps troops overseas vote | Stripes

With the midterm elections approaching, voting activists have developed a new online tool to make it easier for servicemembers deployed overseas to cast their votes. The Can I Vote Absentee? widget provides information about absentee voting rules and regulations on a state-by-state basis. It also helps people register to vote and request their ballots. … Registering and acquiring ballots are critical steps in the voting process, but Pamela Smith, the president of Verified Voting, emphasized the importance of getting the ballots mailed back in time. She encouraged troops to take advantage of the Military Postal Service’s special express mail delivery service for sending ballots. The service is free and gets each ballot back to election officials within two days on average, she told reporters. “This is really helpful because it makes it a secure and private way to get your ballot back,” she said.

National: Why Voting Machines Are About To Wreak Havoc On Another Election | ThinkProgress

In 2012, hundreds of thousands of people across the U.S. waited, at first patiently and then with growing frustration, in lines that ventured out the doors and wrapped around street corners. They weren’t waiting more than seven hours in line to buy the new iPhone — they were waiting to vote on an electronic touch-screen machine. Technology has made life easier, simplifying common tasks such as banking, publishing a book, talking to friends and paying for things online. But when it comes to voting, technology is stuck in 2002. And with the decade-old electronic voting machines that states use falling apart — creating long lines that cause some not vote at all — voters are slowly losing access to their voting rights. There’s been renewed emphasis on voting rights in the last year, since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key portion of the Voting Rights Act. … But even without ID laws, voters face obstacles at polling centers having to wait hours to vote in some regions partly because of outdated and too few electronic voting machines.

Maryland: State to appeal ruling on voting by disabled | Baltimore Sun

The state attorney general’s office is appealing a federal judge’s ruling ordering Maryland to use an absentee ballot-marking technology for the disabled that the Board of Elections had refused to certify as secure. The state will ask the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., to throw out District Judge Richard D. Bennett’s decision this month. Bennett found that the election board’s refusal to implement the program violated the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. The attorney general’s office filed a notice of intent to appeal Monday but did not spell out its objections to the ruling. Alan Brody, a spokesman for the office, said the state is not requesting a stay of Bennett’s ruling. The decision not to seek a stay means this year’s election will go forward with the system in place, according to Brody. Nikki Baines Charlson, deputy administrator of the elections board, said the system has been installed and is being used now by disabled absentee voters. “We will continue to use it until the court tells us otherwise,” Charlson said. She referred further questions to the attorney general’s office.

National: Voting’s ‘impending crisis’ | Al Jazeera

A recent presidential commission report on election administration characterizes the state of U.S. voting machines as an “impending crisis.” According to the report, created in response to a presidential order, existing voting machines are reaching the end of their operational life spans, jurisdictions often lack the funds to replace them, and those with funds find market offerings limited because several constraints have made manufacturing new machines difficult. On Election Day, these problems could translate into hours-long waits, lost votes and errors in election results. In the long term, such problems breed a lack of trust in the democratic process, reducing the public’s faith in government, experts say. According to Barbara Simons, a member of the board of advisers to the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the problem can’t be avoided any longer. “People died for the right to vote as recently as the civil rights movement,” she said. “The American Revolution was all about being able to control our own democracy, and that means voting … We know that a lot of machines were breaking in the 2012 election. It’s not that it’s an impending crisis. This crisis is already here.” Also, outdated voting machines can present security risks both in hardware deficiencies (some machines use generic keys to protect sensitive panels) and in software flaws that are difficult if not impossible to detect when compromised, according to security audits. Assessing the security of many of these systems is difficult, however, since companies insist proprietary software and hardware may not be disclosed to third parties. Government audits are often not fully public. The current problem is rooted in the short-term fixes that were implemented to solve the last major voting crisis, in 2000, when unreliable punchcard machines led to ambiguous ballots in Florida, putting the presidential election into question. After further issues in the 2002 midterm elections, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) that fall. HAVA gave states millions of dollars to replace punchcard machines and created the EAC, charged with establishing standards for voting systems.

Colorado: Arapahoe County pioneering use of new vote verification system | The Denver Post

Arapahoe County is piloting a vote-checking system this week that promises to raise the level of confidence in the accuracy of election results in Colorado. Elections officials gathered Wednesday at the county’s clerk and recorder office in Littleton to put the system — dubbed the risk-limiting audit — through the paces. The goal is to work out the bugs and have it ready for statewide rollout by election day 2017, as required by the state legislature. “The way we do audits doesn’t present a good enough picture,” Arapahoe County Clerk Matt Crane said Wednesday. “Our citizens deserve to know that we have a fair, transparent and accurate voting process.” The way a post-election audit of ballots is done currently requires a canvass team to pull at least 500 randomly selected paper ballots and compare the results to the tally recorded by the tabulation machines used in the election. Under the risk-limiting audit, random numbers generated by a software program will identify certain ballots to be pulled for inspection. The sample size is statistically determined based on the total number of ballots cast, the margin of the contest and the audit results as they unfold.

Maryland: On-line voting battle pits the blind vs. the blind | McClatchy DC

Maryland’s Board of Elections fell one vote short last year of the super-majority needed to inch the state toward online on-line voting, despite cyber experts’ warnings that such balloting could easily be hacked, with votes even switched to other candidates. Now, three months before this fall’s elections, the issue has morphed into a legal battle pitting the blind vs. the blind. It’s a fight with plenty of intrigue behind it and nationwide implications in the debate over whether cyber security is ready for electronic voting. The National Federation of the Blind Inc., which touts itself as the recognized voice of blind Americans and their families, filed a federal court suit in May seeking to compel the state elections board to make its newly developed online ballot-marking system available so that all disabled people could cast absentee ballots via the internet this fall. It’s a suit that likely wasn’t unwelcome to the three board members who voted to implement the system and to state Election Director Linda Lamone, a big advocate of electronic voting. But over the weekend, the American Council of the Blind of Maryland, along with three blind residents and two nonprofit groups that have fought internet voting, intervened in the case filed in Baltimore. They contend that the board’s online balloting tool is both flawed and insecure.

Editorials: Utah is correct to both be at the front of online voting, and cautiously study security | Deseret News

Utah Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox has convened a committee to study how the Beehive State might proceed with online voting. He has said Internet voting is inevitable, but his office agrees that security is the top concern. That is the correct attitude to assume as this effort proceeds. Security — the idea that a voter’s secret ballot is transmitted and tabulated correctly — must be nailed down and ensured beyond any reasonable doubt before anyone votes directly through the Internet. If voters lose confidence in the integrity of the election system, the notion of government by the people would be imperiled. We have yet to hear of any online effort that has successfully overcome these concerns. Norway, a pioneer in online voting, ended a three-year experiment with it last month, citing a lack of security. A small number of people there succeeded in voting twice by casting both online and paper ballots.

National: Court case: Voting via the Internet is a civil rights issue for disabled | Al Jazeera

The debate over whether Americans should be permitted to vote via the Internet has long pitted voting system manufacturers, who frame it to election officials as inevitable and modern, against top cybersecurity experts who insist it cannot be done without inviting wide-scale fraud. In recent months, however, a powerful new force has joined the fight: people with disabilities, insisting that using electronic ballots from their homes ought to be seen as a right guaranteed by the Americans With Disabilities Act. Most notably, a federal judge in Maryland is scheduled next month to hear arguments as to whether the state board of elections must certify a system that involves the Internet-based delivery and marking of absentee ballots for people with disabilities. The lawsuit’s main plaintiff is the National Federation for the Blind (NFB), joined by a man with cerebral palsy and a woman who is deaf and blind. Separately, the Utah legislature in March passed the Internet Voting Pilot Project Act to permit county election officials to develop systems for people with disabilities to vote online. No actual system has been proposed or adopted yet. …  Those systems are worrisome to opponents, but for the most part they represent a relatively small number of voters scattered across the nation. The focus on Maryland is the result of both limited resources and the fear of a federal precedent, said Susan Greenhalgh of Verified Voting, a watchdog group that raises concerns about vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems of all types.

Utah: Improving voter turnout still a tough nut to crack | Deseret News

Would the ability to vote in your pajamas, on a smart phone, make you a better participant in the political process? Would it make you care more? Utah’s lieutenant governor has convened a committee to study the idea of making the state a pioneer in Internet voting. They might want to look to Norway, which tried such a thing — then, according to a headline writer at npr.org, did a “Ctrl+Alt+Delete” on the whole thing a few weeks ago. Utah Director of Elections Mark Thomas told the Deseret News last week that the biggest hurdle to overcome is security. Norwegian officials would agree. They couldn’t do it. NPR quotes Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory computer scientist David Jefferson as saying, “There is no way to guarantee that the security, privacy and transparency requirements for elections can all be met with any practical technology in the foreseeable future.”

Norway: Norway Does A Ctrl+Alt+Delete On E-Voting Experiment | NPR

After a two-year trial for Internet voting, Norway is pulling the plug. The country’s Office of Modernization said in a statement that there’s no evidence that online voting, tested in elections in 2011 and 2013, improved turnout. It also said that “political disagreement” over the issue, along with voters’ fear that ballots might not be secure, could undermine the democratic process. The office said it had “decided that the attempt with voting over the Internet should not be promoted.” The idea of online voting has been in the ether for as long as the Internet, so Norway’s experience might be relevant elsewhere. … David Jefferson, a computer scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, wrote in 2011 that “computer and network security experts are virtually unanimous in pointing out that online voting is an exceedingly dangerous threat to the integrity of U.S. elections. “There is no way to guarantee that the security, privacy, and transparency requirements for elections can all be met with any practical technology in the foreseeable future,” he says.

Namibia: Implementing Biometric-Based Systems – Researchers Challenge Electronic Voting | allAfrica.com

In line with last week’s article “Implementing Biometrics based Systems: Electronic Voting Selection Criteria”, we continue our focus on electronic voting, known as e-voting, to be held in Namibia. In addition, the Biometric Research Laboratory, BRL, at Namibia Biometric System will answer some of the questions received in last week’s article. However, researcher at BRL and worldwide have been keen to get access to e-voting machine and independently assess the merits of the machines. Researchers at BRL would like to highlight some of the latest findings on e-voting machines conducted by researchers from the University of Michigan. Recently in May 2014, researchers at the University of Michigan said they have developed a technique to hack into the Indian electronic voting machines. University of Michigan researchers were able to change results by sending text messages from a mobile.

Ukraine: Election narrowly avoided ‘wanton destruction’ from hackers | CSMonitor

A three-pronged wave of cyber-attacks aimed at wrecking Ukraine’s presidential vote – including an attempt to fake computer vote totals – was narrowly defeated by government cyber experts, Ukrainian officials say. The still little-known hacks, which surfaced May 22-26, appear to be among the most dangerous cyber-attacks yet deployed to sabotage a national election – and a warning shot for future elections in the US and abroad, political scientists and cyber experts say. National elections in the Netherlands, Norway, and other nations have seen hackers probe Internet-tied election systems, but never with such destructive abandon, said experts monitoring the Ukraine vote. “This is the first time we’ve seen a cyber-hacktivist organization act in a malicious way on such a grand scale to try to wreck a national election,” says Joseph Kiniry, an Internet voting systems cyber-security expert. “To hack in and delete everything on those servers is just pillaging, wanton destruction.” That wanton destruction began four days ahead of the national vote, when CyberBerkut, a group of pro-Russia hackers, infiltrated Ukraine’s central election computers and deleted key files, rendering the vote-tallying system inoperable. The next day, the hackers declared they had “destroyed the computer network infrastructure” for the election, spilling e-mails and other documents onto the web as proof. A day later, government officials said the system had been repaired, restored from backups, and was ready to go. But it was just the beginning.

National: DoD won’t release e-voting penetration tests | Politico

Officials have yet to release the results of a 2011 set of penetration tests on Internet voting software conducted by the Department of Defense, prompting election watchdogs to ask what the Pentagon might be hiding. A few months after the 2011 tests, an official said the results would be publicly available, and a year later, another said the first release was slated by the end of 2012. A representative now says it will release results in 2015, as material is considered “pre-decisional.” Meanwhile, elections officials and lawmakers from across the country are joining watchdogs in demanding the results.

National: How Block Chain Technology Could Usher in Digital Democracy | CoinDesk

In the digital age, it seems strange that people all around the world still use paper to vote. Of course, given bitcoin’s promise to remove paper from the financial system, many in the industry are beginning to ask if the same block chain technology can be applied to help modernize the democratic process. … Forget it, says Barbara Simons. “At this point we cannot do Internet voting securely,” warns the former IBM computer scientist who has conducted extensive research into Internet voting. Readers will point out that Internet voting is already happening, but she’s saying that we cannot guarantee its integrity. Simons, a former president of the Association for Computing Machinery, participated in a National Workshop on Internet Voting commissioned by former US President Bill Clinton, and authored a book, ‘Broken Ballots‘. She is a long-standing critic of online voting, and her research caused the US Department of Defense to nix an Internet voting system it was considering. “A lot of people think ‘I can bank online, so why can’t I vote online?’,” says Simons. “But, millions disappear from online bank accounts each year.”

Editorials: Internet voting: A really bad idea whose time has come | Larry Seltzer/ZDNet

The area on the Jersey shore where I grew up was hit very hard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. It was many weeks before some of the people could even go home. Life was a mess. And then, a little over a week later, was the 2012 election day. The state made it clear that they would make whatever accommodations it could to help people vote if they were displaced by the storm. So far, so good, but my ears perked up when I heard about “email voting.” Yes, the state announced that voters could email in a vote. This was part of an effort to make all non-traditional forms of voting, including mail-in and fax, easier. In fact, voters were instructed to ignore the part of the relevant web page where it says “The County Clerk cannot accept faxed or emailed copies of a Application for Vote by Mail Ballot, unless you are a Military or Overseas Voter, since an original signature is required.” But certainly such circumstances were sui generis, and no sane state authority would contemplate Internet voting in the normal course of things, right? Wrong.

Canada: Switch to e-voting still an issue in Brockton | The Post

Some Brockton residents are upset with council’s decision to go with electronic voting in the municipal election this fall. Council has approved a contract with Dominion Voting to provide telephone and Internet voting at a cost of $1.70 for each 7,600 potential voters. Pauline Gay and Barb Klages left last Monday’s council meeting critical of council’s decision. They want the municipality to stick with paper ballots. “I’m disappointed because they don’t seem to consider the security of my computer if I choose to vote with it . . . and there is no way to do a valid recount with an electronic vote,” said Klages. During the meeting council heard from former IBM employee and computer scientist Barbara Simons, who addressed council by teleconference from California. She cited cost, lack of security and the inability to have a recount in a close election as reasons to reject electronic voting. She also said Internet voting doesn’t increase voter participation.

Estonia: Centre Party: e-voting should be banned | Baltic Business News

Estonia’s largest opposition party Centre Party is requesting to ban e-voting in the upcoming European Parliament elections, reports ERR. The request signed was addressed the letter to Estonian President Toomas-Hendrik Ilves, Prime Minister Taavi Rõivas, Secretary of State Heiki Loot, Chairman of the Electoral Committee Alo Heinsalu, Estonian Parliament speaker Eiki Nestor, Chairman of the Supreme Court Priit Pikamäe, Law Chancellor Indrek Teder and State Auditor Alar Karis. Copies of the letter were also addressed to the European leaders Martin Schulz, Herman Van Rompuy and José Manuel Barroso. In its request the party refers to the findings published yesterday by a group of international experts who claim that the Estonian Internet-based e-voting system is extremely vulnerable and should be banned.

India: US scientists ‘hack’ India electronic voting machines | Bhatkallys

Scientists at a US university say they have developed a technique to hack into Indian electronic voting machines. After connecting a home-made device to a machine, University of Michigan researchers were able to change results by sending text messages from a mobile. Indian election officials say their machines are foolproof, and that it would be very difficult even to get hold of a machine to tamper with it. India uses about 1.4m electronic voting machines in each general election. A video posted on the internet by the researchers at the University of Michigan purportedly shows them connecting a home-made electronic device to one of the voting machines used in India. Professor J Alex Halderman, who led the project, said the device allowed them to change the results on the machine by sending it messages from a mobile phone.

Estonia: Online Voting System Is Not Secure, Researchers Say | TechPresident

“I gave my e-vote. This is not only convenient, but a vote of confidence to one of the best IT systems in the world, a vote of confidence to the Estonian State,” tweeted Toomas Hendrik Ilves , the president of Estonia on May 15th, marking the start of early voting for the European Parliament (the voting process will end on May 25th.) While undoubtedly convenient, e-voting in Estonia might not be as safe as President Ilves think. An independent group of researchers recently tested the Estonian I-voting system used during the last municipal elections, held in October 2013, and concluded that the flaws and lapses in operational security make it vulnerable to manipulations. Therefore, it cannot be considered safe enough. Last Monday, the Guardian reported on the research, whose results are available in a technical report published on Estoniaevoting.org, a website set up by the researchers, complete with photos and videos. “These computers could have easily been compromised by criminals or foreign hackers, undermining the security of the whole system,” declared Harri Hursti to the British newspaper. Hursti is an independent researcher from Finland with experience in testing e-voting system.

Estonia: How Secure is E-Voting in the Nation Where 20 Percent of Citizens Vote Online? | Motherboard

Days before voting opens for Estonia’s European elections, a group of researchers came out with a summary of a report that questioned the security of the country’s innovative online voting system. They said that they had found “such serious security vulnerabilities” that, by their recommendation, e-voting should be discontinued. That happened on Monday, and e-voting for the country’s European elections opens on Thursday morning. Estonia’s Electoral Committee seemed as surprised at the news as anyone, and since then the findings have spurred rebuttals (and rebuttals of rebuttals), ignited political debate, and thrown the whole idea of e-voting into disarray. It seems rather quaint that, when we can do everything else on our iPhones, most of the world still votes by trudging along to polling stations to drop cards in boxes or sending paper ballots by snail mail. Estonia, the small country with the big technological reputation, introduced e-voting as an option in 2005, and over 20 percent of voters have used it in recent elections, with voters using the chip in their national ID card and a PIN to prove their identity. The National Electoral Committee notes that it’s particularly useful for voters who live remotely or travel a lot, and said that in the last two elections e-votes were collected from 105 different countries.

Estonia: Online voting system could easily be rigged by hackers | The Verge

Estonia’s online voting system could easily be hacked by attackers working on behalf of an outside government, researchers have discovered. That’s alarming news considering how much faith Estonia has shown in its e-voting system; it’s the only country that uses web-based voting “in a significant way” for national elections, researchers said in a report published Monday. Other countries including the US have steered clear of web-based voting out of security concerns.  And Estonia is a good example of why they’re reluctant to make the jump. After putting together a replica of the Estonian voting setup, a research team found that they were able to infiltrate the voting technology and change the result of an entire election — without leaving any real trace of the digital break-in.