Switzerland: Two Swiss cantons get the go-ahead for online voting | The Local

The Swiss government has given the green light to two cantons to resume online voting in time for the next set of referendums in September. The cantons of St Gallen and Aargau will be able to resume e-voting, joining six other cantons which already offer the system. Online voting was used previously in St Gallen and Aargau between 2010 and 2015, when the government banned the practice before that year’s general election, due to security loopholes. During that time, both cantons used the Vote électronique system which involved a total of nine cantons before the government withdrew its authorization.

Australia: New South Wales Electoral Commission given $5.4m to rebuild iVote | iTnews

The NSW Electoral Commission scored $5.4 million in this year’s state budget to rebuild its iVote online voting system in time for the next state election in 2019. The funding is part of a $23 million package to improve the agency’s online systems, which will also see the introduction of “an end-to-end solution for the disclosure of political donations, expenditure and the lodgement of public funding claims,” budget documents state. Last month the NSWEC asked the market to suggest off-the-shelf software that could replace the online voting system’s current core platform. “The RFI [request for information] process will give suppliers the opportunity to demonstrate new or innovative solutions that may better meet the needs of the NSWEC,” the agency said at the time.

United Kingdom: Why we still can’t vote online | The Telegraph

We do our banking, our shopping and manage our relationships online. But our democracy remains decidedly analogue: in 2017, the simple act of casting a vote requires citizens to trudge down to a polling booth, queue up, and tick a box on a voting slip. … The most clear threat to online voting is the prospect of a cyber attack. If malicious actors were able to hack into the voting system, they might be able to manipulate the result. The threat of this has grown in recent years. Russian hackers are said to have interfered in last year’s US election by stealing information from US Democrats. Being able to target the voting system itself would be a much bigger prize. Hackers might not even have to gain access to the voting system. Launching a distributed denial of service (DDos) attack, in which a system is flooded with internet traffic to the extent that legitimate attempts to access it cannot get through, could hamper the online voting process.

California: Amid calls for investigation, Los Angeles certifies Skid Row election outcome | KPCC

Skid Row advocates say they hope to pursue “any and all legal action” to help keep their community’s effort to establish a neighborhood council alive. General Jeff Page, speaking for the Skid Row Neighborhood Council formation committee, told KPCC Monday he did not agree with city officials’ decision on Friday to certify last month’s election results, when the Skid Row effort was defeated by less than 100 votes. “It’s a bunch of hogwash,” he said. “Right now we’re in the process of seeking legal representation to stand with us and overcome this travesty.”

National: Transforming Election Cybersecurity | Council on Foreign Relations

The 2016 U.S. election constituted a watershed for democracies in the digital age. During the election cycle, fears proliferated among policymakers and the public that foreign actors could exploit cyber technologies [PDF] to tamper with voter registration, access voting machines, manipulate storage and transmission of results, and influence election outcomes. Russian information operations and disinformation on social media compounded these fears about election cybersecurity by raising questions about foreign interference with the election’s integrity. Similar worries have arisen with elections this year in France, Britain, and Germany, and the Netherlands opted to hand count ballots in its March election to prevent hacking from affecting the outcome. In May 3 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, James B. Comey, former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, indicated that Russia had tried to tamper with vote counts in other countries and that it might attempt to do the same in the United States in the future. Technical strategies [PDF] to protect election systems from cyber interference exist, such as stopping the use of voting machines connected by wireless networks and deploying machines that produce auditable paper trails. However, the events of 2016 demonstrate that more high-level political action is required to manage real and perceived cyber vulnerabilities in election systems.

Canada: Online voting not ready for federal, provincial election: officials | CBC

A small group of election officials from across Canada who observed a ground-breaking plebiscite vote on P.E.I. has concluded online and telephone voting should be considered only under limited circumstances in Canada in the foreseeable future, given the risks involved. P.E.I.’s plebiscite on electoral reform, held over a 10-day period in October and November 2016, allowed voters to participate by voting online, by telephone, or with a traditional paper ballot. It was the first time in Canada online voting was included as an option in a province-wide election. More than 80 per cent of Island voters who participated voted online. An audit team made up of election officials from across the country was assembled to observe the vote. That team concluded that, while online voting was secure enough for a non-binding plebiscite in Canada’s smallest province, “a perfectly secure and fool-proof electronic voting system does not yet exist.” Because of the “major risks” associated, the audit team concluded online and telephone voting for federal and provincial elections in Canada “should be limited to use only by absentee voters for the immediate foreseeable future.”

Australia: Victorian inquiry backs limited Internet-based e-voting | Computerworld

A Victorian parliamentary inquiry has backed the roll out of Internet-based voting for state elections, but only in limited circumstances. A report by the state parliament’s Electoral Matters Committee on the issue was tabled yesterday. The inquiry endorsed the use of remote electronic voting for electors who are blind or have low vision, suffer motor impairment, have insufficient language or literacy skills, or who are eligible to vote but interstate or overseas. Internet-based voting should be backed by the “most rigorous security standards available” to the Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC), the report recommended.

Lithuania: President says online voting wouldn’t ensure secrecy and security | The Baltic Times

Lithuania’s President Dalia Grybauskaite says that online voting in the country would fail to ensure confidentiality and security. “In light of the geopolitical realities and seeing the enormous resources earmarked to cyber attacks against democratic countries, we can conclude that online voting would be short on confidentiality and security. This would possibly violate the requirement of anonymity,” Grybauskaite said in a comment to BNS via her press service. Lithuania’s government has envisaged that the information system for online voting should be worked out in the second quarter of 2018. The Justice Ministry says that Lithuanians should make their first online vote in the 2019 elections to local governments.

California: In narrow election, downtown votes against creating neighborhood council for skid row | Los Angeles Times

Downtown residents and business people narrowly defeated a proposal to form a separate neighborhood council for skid row, the city’s epicenter of homelessness, but the measure organizers said Friday that they would continue to press for a stronger voice for their community. People with ties to a broad swath of downtown interests voted 826 to 764 against a breakaway council for the 10,000 residents of skid row’s tents, renovated slum hotels and apartments, according to an unofficial tally. The results will not be certified until challenges or recount requests, if any, are resolved, according to Stephen Box, the director of outreach and communications for the L.A. Department of Neighborhood Empowerment.

Nigeria: How electronic voting will change the face of Nigeria’s future general elections | Ventures Africa

On the 31st of March, 2017, the Nigerian Senate passed the Electoral Act No. 6 2010 (Amendment) Bill 2017 into law. This bill gives the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) the power to conduct Electronic Voting (E-voting). … The bill raises the question of Nigeria’s readiness to plunge into this new technology-based terrain. Proponents of the bill are inclined to believe that it will give credibility to our elections while cynics think Nigeria is yet to come to terms with using this technology for elections. These positions may have been gathered from INEC’s performance with the voter’s card readers during the last general elections in 2015 when INEC decided to adopt smart card readers for voters’ accreditation.

Switzerland: Swiss e-voting poised for expanded roll-out | SWI

The Swiss authorities are preparing to expand e-voting to more cantons, which would give more citizens the chance to cast their votes electronically. The government on Wednesday said the system should be expanded from its test phase. Until now, 14 cantons have at various times allowed Swiss living abroad to vote electronically. Three cantons (Neuchatel, Geneva and Basel City) have operated e-voting systems for Swiss-based citizens. Up to two-thirds of citizens who have been eligible to vote electronically have grabbed the opportunity, proving that strong demand exists, the government said.

Editorials: Web-Based Voting Isn’t Plausible—At Least Not Yet | Stan Hanks/Newsweek

Could we create an app for people to use for voting in national elections? I did some work on electronic voting systems problems with Ed Gerck in the early 2000s. It was hard then, it’s arguably harder now. This gets back to what some people have lobbied for since the early days of the Internet: the “Internet driver’s license.” In the U.S., to get a voter’s registration card, you have to prove you are who you say you are, that you live where you say you live, and that you’re a U.S. citizen. That entitles you to be enrolled as a registered voter, which means that for any election in your jurisdiction, you can show up and cast your vote (or as is more commonly the case, to mail your ballot in or drop it off at a collection point).

France: Government withdraws electronic vote over hacking fears | IT PRO

The French government has advised citizens living abroad that they won’t be able to vote electronically in the upcoming parliamentary elections due to fears of hacking. Over the course of the past week, French voters living abroad have been receiving emails from the French Foreign Ministry stating: “Due to the very high risk of cyber-attacks, the French authorities have decided, on the advice of the National Agency for Information Security, not to allow electronic voting for the parliamentary elections of June 2017.” No further information has been provided as to whether a specific risk has been identified and, IT Pro understands that even though the alert first went out on 6 March, not all those affected have been contacted so far. There are 1,611,054 French nationals living abroad, according to France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development. … The upcoming French presidential elections, which begin on 23 April, aren’t affected, however, as electronic voting isn’t an option.

Ireland: Online voting to be considered in referendum for Irish abroad | The Irish Times

The Government will consider online voting as an option in the referendum granting voting rights for the Irish abroad, Minister for the Diaspora Joe McHugh has said. Mr McHugh told RTÉ that an options paper containing a range of suggestions will be published. “It will contain all the various permutations. Ultimately we hope to have a rational and informed debate to determine the best options.” The decision to hold a referendum, which was taken by the Cabinet last week and announced by Taoiseach Enda Kenny in the US on Sunday, builds on the findings of the convention on the constitution in 2013 which recommended that the constitution be amended to provide for citizens resident outside the State, including Northern Ireland, to have the right to vote at presidential elections.

Switzerland: Swiss Post launches demo version for e-voting | SWI

Swiss citizens of some cantons who live abroad have a choice of two systems with which to vote online in votes in their home country. One of these is offered by Swiss Post. It has now put a demo version online, which people can use to simulate their participation. More than just an advertising stunt? A trial goes smoothly: First, I can download a digital voting card from Swiss Post’s special websiteexternal link (in the country’s four national languages, German, French, Italian and Romansh) which I would usually have received by post. This has three codes.

Australia: iVote West Australia: Who voted for you? | Pursuit – The University of Melbourne

In the 2017 Western Australian state election, voters with disabilities can register and vote over the Internet for the first time, using a system called iVote. Voters with disabilities deserve to have just as much confidence in the privacy and security of their votes as able-bodied voters using a polling booth. Unfortunately, a breach of voter privacy, or overt tampering of ballots, may not be noticed if it happens online – and reading or altering someone’s iVote might be easier than it seems. Security vulnerabilities are successfully exploited every day to steal money, commit financial fraud and extract government secrets. US intelligence agencies blamed Russian government hackers for interfering in the US election. The iVote registration and voting servers are protected by Transport Layer Security (TLS), the Internet’s most common security protocol. If you visit your bank and click on the padlock in your browser’s address bar, you can see a TLS certificate that proves you are communicating with the true owner of that domain. However, if you visit the WA Electoral Commission’s online registration page or the iVote log-in page and click on that padlock, you see something surprising: the TLS certificate is owned not by the WA Electoral Commission (WAEC) but by a US company called Incapsula.

Lithuania: Government seeks to introduce online voting this year | The Baltic Times

Lithuania’s government will seek to legalize this year the creation of an online voting system, which should be developed by mid-2019, shows the implementation plan of the governmental program published on Thursday. All of the amendments necessary for online voting should be adopted by the end of 2019. The Justice Ministry was put in charge of drafting the laws and developing the system.

Utah: After caucus chaos, lawmaker wants Utah to pay for primaries | Associated Press

To vote in Utah’s Democratic primary caucus last year, Kellie Henderson of Salt Lake City had to walk at least a mile and wait in line for three hours.
Henderson told Utah lawmakers on Tuesday that she had to trek from her home to the elementary school where her caucus was held because there was no parking nearby. At the school, she had to wait in a line for three hours before overwhelmed party volunteers running the caucus were able to help her cast a ballot. “It was just chaos,” Henderson said Tuesday. Rep. Patrice Arent, D-Millcreek, wants to avoid a similar mess and has sponsored a bill requiring the state to pay for and run a presidential primary every four years. “Political parties should be in the business of trying to win elections, not run them,” Arent said.

China: Beware of privacy issues in mock online election | South China Morning Post

Benny Tai Yiu-ting of Occupy Central fame is set to relaunch a mock nomination and election of the chief executive. The so-called civil referendum uses a mobile app and a website to encourage people to nominate and vote for “candidates”. Critics including the privacy commissioner have expressed alarm. Tai’s previous ThunderGo mobile app debacle was accused by even some pan-democratic candidates in the last Legislative Council election of distorting the voting outcomes by favouring extremist candidates over more mainstream ones. Hong Kong’s unofficial chief executive election opinion poll PopVote back online next week

Washington: Opponents Of E-Voting In Washington State Call Proposed Bill ‘Dangerous’ | KUOW

Washington state voters overseas can email their ballots to a county auditor. A bill in the legislature would expand that privilege to the rest of the state. But at a hearing Friday, lawmakers heard strong opposition to the proposed legislation. Josh Benaloh, a cryptology expert, believes there is a future for voting online. But he called this bill dangerous. “Things do go bad on the internet. And the real issue is about the ability to review and correct problems,” Benaloh said. “If my vote is altered on the way to an election office, I will likely never know about it.”

Estonia: Nasdaq says Estonia e-voting pilot successful | Cyberscoop

Blockchain technology can safely be used to authenticate e-voting by shareholders at a company’s annual general meeting, Nasdaq said this week, following a pilot project in Estonia. … Voting security experts in the U.S. were skeptical about the pilot project’s wider applicability, especially with regard to national elections. “Blockchain solves a small part of the overall set of problems [with e-voting], but nowhere near all,” said Pamela Smith, president of election integrity advocacy group Verified Voting. “If you have a boat with many leaks, plugging one of them should not make you assume the others won’t swamp you,” she told CyberScoop via email.

Canada: Online voting: We can ensure the research into how it happens is sound | Ottawa Citizen

Since the House of Commons Special Committee on Electoral Reform (ERRE) tabled its report in December, the national conversation has largely focused on potential changes to the electoral system. One of the committee’s more significant recommendations related to the future of online voting in Canada, however, has flown under the radar. The committee recommended that Elections Canada not adopt online voting at this time, but work with stakeholders to determine how election technologies can maintain electoral integrity and voter access, notably for persons with disabilities. This should not be dismissed as an insignificant recommendation as it has the potential to influence the modernization of voting in federal elections in Canada. While Elections Canada could certainly start work on this, development of online voting approaches in other jurisdictions has shown that working with experts – social and computer scientists – is a best practice. In Geneva, Switzerland, for example, the decision to leverage expert knowledge substantially improved the design of the online voting system.

United Kingdom: Online voting could leave British elections vulnerable to hacking, former MI6 head warns | The Independent

Adopting electronic voting systems could leave British elections vulnerable to cyber attack by other countries, the former head of MI6 has said. Sir John Sawers said traditional pencil and paper approaches to voting were “actually much more secure” – following allegations that the recent US presidential election was subject to hacking. “The more things that go online, the more susceptible you are to cyber attacks,” Sir John, who stepped down in 2014, said. “We need to have systems which are robust,” he said in an interview for the BBC documentary The New World: Axis of Power. “The only trouble is, the younger generation of people expect to be able to do things remotely and through electronic devices. “Bizarrely the stubby pencil and piece of paper that you put your cross on in the ballot box is actually much more secure than anything which is electronic.”

Switzerland: Journalist who proved electoral flaws convicted of fraud | The Local

Reporters without Borders has condemned a Swiss court’s decision to convict a journalist of electoral fraud after he voted twice in order to prove failures in the system. Joël Boissard, who works for Swiss broadcaster RTS, was fined, ordered to pay court costs and given a further suspended fine after being found guilty in early November, according to news agencies. The incident occurred last year when Boissard, who had recently moved house, received two sets of voting documents for federal and cantonal elections on March 8th 2015. Assuming the online system would prevent him from voting twice, he tried to do so – and succeeded. Boissard immediately contacted the electoral authorities to report what he had done and ask them to explain the anomaly, he told news agencies.

Switzerland: Journalist appeals e-voting fraud conviction | SWI

A Swiss television journalist is to appeal a conviction for electoral fraud after demonstrating for a news report that it was possible to vote twice electronically on a single issue. He was able to do this in March 2015 having been mistakenly sent two sets of voting forms following a change of address. He alerted the authorities to the issue, but three weeks later was indicted by Geneva prosecutors. In early November, he was sentenced by a Bern court to a two-day suspended prison sentence and a fine of CHF400 after exposing the e-voting system’s shortcomings. His journalistic research was found by the court to be no defence against the crime.

Canada: Waterloo rejects online voting, ranked ballot | The Record

Waterloo council will stick with tradition and use paper ballots and the first-past-the-post system for the 2018 municipal election. Politicians voted Monday not to pursue online voting or use ranked ballots. “Voting shouldn’t necessarily be that simple,” Coun. Brian Bourke said. “It shouldn’t just be the click of a button.” Region of Waterloo Coun. Jane Mitchell appealed against Internet voting, citing concerns about confidentiality. “The secret ballot will always be a problem,” she said. She said polling locations are the most reliable way to keep ballots secret, the “old school” way. Resident Dave Shuffling said he has about eight years of experience in the computer security industry. He outlined a long list of possible threats to the integrity of online voting and asked council not to proceed with online voting. “Security is really difficult to get right,” Shuffling said. A previous council voted against using online voting to conduct the last municipal election but staff told council in January they wanted to have another look at the idea.

Australia: E-voting risks in Australia after Russian hacking in US election | Financial Review

The Turnbull government’s new Cyber Ambassador, Tobias Feakin, has warned of the risks of e-voting after allegations Russian hacking of Hillary Clinton’s emails may have influenced the US election outcome. The comments may further slow moves towards a change, after Labor turned on the idea in its submissions to a joint parliamentary inquiry into the federal election, saying the online census outage was cause to proceed with caution. In the days after the Australian federal election, both Malcolm Turnbull and Labor leader Bill Shorten called for the introduction of electronic voting, saying in 2016 it should not take more than eight days to find out a result. … E-voting expert University of Melbourne’s Vanessa Teague has previously said instead of at-home e-voting via personal devices, which could be unsafe, she would instead advocate a change to e-voting via computers at polling places.

National: Why We Can’t Use the Internet to Vote | Mel Magazine

Every four years, America elects a president. And every four years around election time, Kim Alexander gets annoyed by the same question: Why can’t we vote over the internet yet? “I hate the question,” says Alexander, founder of the California Voter Foundation. Voting over the internet isn’t a priority for CVF, and won’t be for the foreseeable future. You would think an organization dedicated to “the responsible use of technology to improve the democratic process” would be for using the internet to make voting easier. Alexander did, too, once, back in the mid-’90s, shortly after she established CVF and the internet first entered the public consciousness. “But then I started to learn what about it takes to run secure elections, and how vulnerable the internet is,” Alexander says. “This internet is not a safe place to cast ballots.”

Verified Voting Blog: Security against Election Hacking – Part 2: Cyberoffense is not the best cyberdefense!

This article was originally posted at Freedom to Tinker on August 18, 2016.

State and county election officials across the country employ thousands of computers in election administration, most of them are connected (from time to time) to the internet (or exchange data cartridges with machines that are connected).  In my previous post I explained how we must audit elections independently of the computers, so we can trust the results even if the computers are hacked.

Still, if state and county election computers were hacked, it would be an enormous headache and it would certainly cast a shadow on the legitimacy of the election.  So, should the DHS designate election computers as “critical cyber infrastructure?”

This question betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how computer security really works.  You as an individual buy your computers and operating systems from reputable vendors (Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Google/Samsung, HP, Dell, etc.).  Businesses and banks (and the Democratic National Committee, and the Republican National Committee) buy their computers and software from the same vendors.  Your security, and the security of all the businesses you deal with, is improved when these hardware and software vendors build products without security bugs in them.   Election administrators use computers that run Windows (or MacOS, or Linux) bought from the same vendors.

Verified Voting Blog: Why Online Voting is a Danger to Democracy

If, like a growing number of people, you’re willing to trust the Internet to safeguard your finances, shepherd your love life, and maybe even steer your car, being able to cast your vote online might seem like a logical, perhaps overdue, step. No more taking time out of your workday to travel to a polling place only to stand in a long line. Instead, as easily as hailing a ride, you could pull out your phone, cast your vote, and go along with your day. Sounds great, right?

Absolutely not, says Stanford computer science professor David Dill. In fact, online voting is such a dangerous idea that computer scientists and security experts are nearly unanimous in opposition to it.

Dill first got involved in the debate around electronic voting in 2003, when he organized a group of computer scientists to voice concerns over the risks associated with the touchscreen voting machines that many districts considered implementing after the 2000 election. Since then, paperless touchscreen voting machines have all but died out, partly as a result of public awareness campaigns by the Verified Voting Foundation, which Dill founded to help safeguard local, state, and federal elections. But a new front has opened around the prospect of Internet voting, as evidenced by recent ballot initiatives proposed in California and other efforts to push toward online voting. Here, Dill discusses the risks of Internet voting, the challenge of educating an increasingly tech-comfortable public, and why paper is still the best way to cast a vote.