Editorials: 10 ways e-voting could save or destroy democracy | Sydney Morning Herald

It seems a forgone conclusion that, with everything going digital, voting is sure to follow. Especially after lost paper ballots triggered the recent rerun of Western Australia’s 2013 Senate election, sparking renewed calls to trash pencil-and-paper voting for an online alternative. And why not? Networks can transport data faster than vehicles. Machines can tally numbers faster and, arguably, more accurately than humans. And machines alone can’t be accused of manipulating votes. Estonia and Norway have, with the aid of cryptographic ID checks, launched internet voting without too much controversy. But are machines really any less fallible than error-prone humans?

Maryland: Online ballot system in question after Board of Elections action | Baltimore Sun

The future of a system that would let voters download absentee ballots before mailing them in was cast into doubt Thursday when the State Board of Elections refused to move forward with part of the plan amid fears it would open the door to widespread fraud. The five-member panel declined to certify a system for marking the ballots on a computer screen despite assurances from its staff that the system was secure and ready to be used in this year’s June primary and November general elections. No formal tally was taken, but it was clear the approval was two votes short of the four-vote supermajority required. Both Republican members opposed the certification, and they were joined by one of the three Democrats. Opponents of the system were jubilant over the outcome. “Sanity prevailed,” said Michael Greenberger, a University of Maryland law professor and founder of its Center for Health and Homeland Security. “If this system had been adopted, Maryland would have had a voting system that was the most subject to fraud in the country.”

National: Microsoft Co-Founder Allen Bets on Online Voting; Funds Scytl | Wall Street Journal

People bank online and do their taxes online. But not many vote online. On Monday, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen‘s venture-capital fund said it was betting that online voting will win over skeptics worried about security and gradually become the norm for elections world-wide. Vulcan Capital’s growth equity fund, based in Palo Alto, Calif., said it will invest $40 million in Scytl, a digital voting services company based in Barcelona with customers in more than 30 countries, including Canada, Mexico and Australia. Scytl, founded in 2001, sells a range of services aimed at modernizing elections, from training poll workers and registering voters to hosting elections online and counting votes. Scytl has previously received investments from Balderton Capital, Nauta Capital and Spinnaker SCR.

Canada: Governments wary of going digital with elections | Montreal Gazette

We use the Internet for just about everything these days. … The concept of e-voting — whether it be casting a ballot via the phone or Internet or using electronic vote-counters at a polling station — is hardly novel. Officials across Canada began experimenting with this kind of technology when computers still weighed 30 pounds and took up most of the space on your desk. But early and repeated failures have made many jurisdictions — including Quebec — wary of handing control of any part of the democratic process over to a machine. “We’re not anywhere near (introducing any form of e-voting) for the moment,” Elections Quebec spokesperson Stephanie Isabel told The Gazette on Friday. “There’s an internal committee here that is doing analysis and studying this, but there is no project envisioned.” The trepidation is perhaps understandable. Even as technology has improved in recent years, the foul-ups have continued. The most recent example came during the NDP’s national leadership convention in 2012, when the Internet-based voting process was marred by allegations of a possible denial-of-service attack, in which a hacker overwhelms a server with requests and causes it to crash.

Slovakia: Internet voting expensive, risky, says interior minister | The Slovak Spectator

The current presidential election will not be the last in which Slovaks living abroad are not able to exercise their right to vote. While allowing people to vote via online could remedy the problem, Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák shot down that option on March 23, citing high costs and security risks. Lawmakers are set to discuss a new election law at the next parliamentary session, but electronic voting is not part of the bill “There are a number of risks and drawbacks,” the TASR newswire quoted Kaliňák as saying. “Even states far more advanced [than Slovakia] such as Germany or Belgium, even our neighbours in Austria, aren’t entertaining the idea of e-voting for the time being.”

Canada: New elections act could pull plug on federal online voting experiments | Edmonton Journal

A provision in the Conservative government’s new elections act will limit the ability of Elections Canada to experiment with online voting — a limit the Opposition argues will suppress the votes of young people who are less likely to vote Tory than older demographics. “The only reason for this has to be singling out a reform that the Conservatives have particular problems with,” NDP Democratic Reform Critic Craig Scott said. “E-voting is something they know appeals to younger generations, which is not necessarily their voting cohort.”

Europe: Online voting flops for European Green Party | Deutsche Welle

When its four candidates for European elections were unveiled in November, the European Green Party showcased its contenders with an air of optimism. By the time the victors were declared two months later, however, that enthusiasm had deflated. Even the winners, Franziska Keller and Jose Bove, were hardly in a celebratory mood. Barely more than 22,000 EU citizens used the Green mobilization experiment, “Green Primary,” from which the two top Green candidates were selected from four to represent the Greens in the upcoming European elections. With a total of 375 million voters across the EU, the paltry participation numbers were a flop. The Greens had originally set to mobilize 100,000 participants – a far cry from actual turnout.

Editorials: Digital voting is a game changer but we have to get it right | The Conversation

The UK may be taking its first, tentative steps towards introducing online voting with the establishment of a Commission on Digital Democracy. As so many of our routine tasks are going digital, the shift towards virtual polls seems like a natural progression. However, there are many technical issues that need to be ironed out and the stakes are very high. John Bercow, Speaker in the UK House of Commons, established the commission with a view to looking at how technology can be used to aid the democratic working of parliament, including online voting. This team would do well to take a look at what has, and has not, worked elsewhere around the world. Electronic voting can take a number of forms, including tallying votes by computer, using electronic equipment in polling stations and voting over the internet from the voter’s own computer or mobile device. Voting by phone is already used in entertainment shows, though multiple voting is possible and result-fixing has been known to happen. Internet voting is also carried out for professional societies, student unions and other forms of election. It works well when cost and desire to increase turnout are important factors and where the likelihood of an attack on the election is considered to be low. If we were to start using e-voting systems for electing political representatives, we’d need to be absolutely sure of their trustworthiness. Computer systems, including e-voting systems, can go wrong accidentally through software bugs, they can be hacked, and they can be subverted by corrupt insiders. Systems used in elections have been the subject of criticism for all these reasons, resulting in some cases from their withdrawal.

Editorials: Online voting not the solution | Times Colonist

Voting on the Internet might be the wave of the future, but it’s too soon for B.C. to catch that wave. Elections B.C. looked into the question of whether the province should move to Internet voting, and released a report last week that found the technology presents too many problems and won’t do what its advocates hope. Those who want us to vote on the Internet tout its obvious convenience as an answer to declining voter turnout. We bank, shop, book vacations and manage much of our lives on the Internet, so adding voting to the suite looks like a no-brainer. The most optimistic of its supporters hoped it could be in place in time for the municipal elections in 2014. But slow down, says Elections B.C.’s panel on Internet voting. It won’t be possible to answer all the questions before next year. It gives four recommendations in its report: Don’t bring in universal Internet voting, although limited use for people with accessibility issues could work; have a provincewide policy; set up a technical committee for evaluation and support; evaluate any system on nine essential principles. The report’s nine principles are: accessibility, ballot anonymity, individual and independent verifiability, non-reliance on the trustworthiness of the voter’s device(s), one vote per voter, only count votes from eligible voters, process validation and transparency, service availability, voter authentication and authorization. As the nine principles show, Internet voting has a lot of hurdles to clear.

Estonia: E-Voting Tests Wind Up, One Bug Fixed | ERR

Just under 2,000 people took part in the e-voting test run last week, with officials saying that casting a vote should take less than a minute. Despite its reputation as an Estonian success story, e-voting has been a controversial issue that has been challenged by political opposition, claims of security vulnerabilities and an ensuing Supreme Court case. This year’s innovation is a verification system, albeit one that only works on Android operating systems.

Australia: Electoral chief cautious about online voting | Sydney Morning Herald

The replacement of paper-and-pencil voting with an electronic system could see Australians lose confidence in the poll results, the electoral chief has warned. Australian Electoral Commissioner Ed Killesteyn defended the system’s reliability following attacks from election hopeful Clive Palmer, who portrayed himself as a victim of ”rigged” results and the AEC as a military-infiltrated ”national disgrace”. Despite the conspiracy claims, Mr Palmer extended his lead over his Liberal National Party rival to 111 votes on Friday, with the final counting of outstanding votes in the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax expected on Saturday. The Palmer United Party founder and wealthy Queensland businessman reacted angrily to the discovery of 750 votes tallied against the wrong pre-poll location mid-way through the count. In an earlier mistake, officials noticed 1000 votes for Victorian independent Cathy McGowan had not been recorded correctly, pushing the seat of Indi further out of reach of former Coalition frontbencher Sophie Mirabella, who subsequently conceded defeat this week. Mr Killesteyn said computer-based voting would eliminate these kinds of ”human errors” but the benefits would have to be weighed against hacking and manipulation fears.

Estonia: Electoral Committee Launches E-Voting Tests | ERR

Officials begin a three-day period of testing Estonia’s e-election system today, and voters can also participate. The testing comes in light of the fact that the upcoming local government elections will be the first in which Internet voters will be able to verify that they have voted – a sort of electronic receipt, reported ETV. Those wishing to vote online, as has been possible in Estonia since 2005, must download the voting software and log in with their national ID card or mobile ID. Despite its reputation as an Estonian success story, e-voting has been a controversial issue that has been challenged by political opposition, claims of security vulnerabilities and an ensuing Supreme Court case.

Editorials: Say no to e-voting: defending the pencils of democracy | Crikey

Another election is winding up, so it’s time for the compulsory round of people complaining that the system is flawed and that technology would magically fix some of the problems. Quite a few are troubled by the pencils, including Clive Palmer, who listed pencils as part of his comprehensive spray against Australia’s “corrupt system”. He told AAP:

“There’s absolutely no way I will win based [on] voting irregularities and the security of the ballots. We think it’s a corrupt system. Until that’s sorted out Abbott won’t be getting any legislation through the Senate with our support.”

But the Australian Electoral Commission has good reasons for using pencils.

“The AEC has found from experience that pencils are the most reliable implements for marking ballot papers. Pencils are practical because they don’t run out and the polling staff check and sharpen pencils as necessary throughout election day. Pencils can be stored between elections, and they work better in tropical areas.”

Besides, if someone intent on defrauding the election broke into the room where the ballots were stored overnight, do you think the best mode of attack would be to erase votes one by one, in a way that couldn’t be detected?

Norway: Vote early, vote often: Inside Norway’s pioneering open source e-voting trials | ZDNet

With Norway holding parliamentary elections this week, the country has taken the opportunity to hold its second e-voting pilot. The pilot follows an earlier trial which took place during the local government elections in 2011. According to statistics released by the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development, the ministry responsible for running elections in Norway, the e-voting participation increased significantly compared to 2011. The trial was carried out in 12 municipalities, chosen for geographical and demographical diversity, which play home to 250,000 of Norway’s 3.6 million voters. … Even though the e-voting system with security front and centre, it still has attracted some criticism from security professionals. The first and most discussed issue were concerns raised over the encryption used in the pilot. The encryption software on the voters’ computers was thought to not have a good enough random number seed for the algorithm and, according to the security company Computas which was engaged by the government to control the system, the seed value was “very predictable”.

New Zealand: Can we trust voting online? | ZDNet

Thankfully, the New Zealand government appears not to be pressing ahead with online voting — at least, for now. An Electoral Amendment Bill was released yesterday, which improves online registration through its RealMe identification service, but nothing appears to have been said about actual online voting itself. Voting online was always seen as one of those inevitable things as part of an e-transition, as it were, to an online world; something that we all saw as “a good thing”. But recent events have made me turn against such “progress”. Having free and fair elections are fundamental to the democratic process, but can we trust such e-ballots?

Indonesia: Touch-screen voting initiated in Bali | khabarsoutheastasia.com

On a bright Monday morning on July 29th, residents of Mendoyo Dangin Tukad, in Jembrana, Bali, lined up to choose their next village chief. Most wore traditional Balinese attire – batik sarongs– with kebaya for the women and a headscarf (destar) for the men. The election voting was far from traditional, as election officials said it was the most technologically advanced ever held in Indonesia, using touch-screen devices that verify voters’ identity via their national ID cards. Implementation of the e-voting system was a collaborative effort by the Agency for Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) and the Jembrana regional administration. BPPT provided the four e-voting devices, each worth about Rp 10 million ($1,000). The new technology is a breakthrough for Indonesia, which plans to implement it in other parts of the country, according to the head of BPPT, Marzan Iskandar.

Estonia: Volunteers to Put Internet Voting Software to the Test | ERR

A group of IT experts says it intends to carry out a test attack on Estonia’s e-voting software following the release of the source code two weeks ago. Although it was possible to test the system before the code was made public, only administrators had access to the results, reported Õhtuleht. The group of volunteers, led by security expert Renee Trisberg, says it hopes to finish testing the voluminous and complex system one month ahead of Estonia’s next local elections, on October 20 (electronic voting begins 10 days earlier). Since the general framework of the e-voting system has been public for years, Trisberg said, he believes that it is generally secure and that his team can only expect to find minor errors. “I have been a supporter of the e-elections. One must do his part to ensure that nothing happens, even just a simple mistake. Years of finger-pointing will follow if a malfunction were to occur,“ Trisberg said.

Estonia: E-Voting Source Code Made Public | ERR

The Electronic Voting Committee yesterday revealed the source code of its server software, opening up technical analysis of the e-elections system to the public. “This is the next step toward a transparent system. The idea, which was the result of joint discussion between numerous Estonian IT experts and the Electronic Voting Committee, was implemented today. We welcome the fact that experts representing civil society want to contribute to the development and security of the e-elections,” said committee chairman Tarvi Martens. Although the source code was accessible before, it required the requester to sign a confidentiality contract. Estonia’s e-voting system has been used for five elections – including general, local and European Parliament elections – since it was introduced in 2005. In the 2011 general elections, 24.3 percent of the votes cast were done so by e-vote, according to the National Electoral Committee. A new feature at the coming October local government elections is an Android-based electronic receipt of sorts that allows a voter to verify if their e-ballot went through properly.

Estonia: E-voting system source code releases in push for transparency, security | Gigaom

For six years, Estonians haven’t had to set foot in a polling place or wait in line to cast their votes for President — instead, they can do it online. And on Thursday, the country’s Electronic Voting Committee released the entire source code of its voting server software on open-source platform GitHub — a move that not only gives Estonians a glimpse into the workings of their e-voting system, but that also gives them a chance to help toughen it up from a security perspective. The Estonian e-voting process is based on the country’s identity card, which is mandatory and issued when a citizen is 15 years old. The card has a built-in electronic authentication system that allows secure voting online from any computer, and each citizen is allowed to submit and change their vote until Election Day. At the last Parliamentary Election in 2011, one in four people chose to cast their ballot via e-vote. While there isn’t enough data to conclude whether e-voting has raised voter turnout overall in the country, the country’s electoral committee views the process as successful.

Australia: Queensland moves to have electronic, and potentially online voting, within six years | The Telegraph

Queenslanders who fail to vote in State Elections will continue to cop a fine after the Newman Government decided not to scrap compulsory voting. But the Government will eventually make it more convenient to vote, moving to introduce electronic, and potentially online voting, within six years. Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie yesterday announced Cabinet had decided against removing fines for voters who fail to show up on polling day. It comes after The Courier-Mail revealed in January the Government was reviewing compulsory voting among other reforms. Other changes include a new requirement for voters to show proof of identification at the polling booth, a move that could affect pensioners.

Australia: Compulsory voting to remain in Queensland as donation cap lifted | The Australian

Compulsory voting will remain in place in Queensland but political parties will have to declare donations of $12,400 or more under reforms announced by the Newman Government today. Online voting could also be trialled in the 2015 campaign for voters with a disability. Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie said he envisioned all voters could vote electronically within six years. “Subject to appropriate security arrangements and successful trials, computers could replace paper voting cards at polling booths and Queenslanders could even one day vote from the comfort of their own homes over the Internet,” Mr Bleijie said. “The immediate priority is providing electronically assisted voting for people with disabilities.” Other reforms will include lifting the caps on political donations and expenditure which were imposed by the former government and requiring proof of identity from voters on polling day.

Albania: Electronic voting dropped from June 23 parliamentary elections | Balkans.com

The Central Electoral Commission, CEC, has abandoned the planned use of new pilot technologies in the June 23 parliamentary elections, after tests revealed problems. The Electoral Code mandated the CEC to pilot two new election technologies for these elections: an electronic voter verification system, EVS, in the district of Tirana, and an electronic counting system in the region of Fier. But according to a CEC report 11 per cent of the identity cards tested could not be read from the machine. Tests with the EVS system in Tirana revealed that the system could not read deteriorated IDs or prevent attempts of multiple voting at different voting centres.

Estonia: No Sweat for Vallbaum in E-Vote Rigging Scandal | ERR

One of the he-said, she-said conflicts in the Reform Party’s vote rigging scandal is whether Lääne-Viru County Governor Einar Vallbaum had any involvement. Regional development director Taimi Samblik had accused both MEP Kristiina Ojuland and Vallbaum of persuading her to rig the votes and later of trying to bribe her into taking full responsibility. Yesterday, Samblik left the party and Ojuland was kicked out. But Vallbaum, who had threatened to sue the party if he were expelled, was kept in, as the party said it did not find evidence that he was implicated, ERR reported. Moreover, Vallbaum said he believed Ojuland and claimed that Samblik had made the whole story up. “It’s too bad about Taimi. She did her work well, excluding the two incidents that she made up,” Vallbaum said.

France: E-voting system used in French election is flawed | Help Net Security

A recent electronic election in France has proved electronic some voting systems still cannot be trusted not to include fraudulent votes. The town hall primary election which ended on Monday saw four candidates of the Union Pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) vie for the honor to be the party’s candidate in the Paris mayoral elections scheduled for next spring. But, the entire affair has been tainted by claims of Metronews journalists that it’s extremely easy to cast a ballot in other voters’ name. The UMP had outsourced the organization of the election to Docapost, a subsidiary of the French postal service, which has apparently organized several successful union and political elections in the past. The company assured that every measure had been taken to prevent fraud, and the UMP had even hired a security expert to control the voting process and results.

Florida: Congressman Joe Garcia: ‘Flawed’ absentee-voting system, ‘reckless abandon’ in politics contributed to ballot scandal | Miami Herald

Congressman Joe Garcia on Saturday attempted to control the damage inflicted on his office a day earlier, when he dismissed his chief of staff for apparently orchestrating a scheme to submit hundreds of fraudulent absentee-ballot requests. Meanwhile, Republicans nationwide and closer to home pummeled Garcia, questioning whether the first-term congressman was coming clean on his campaign’s involvement in the ballot scandal. In a news conference held at his West Miami-Dade office Saturday morning, Garcia, a Democrat, maintained that he had no knowledge of the failed plot during last year’s primary election. He said he learned about his campaign’s involvement only the previous afternoon from chief of staff Jeffrey Garcia, who is unrelated to the congressman and has long served as his top political strategist. “I cannot stress how angry I am at these events,” Joe Garcia said Saturday.

Estonia: In E-Voting Scandal, Suspicions Arise Over MEP Kristiina Ojuland | ERR

Prime Minister Andrus Ansip has drawn a connection in the e-voting fraud scandal with MEP Kristiina Ojuland.
Ansip told Postimees after a party meeting that Ojuland has made payments from her personal bank account to compensate the party membership dues of 39 people whose identities are suspected to have been stolen. Võru County has emerged as the second voting district to be wrapped up in the Reform Party’s leadership election scandal, in which an insider is suspected of secretly casting e-votes on behalf of elderly party members who claim not to have voted. Only a few cases of identity theft are suspected in Võru County, as opposed to dozens in Lääne-Viru County, ERR radio reported.

Estonia: Alleging Flaws, E-Voting Critics Make Request for 2011 Log Files | ERR

The Center Party, which insists the country’s vaunted electronic voting system is flawed, has made a freedom of information request to the state electoral committee to get e-voting server log files from the 2011 general elections. “In light of our deep doubts about the security of e-elections, we are asking the electoral committee about e-voting software ownership issues and the contracts under which the software was commissioned,” said MP Priit Toobal. Toobal said Center was interested in whether the 2011 e-voting software was audited and if so, what the results of the audit were. Toobal also said the party made a proposal to test the 2013 local election e-voting system and software.

Estonia: Prime Minister Ansip: Election Fraud Suspect Identified | ERR

Prime Minister Andrus Ansip said a member of his party has admitted to manipulating e-votes in the Reform Party’s leadership election last week and in another election in 2011. “The party secretary has a specific individual’s explanation in written form in which the individual admits to having committed the acts at hand. And the individual has suggested that he or she did this at the request and knowing of someone else,” Ansip told ERR radio, without revealing any names as the investigation is still in progress.

Italy: E-voting pilot kicks off in Salento | ZDNet

You’d expect to hear about Salento in a travel blog, inviting you to explore the villages and secluded white sand beaches of this Italian gem. But there’s more to the region than scenery: it’s the home of one of Italy’s first major experiments with e-voting. First, the trivia. Martignano is the one of the region’s smallest towns, situated in an area known as the Grecia Salentina, a language enclave of ten municipalities where griko is spoken, a language originating from ancient greek (Salento was once part of the Magna Grecia). Small yet culturally lively, Martignano still has one of the best broadband infrastructures in Italy. Melpignano is another town in the Grecia Salentina, and also uses griko. Onto the politics: smaller towns and municipalities in Italy have recently been asked to cast their votes as part of an “advisory referendum” on the question of whether to join up with other towns with up to 5,000 citizens. It’s a part of an ongoing countrywide bid to try to reduce public spending by cutting the number of small municipalities and provinces and the amount of administration that goes with them.

California: Canada backs off from Internet voting, for now, while California legislature pushes it forward | FierceGovernmentIT

The Canadian agency charged with conducting national elections has decided against a planned pilot of Internet electoral voting before the 2015 general election due to budget cuts, Canadian media has reported. A report from the agency, Elections Canada, says that it hasn’t ruled out Internet voting, however, and that it “will continue to monitor such trials and developments in other jurisdictions to evaluate the feasibility of undertaking an I-voting project.” The California Assembly, meanwhile, is pressing forward with the possibility of Internet voting, with the Elections Committee approving on April 30 in a 4-3 vote a bill (AB 19) sponsored by Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) that would establish an Internet voting pilot program.