Utah: Utah County pilot project will let LDS missionaries and overseas military vote using their phones | Taylor Stevens/The Salt Lake Tribune

Religious missionaries and active-duty military personnel will get to vote using their smartphones — some already have — as part of a pilot project during this year’s election for municipal offices in Utah County. Around 58 voters will be able take advantage of the program in the primary, estimates Utah County Clerk Amelia Powers. It’s an innovation she and other leaders hope will make it easier for overseas voters and for the state’s second-largest county to process their ballots. “It’s not a ton [of people] but it is enough that it helps with efficiency and manpower,” Powers said. … The primary worry for Marian Schneider, president of Verified Voting, a national nongovernmental organization that advocates for more secure elections, is that Voatz hasn’t proved it could actually identify a threat, and that it would therefore be difficult to determine whether a voter’s information had been intercepted on its way to the blockchain. “We always advocate that there be a way to detect if something has gone wrong and then to recover from it,” she said. “This doesn’t have that — regardless of all the measures they’re putting in place to prevent something from happening.”

Japan: Internal affairs ministry to test online voting for overseas citizens | The Japan Times

The internal affairs ministry will test online voting for Japanese citizens living abroad in an effort to raise voter turnout among such people in elections. The ministry will conduct the test after Sunday’s House of Councilors election with a goal of introducing it as early as the next Upper House poll in 2022, officials said. Eligible voters will be able to enter the voting page using electronic devices by verifying their identity through registered My Number identification cards. To protect privacy, voting data will be sent encrypted to Japan, and personal information attached to the data will be deleted when votes are counted. Voting data left on voter devices will also be deleted. An expert panel set up by the ministry proposed the introduction of online voting in August last year to address low voter turnout, at around 20 percent, among Japanese citizens overseas. The low rates are believed to reflect a shorter voting period due to the need to send votes to Japan as well as the need to go to diplomatic missions where polling stations are set up.

West Virginia: What happened with West Virginia’s blockchain voting experiment? | Yael Grauer/Slate

Last year, West Virginia did something no other U.S. state had done in a federal election before: It allowed overseas voters the option to cast absentee ballots for the midterm election via a blockchain-enabled mobile app. According to Voatz, the company West Virginia worked with, 144 individuals from 31 countries successfully submitted ballots via the app for the November election. Before that, there was a smaller pilot of the system in two West Virginia counties that May. West Virginia billed the experiment as a success and says it plans to use the technology again in 2020. Voatz has already made deals with other local governments in the U.S., most recently for Denver’s May municipal election. But how secure and accurate was the 2018 vote? It’s impossible to tell because the state and the company aren’t sharing the basic information experts say is necessary to properly evaluate whether the blockchain voting pilot was actually a resounding success. With 2020 looming, that’s troubling, given what we now know about the extent of Russian incursions into our election systems in 2016.

Switzerland: Three cantons seek damages for failed e-voting system | SWI

Three Swiss cantons that were preparing to use a new e-voting system this year say they will seek financial compensation after it was unexpectedly withdrawn and put on ice. Fribourg, Neuchâtel and Thurgau will seek compensation after spending money on making the system ready to voters in the October elections. Fribourg told the Swiss News Agency Keystone-SDA that it had invested CHF150,000 ($151,000). A fourth canton, Basel City, said it was considering its options on suing Swiss Post, the state-owned postal service that had developed the system. The Swiss government recently suspended efforts to enshrine electronic voting in the law. Swiss Post followed this announcement by suspending its e-voting platform, to which the four cantons had already subscribed.

Nevada: Iowa, Nevada to Launch Caucus Voting by Phone for 2020 | Michelle L. Price and Thomas Beaumont/Associated Press

Democrats in the early presidential contest states of Iowa and Nevada will be able to cast their votes over the telephone instead of showing up at their states’ traditional neighborhood caucus meetings next February, according to plans unveiled by the state parties. The tele-caucus systems, the result of a mandate from the Democratic National Committee, are aimed at opening the local-level political gatherings to more people, especially evening shift-workers and people with disabilities, whom critics of the caucuses have long said are blocked from the process. The changes are expected to boost voter participation across the board, presenting a new opportunity for the Democratic Party’s 2020 candidates to drive up support in the crucial early voting states. “This is a no-excuse option” for participation, said Shelby Wiltz, the Nevada Democrats’ caucus director. Party officials don’t have an estimate of how many voters will take advantage of the call-in option. But in Iowa, some recent polls show as many as 20% of Democrats will participate virtually. In Nevada, most voters tend to cast ballots early during regular elections, and party officials expect many will take advantage of the early presidential vote. While rolling out a new voting system holds the promise of more voter participation, it also comes with potential risk for confusion or technical troubles. But the party is moving forward to try and address long-standing criticism that the caucuses are exclusionary and favor some candidates over others.

Switzerland: No e-vote option for the Swiss parliamentary election | SWI

Swiss Post has suspended its e-voting system effectively spelling the end of the online trials with the current technology for the October parliamentary elections. The state-owned company said it took the decision after the government announced last week  that it will drop plans to introduce e-voting as an official voting channel for the time being. However, Swiss Post pledged to develop a new, updated version with universal verifiability available from 2020, according to statementexternal link on Friday. The current system of Swiss Post has been in use in four cantons on a trial basis, notably the registered expat Swiss community living around the world. Last month, a rival system developed by canton Geneva and used by three other cantons, was also withdrawn with immediate effect. The moves come amid increasing opposition against e-voting for data security reasons.

Canada: Northwest Territories to be 1st province or territory to use online voting in general election | Hilary Bird/CBC News

In a move to increase voter turnout, the Northwest Territories will soon become the first jurisdiction in Canada to use online voting in a provincial or territorial election. Polls will open on Oct. 1 to elect 19 members to the N.W.T. Legislative Assembly, but people can vote in advance polls as early as Sept. 6. Voters can use a new website called Electorhood to access the Simply Voting online system to cast their ballots. Using the site, eligible voters can vote online from Sept. 6 up until the end of election day on Oct. 1 as long as they’ve registered for the absentee ballot beforehand. “I know elections isn’t very sexy for a lot of people but they don’t realize that they have a Cadillac of a system,” said Nicole Latour, chief electoral officer of the N.W.T. Latour said she’s optimistic the new website and online voting system will encourage more young people to log on and cast their ballots.

Estonia: IT minister convenes inaugural e-voting working group | ERR

Minister for Foreign Trade and Information Technology Kert Kingo (EKRE) is convening an e-voting working group for the first time on Thursday. Kingo says that the group’s main aim is to assess the effectiveness of Estonia’s e-voting system in the light of both cybersecurity concerns, and electoral regulations, ERR’s online news in Estonian reports. Tarvi Martens, one of the people behind the e-voting system, has said he regards the move as a political statement. Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (EKRE) members have in the past been critical of e-voting, principally on security issues. For instance, following the 2017 municipal elections, the party mounted an appeal to the Electoral Committee, questioning why the e-vote had gone ahead in October of that year, despite a recently-detected security risk that could have potentially affected up to quarter of a million Estonian ID cards.

Switzerland: Control-Alt-Delete? Swiss government puts the brakes on e-voting | James Walker/The Daily Swig

The Swiss Federal Council has suspended its plans to bring electronic voting (e-voting) into regular operation in Switzerland. Concerns surrounding the security and integrity of one online voting system were cited among the reasons for the U-turn. In December 2018, the Federal Council launched a consultation into proposed amendments to Switzerland’s Political Rights Act that would effectively make e-voting a third regular voting channel, alongside in-person and postal votes. This consultation is now over, and although a “clear majority” of the cantons and political parties were said to support the introduction of e-voting in principle, the Federal Council said it has decided to “provisionally forgo” the introduction into regular operation. “The political parties which support e-voting in principle consider that now is not the right time to take that step,” a statement reads. “The Federal Council has therefore decided not to proceed with the partial revision of the Political Rights Act at the present time.”

Iowa: Democrats express concern about Iowa’s “virtual caucuses” | Eleanor Watson/CBS

Members of the Democratic National Committee expressed skepticism Friday morning about the Iowa state party’s ambitious plan to introduce “virtual caucuses” at the first contest of the presidential primary calendar next February. The discussion came during a meeting of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC), which sat down in Pittsburgh to go over and approve 22 states’ plans for choosing delegates to the Democratic National Convention, including Iowa’s. An RBC member from Iowa, Scott Brennan, gave a presentation outlining the key changes to the Iowa caucus for the 2020 cycle, with the biggest change being the implementation of virtual caucuses, which would allow Iowans to support candidates without ever leaving home. But the chief technology officer of the DNC, Nell Thomas, expressed concern that this new system might not work. “I hope you have a contingency plan,” Thomas said. Critics of the virtual caucuses proposal said they were worried about the capacity of the system, the security behind it, and how complex it will be for the Iowans who use it. “This is the future, but I don’t know if we’re there yet,” committeewoman Donna Brazile, a former DNC chair, said. Another committee member, Frank Leone, said the process sounded like it made voting more complicated than it needed to be.

Switzerland: E-voting suffers another setback amid expat Swiss concerns | Urs Geiser/SWI

The government has decided to suspend efforts to enshrine electronic voting in Swiss law, but it plans to continue trials using improved systems. The expatriate Swiss community is alarmed by the announcement. A consultation among political parties and the 26 cantons, as well as a series of technical flaws in the current systems, has led the government to review its policy on e-voting, according to the Federal Chancellor Walter Thurnherr. “Opinions are clearly divided. The cantons have come out in favour, but the parties are against,” he told a news conference on Thursday. “This means there is not sufficient support at the moment for the introduction of e-voting on a legal basis.” Thurnherr added that the series of limited e-voting trials underway since 2004 will continue unless “citizens or politicians decide otherwise”, though he also acknowledged that public opposition has grown since the tide started turning against e-voting two years ago. Recently, a committee launched a people’s initiative for a five-year e-voting moratorium amid the controversial discovery of technical problems in the two e-voting systems currently in use.

Switzerland: Swiss Delay Plans for Nationwide e-Voting, Citing Flaws | Associated Press

Swiss officials are delaying plans to introduce electronic voting across the Alpine country, saying it’s “premature” because of problems testing the security and reliability of the system. The Federal Council said there is support for e-voting in addition to mail-in and in-person balloting. Some Swiss cantons, or regions, have already used e-voting systems, and the federal government has supported work on a nationwide system.

Australia: ACT to introduce limited online voting next year | Justin Hendry/iTnews

The ACT Electoral Commission is planning to introduce limited online voting in time for next year’s territory election to allow Canberrans to cast their ballot if travelling overseas. The electronic voting system, which could bear resemblance to NSW’s iVote system, will be developed as part of a refresh of the commission’s election management system. The refresh of the commission’s existing custom-made TIGER system was handed $1.5 million in this month’s territory budget, with separate funding for electronic voting also set aside. The core system has been in place since 1995 and is used to support all administrative tasks associated an ACT election every four years. TIGER, which contains the the electoral role information on around 300,000 ACT electors in a Microsoft Access 365 format, is also used to “support referendums, interstate elections and small external fee-for-service elections”.

Switzerland: Most Swiss expats to lose e-voting access in parliament elections | SWI

Swiss citizens overseas registered for e-voting in the cantons of Geneva, Bern, Aargau and Lucerne will not be able to vote electronically in the national parliament elections in October. The canton of Geneva has decided to accelerate the phasing out of the voting platform used by these cantons until now.  Geneva had earlier announced that it was shelving its CHVote platform (developed in 2003) due to cost reasons. However, it said that it would keep the platform going until February 2020.  But it has now decided to deactivate CHVote earlier than originally anticipated, leaving some users unable to vote electronically in the parliamentary elections in October. This decision was taken in agreement with the cantons of Bern, Aargau and Lucerne, which have been using CHVote since 2010.

National: Voatz has raised $7 million in Series A funding for its mobile voting technology | Connie Loizos/TechCrunch

Voatz, the four-year-old, Boston, Mass.-based voting and citizen engagement platform that has been at the center of debate over the merits and dangers of mobile voting, has raised $7 million in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Medici Ventures and Techstars, with participation from Urban Innovation Fund and Oakhouse Partners. Voatz, which currently employs 17 people, is modeled after other software-as-a-service companies but geared toward election jurisdictions, working with state and local governments to conduct elections and provide related election management and cybersecurity services. As we reported back in March, the city of Denver agreed to implement a mobile voting pilot in its May municipal election using Voatz’s technology, an opportunity that was offered exclusively to active-duty military, their eligible dependents and overseas voters using their smartphones.

Verified Voting Blog: Verified Voting Letter in Support of Congressional Election Cybersecurity Legislation

This letter was sent to Senators Cory Gardner (R-CO), Mark Warner (D-VA) and Representatives Derek Kilmer (D-WA) and Michael McCaul (R-TX) on May 14, 2019. Download the PDF.

Thank you for introducing legislation aimed at increasing cybersecurity at the state and local levels of government. We recognize the need for this important legislation, which is aimed at hardening cyber resiliency efforts and preventing vulnerabilities from becoming nightmare realities. For the states that would respond to the proposed grants in H.R. 2130 and S.1065, and for the protection of the citizens who live in them, we applaud your support in the battle against cyberattacks.

At the same time that you are bolstering cybersecurity defenses, we encourage you to add provisions specifically prohibiting these funds from being used for internet-based voting. Cybersecurity experts agree that internet return of marked ballots lacks sufficient safeguards for security and privacy. We urge you to specifically name internet voting as a threat and prohibit the funding provided by your legislation from being used to support internet voting programs and pilots.

Cybersecurity experts agree that no current technology, including blockchain voting, can guarantee the secure, verifiable, and private return of voted ballots over the internet. Both because vote-rigging malware could already be present on the voter’s computer and because electronically returned ballots could be intercepted and changed or discarded en route, local elections officials would be unable to verify that the voter’s ballot accurately reflects the voter’s intent. Furthermore, even if the voter’s selections were to arrive intact, the voted ballot could be traceable back to the individual voter, violating voter privacy.

Russia: E-voting bill faces second reading in Russia’s lower house of parliament | RAPSI

The State Duma will consider a bill envisaging a test remote voting via electronic communications during the elections to the Moscow parliament in the second reading on May 16, the Moscow City Duma Chairman Alexey Shaposhnikov has told journalists. Under the draft law, the test voting is to be conducted in only one city district. The remote voting would require changes and development of public control over the elections, Alexander Brod, a member of the Presidential Council of Human Rights, said earlier. Previously, the Central Election Commission (CEC) proposed to ease the procedure governing the elections of municipal deputies.

Australia: Federal election 2019: why can’t we just vote online? | Crikey

Every time election season comes around, the same question crops up again and again: why can’t we just vote online? We can shop, order takeaway and request an Uber from our phones; why can’t we vote over the internet as well? The main reason: maintaining the security and integrity of elections is actually a lot more complicated than it seems. But let’s take a closer look. While we can secure things like online banking to a reasonable degree, our elections are based on the principle of anonymity and this makes it far more challenging to protect them. Our online banking systems permanently record how much people spend and where, so that we can verify whether our balances are correct. But a record of each person’s vote would be extremely limiting to democracy because it would open up the door to peer pressure and coercion. This could stop people from truly expressing their democratic will. The need to keep elections anonymous brings up some major problems: without records, how can we ensure that the final vote tally is an accurate representation of what the people want? How do we know that the result hasn’t been meddled with by a political party or a foreign power? In paper-based voting systems, we rely on simplicity and having observers from each side at every step of the process. This has been relatively effective at preventing large-scale compromises and errors. When we use electronic and internet-based voting systems, we can’t see what’s actually going on inside the computers and servers, and the vast majority of the electorate doesn’t have the specific knowledge to understand the technical processes that underlie these systems. Electronic and internet-based systems also open up the possibility for widespread election tampering that could slip by undetected, corrupting the entire system. This isn’t feasible in a paper-based election because it would require collusion between far too many people, which would surely be discovered.

Switzerland: Trapdoor commitments in the SwissPost e-voting shuffle proof | Vanessa Teague

Verifiability is a critical part of the trustworthiness of e-voting systems. Universal verifiability means that a proof of proper election conduct should be verifiable by any member of the public. The SwissPost e-voting system, provided by Scytl, aims to offer a partial form of verifiability, called “complete verifiability”, which resembles universal verifiability but adds the assumption that at least one of the components on the server-side, i.e., the computers running the voting system, behaves correctly. (Universal verifiability offers guarantees even if all server-side components are malicious.) In the SwissPost system, encrypted electronic votes need to be shuffled to protect individual vote privacy. Each server who shuffles votes is supposed to prove that the set of input votes it received corresponds exactly to the differently-encrypted votes it output. This is intended to provide an electronic equivalent of the publicly observable use of a ballot box or glass urn. We show that the mixnet specification and code recently made available for analysis does not meet the assumptions of a sound shuffle proof and hence does not provide universal or complete verifiability. We give two examples of how an authority who implemented or administered a mix server could produce a perfectly-verifying transcript while actually – undetectably – manipulating votes.

National: Blockchain Voting: Unwelcome Disruption or Senseless Distraction? | U.S. Vote Foundation

It really gets old being a guinea pig. Not because of the cagey confines, but for the insistence of those who try their ideas out on you. Overseas and military voters continue to be the guinea pigs for unvetted online voting ideas, the new one being “blockchain voting”. We have been here before. Overseas and military voters do need continued meaningful reforms across all states, and it is good when people truly care enough to examine and invest in solutions. What we do not need is a distraction that introduces new threats to overseas and military ballot integrity. The cliché “disruption model” doesn’t belong in our elections. Particularly in light of Russia’s cyber-interference in elections in Ukraine in 2014 and the US in 2016, we should consider with extra caution the idea of putting the entire voting process online. Russia itself is pushing to use this same technology for voting. Maybe it is worth a deeper look at it before we rush to its implementation? Perhaps investment in a threat detection system, which most state election offices cannot yet afford, would, at minimum, be a wise first course of action. Typically election systems must undergo formal testing and certification. Public access and examination is crucial. With a fully online system, that requirement is far more serious. Internet voting is not the same sort of simple transaction as is online banking; it is far more complex due to the fact that there must be a separation of the transaction from the identity of the person executing it. Just because there is a “blockchain” for the transaction doesn’t make the total voting system secure. The bottom line: it should not be possible to implement these systems in real elections without full and complete public examination. It is not sufficient to declare a technology as “tested” when it is used only in private elections and by outside companies hired to do “security audits”.

Switzerland: Swiss Post’s e-voting system pulled for May votes | SWI

The e-voting system operated by Swiss Post will not be available for nationwide votes on May 19. This is the consequence of “critical errors” found during a public intrusion test, the Federal Chancellery and Swiss Post announced on Friday. The Federal Chancellery said in a statementexternal link it would review the licensing and certification procedures for e-voting systems. It added that it had no indication that these flaws had resulted in votes being manipulated in previous ballots. Swiss Post’s e-voting system had been in use in four cantons: Basel City, Fribourg, Neuchâtel and Thurgau. The Organisation of the Swiss Abroad said on Fridayexternal link it was deeply disappointed by the news, describing it as a blow against online voting “and thus a denial of the democratic rights of the Swiss Abroad”.

Switzerland: Additional flaw found in Swiss Post e-voting system | SWI

A second error in the Swiss Post planned e-voting system has been discovered as the public intrusion test phase comes to an end. The Federal Chancellery announced the need for action and confirmed a review of the e-voting certification and approval process. The same computer experts who discovered a critical error in the source code of Swiss Post’s new e-voting system earlier this month announced they discovered a further security gap. It was identified as part of the public intrusion test that has been running since February 25, during which the e-voting source code was released. The bug affects universal verifiability – the same area of the system as the first error. However, in this case the error would not make it possible for arbitrary manipulation of any possible votes to go unnoticed, according to the Federal Chancellery. That said, votes could be made invalid without being discovered by the mathematical evidence. René Lenzin, deputy head of communications at the Federal Chancellery, told the Swiss news agency Keystone-SDA that the error confirmed a “need for action”. The error discovered on March 12 had already shown that universal verifiability and thus the “heart of the system” had not worked. The system had to recognise if manipulation had taken place.

Switzerland: Second flaw found in Swiss election system could change ‘valid votes into nonsense,’ researchers say | CyberScoop

Researchers have uncovered a second security flaw in the electronic voting system employed by the Swiss government. The vulnerability involves a problem with the implementation of a cryptographic protocol used to generate decryption proofs, a weakness that could be leveraged “to change valid votes into nonsense that could not be counted,” researchers Sarah Jamie Lewis, Olivier Pereira and Vanessa Teague wrote in a paper published Monday. This disclosure comes weeks after the same team of researchers announced they had uncovered a flaw in the e-voting system that could allow hackers to replace legitimate votes with fraudulent ones. Swiss Post, the country’s national postal service, which developed the system along with Spanish technology maker Scytl, said earlier this month that first vulnerability had been resolved. Researchers said at the time that the vulnerability demonstrated what can go wrong when governments shift to electronic voting with no alternative plan. The security and integrity of electronic voting systems vary by country, and the vulnerabilities outlined in this research are specific to Switzerland, but other areas of the world increasingly are moving toward a voting infrastructure where it could soon be impossible to verify whether vote tampering has occurred. Christopher Krebs, head of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency told Congress last month election officials must have the ability to audit election results.

Australia: Fury as online voting system crashes on NSW election day | Australian Associated Press

Some New South Wales voters have had trouble casting their ballot as issues plaguing the state’s electronic voting system ran into election day. Technical issues began on Friday night but continued Saturday morning as thousands flooded iVote to register and cast their ballot. Frustrated voters then turned to the telephone registration system, which itself was then overloaded, with some told to call back later. Some New South Wales voters have had trouble casting their ballot as issues plaguing the state’s electronic voting system ran into election day. Technical issues began on Friday night but continued Saturday morning as thousands flooded iVote to register and cast their ballot.

Colorado: Denver Offers Blockchain Voting to Military, Overseas Voters | The Denver Post

The city of Denver will allow thousands of voters to cast their ballots with a smartphone application this year. The pilot program is one of the first U.S. deployments of a phone-based voting system for public elections — but it will only be available to military members and voters living in other countries. The city has invited all of its international voters — about 4,000 people — to use the app in the May 2019 election. The idea of digital voting has been met with skepticism from some elections security experts, but Denver officials say it could make life easier for a limited set of voters. “This pilot enables us to offer that convenience for our military and overseas citizens who have the most difficult time voting and participating in the democratic process here at home,” said Deputy Elections Director Jocelyn Bucaro.

Switzerland: Experts Find Serious Problems With Switzerland’s Online Voting System | Motherboard

Switzerland made headlines this month for the transparency of its internet voting system when it launched a public penetration test and bug bounty program to test the resiliency of the system to attack. But after source code for the software and technical documentation describing its architecture were leaked online last week, critics are already expressing concern about the system’s design and about the transparency around the public test. Cryptography experts who spent just a few hours examining the leaked code say the system is a poorly constructed and convoluted maze that makes it difficult to follow what’s going on and effectively evaluate whether the cryptography and other security measures deployed in the system are done properly. “Most of the system is split across hundreds of different files, each configured at various levels,” Sarah Jamie Lewis, a former security engineer for Amazon as well as a former computer scientist for England’s GCHQ intelligence agency, told Motherboard. “I’m used to dealing with Java code that runs across different packages and different teams, and this code somewhat defeats even my understanding.”

Editorials: There’s No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology | Bruce Schneier/WIRED

In his 2008 white paper that first proposed bitcoin, the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto concluded with: “We have proposed a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust.” He was referring to blockchain, the system behind bitcoin cryptocurrency. The circumvention of trust is a great promise, but it’s just not true. Yes, bitcoin eliminates certain trusted intermediaries that are inherent in other payment systems like credit cards. But you still have to trust bitcoin—and everything about it. Much has been written about blockchains and how they displace, reshape, or eliminate trust. But when you analyze both blockchain and trust, you quickly realize that there is much more hype than value. Blockchain solutions are often much worse than what they replace. First, a caveat. By blockchain, I mean something very specific: the data structures and protocols that make up a public blockchain. These have three essential elements. The first is a distributed (as in multiple copies) but centralized (as in there’s only one) ledger, which is a way of recording what happened and in what order. This ledger is public, meaning that anyone can read it, and immutable, meaning that no one can change what happened in the past.

Switzerland: Government invites hackers to penetration-test its e-voting system | ZDNet

The Swiss government will make its future e-voting system available for a public intrusion test and is now inviting companies and security researchers to have a go at it. “Interested hackers from all over the world are welcome to attack the system,” the government said in a press release. “In doing so, they will contribute to improving the system’s security.” … A mock e-voting session is planned on the last day of the testing period, on March 24, but participants can attack the e-voting system before that, as well. To participate, companies and security researchers will have to sign up in advance of the PIT session’s official start. Signing up will give participants the legal permission to attack the system, will ensure the cash rewards will reach those who first report an issue, and it enforces a set of rules and restrictions on participants.

Switzerland: Government offers reward for hacking its electronic vote system | AFP

The Swiss government has issued a 150,000 Swiss franc (US$149,790) challenge to online hackers; break into our new generation electronic voting system and we’ll reward you. The federal chancellery announced a dummy run election will be held from February 25 to March 24 and invited anyone who wants to display their online piracy talents to sign up at https://onlinevote-pit.ch. They can then “try to manipulate the vote count, to read the votes cast, to violate voting secrecy or to bypass security systems,” it said in a statement. The amount of the reward paid out will depend upon the level of intrusion achieved by each hacker.

Switzerland: Swiss look into online manipulation ahead of federal polls | SWI

Several federal offices in Switzerland are investigating whether online manipulation could affect upcoming elections, says a newspaper report. The Federal Office of Communicationsexternal link (OFCOM) has set up a government working group to look into the effects of artificial intelligence on the media and public opinion, writes the NZZ am Sonntag paper. This group was set up last September and is headed by the education and research ministry, spokesman Francis Meier told the paper. Last October Swiss intelligence chief Jean-Philippe Gaudin also warned that foreign actors could try to influence the next federal elections through online artificial intelligence, saying he would propose appropriate measures to the government.