Australia: Electoral Commission exploring how technology can simplify voting process | ZDNet

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has told a House of Representatives committee that it is looking into a way for its officers to utilise technology to look up the status of citizens at the next federal election in lieu of the dated paper-based method currently employed. The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters heard on Wednesday from AEC representatives, who explained that the government agency is “progressing a series of technical amendments” with the Department of Finance as part of its attempt to modernise the AEC.

Tennessee: Shelby County Election Commission Puts New Voter Registration System First | Memphis Daily News

Before Shelby County voters get new voting machines, the elections administrator wants a new voter registration system to begin a badly needed upgrade of election technology. “Mostly, we really need a system that I don’t fear is going to crash and burn,” administrator Linda Phillips said. She and the five election commissioners are working on a request for proposals and intend to have the new voter registration system installed and working by June 30, the end of the current fiscal year. The election commission’s budget for the current fiscal year has $1 million available for such a system. “I really do not know,” she said of the exact cost of a new system. “The model in registration systems is moving more toward software than service. So a relatively low upfront price, but you pay an annual maintenance license fee. … I would expect it to be less than $2 million without question.

Cambodia: New Equipment for Voter Registration | Khmer Times

The European Union (EU) on Wednesday donated 25 different kinds of electronic equipment to the National Election Committee (NEC) for the upcoming voter registration for the 2017 commune elections. According to a press release issued by the NEC on Wednesday, the electronic equipment included 2,400 HP notebooks, 2,425 computer monitors and various kinds of electronic equipment that will arrive soon. “After receiving the laptops and equipment, voter registration for the new voter list in 2016 should be carried out without any problem,” read the letter. Hang Puthea, an NEC spokesman, told Khmer Times that all voters will be electronically registered from September 1 to November 29, while the election will be held on June 4 next year.

Verified Voting Blog: Some modest proposals for voter signature verification

Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz proposes that we use some kind of electronic scanning system to evaluate voter signatures. I have no idea how good signature comparison software is these days, but I do I know that my own signature isn’t very consistent. Would automatic signature matching software really work well enough to recognize that all of my signatures are mine while rejecting forgeries? I’m skeptical. If one person’s absentee ballot is incorrectly rejected because someone or some software thinks their signature does not match, that would seem to me to be a violation of that voter’s civil rights. If signature matching has a higher likelihood of failing for one group of people than for another, then signature verification can be said to systematically deny voting rights to that group.

Maryland: Cracks in Maryland and Washington Voter Databases | NYTimes.com

Computer security experts have identified vulnerabilities in the voter registration databases in two states, raising concerns about the ability of hackers and others to disenfranchise voters. In the last five years, Maryland and Washington State have set up voter registration systems that make it easy for people to register to vote and update their address information online. The problem is that in both states, all the information required from voters to log in to the system is publicly available. It took The New York Times less than three minutes to track down the information online needed to update the registrations of several prominent executives in Washington State. Complete voter lists, which include a name, birth date, addresses and party affiliation, can be easily bought — and are, right now, in the hands of thousands of campaign volunteers.

Verified Voting Blog: Problems come when using databases to disqualify voters

During their news conference Friday, Iowa’s Republican secretary of state, Matt Schultz, and Democratic attorney general, Tom Miller, presented evidence suggesting there are non-citizens who have registered to vote illegally and that some of these illegal registrants have voted. Clearly, further investigation is called for, and if indeed these people have voted, they should be prosecuted. I am worried, however, about the effort to run a database matching effort to ferret out and remove non-citizens from the voting rolls. The central problem here is that we have no requirement of registering to vote under the same name as we use for other purposes.

For a driver’s license, you present a birth certificate, so your name on the driver’s license will match your birth certificate. To register to vote, you can use your employer ID card and a phone bill. As it turns out, my voter registration is in the same name as my driver’s license. That’s because I used my license to register about 32 years ago. On the other hand, my employer’s ID card lists my name differently (just a middle initial). I could have registered to vote with that card, had I wanted to. There is no legal requirement that I use the same name everywhere, and in fact, I use a variety of names and nicknames:

  • Most people know me as Doug Jones.
  • Some know me as Douglas Jones.
  • To my employer, I’m Douglas W. Jones.
  • And on my driver’s license, I’m Douglas Warren Jones.

I’m not trying to confuse people. It’s just that, at various times, I’ve used different and obvious variations on my full name.