National: NIST: Internet voting not yet feasible | FierceGovernmentIT

Internet voting is not yet feasible, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology have concluded. “Malware on voters’ personal computers poses a serious threat that could compromise the secrecy or integrity of voters’ ballots,” said Belinda Collins, senior advisor for voting standards within NIST’s information technology laboratory, in an May 18 statement. “And, the United States currently lacks an infrastructure for secure electronic voter authentication,” she added. Collins released the statement in response to an inquiry from Common Cause, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit active in campaign finance and election reform.

Switzerland: New study critical of e-voting systems being tested in Switzerland | swissinfo

Swiss e-voting systems lack transparency and are vulnerable to attack by malevolent software, a study has found. The authorities are looking for solutions but officials point out that there is no such thing as absolute security, even with the traditional ballot paper vote. With the systems used so far in electronic voting trials “citizens cannot verify if their vote has been registered and counted correctly. They are obliged to trust the administration and authorities completely,” Eric Dubuis, information technology professor at the Bern University of Applied Sciences, told swissinfo.ch. Under the mandate of the Federal Chancellery, Dubuis co-authored a study on verifiable e-voting systems – systems that allow the voter to trace all the steps of his or her vote and to check that there has been no manipulation and that the vote has been duly counted.

Editorials: States Shouldn’t Tamper with Voting Rights Act | New America Media

Since the beginning of 2011, states across the country have passed new laws restricting the right to vote. From voter ID to curbs on early voting and registration drives, these controversial measures could make it harder for millions of Americans to vote this year, including a disproportionate number of minority, young, and elderly voters. The photo ID law passed by Texas, for example, could prevent hundreds of thousands of eligible voters from casting a ballot, including a disproportionate number of minorities, as the data shows. Voting rights advocates are fighting these laws in the courts, but in addition to these direct attacks on the franchise, opponents are now threatening a cornerstone of American civil rights law — the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Decades ago, our nation passed the Voting Rights Act (VRA) to combat discrimination in voting. It has successfully protected voters against decades of discriminatory measures that had disenfranchised African Americans, Latinos, and many other Americans. The VRA was even reauthorized in 2006 with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress, and it was signed by President George W. Bush. Elected officials in both parties recognized the VRA is still needed because discrimination against minority voters continues to this day. For example, in recent years, the Justice Department forced Texas to stop discriminatory actions against voters at historically black colleges and universities.

Virginia: Miller seeks simpler absentee voting in Virginia | The Suffolk News-Herald

A state legislator wants to make it easier for Virginians who can’t go to the polls on Election Day to obtain an absentee ballot. Sen. John C. Miller, D-Newport News, whose district includes a portion of Suffolk, has proposed that voters be able to request and receive an absentee ballot by email. They still would have to return the completed ballot by regular mail or by hand. Currently, only voters who are in the military or are overseas can use email to request and receive an absentee ballot from Virginia election officials. During the General Assembly’s 2012 regular session, Miller sponsored a bill to allow any registered voter to use email to apply for an absentee ballot.

Estonia: Parliament Seeks to Make Internet Voting More Transparent | ERR

Parliament is looking to amend the electronic voting procedure in such a way as to make it possible for voters to check whether their votes have been registered correctly. Starting from 2005, e-voting has been used in five elections in Estonia. In order to make the system more reliable and trustworthy, legislators are now looking for a way to make it possible for voters to check whether their votes have been registered correctly. This solution was proposed in response to the concerns that arose during the last elections regarding the possibility of voters’ computers being tampered with, reported ETV. “In the case of a virus that blocks voting, a person may think that he has voted, when in fact the vote has not reached the system. This is why we came up with the idea of giving voters an opportunity to check their votes,” said Reform Party MP and member of Parliament’s Constitutional Committee Andrei Korobeinik. According to him, the voter’s computer is the weakest link in the chain and vote checking is one of the most complicated issues being tackled at the moment. “The initial idea is that the voter will be shown an image that he can photograph off the screen using his mobile phone, and then the system will tell him whether his vote has been registered correctly or not,” he explained.

Editorials: Digging deeper into the 2012 Scytl vote count controversy | Examiner.com

The news story being circulated around the alternative media concerning the Spanish company SCYTL and its contracts with 900 U.S. voter jurisdictions is a complicated one. And it is one that has tended to lend itself to broad generalizations and, in some cases, misinformation. Digging deeper into the vote tabulation controversy should help separate fact from fiction.  First, it is important to consider what has been discovered to be either fiction or at the very least unconfirmed speculation. Rumors, innuendo, and opinions that cannot be verified by the paper trail cannot be considered fact, although there may be some kernel of truth within them. A perfect example is the oft repeated claim that George Soros owns SCYTL. There is no evidence that the Leftwing billionaire has any financial stake in the company. SCYTL is funded by three sources, venture capital corporations that specialize in investing in privately owned companies. Those three sources are Balderton Capital, Nauta Capital, and Spinnaker SCR. SCYTL’s board of directors and information concerning its founder can be found at the corporate website. Information on the company’s management team can be found here. However, all attempts to discover who exactly owns SCYTL have come up empty. The company is listed in all official profiles as a “privately owned corporation,” but no information is given as to the identities of the private owners.

Voting Blogs: Anchorage’s Ballot Shortages and Denial of Service Attacks in “Meat Space” | Election Academy

Recently, I wrote about the denial of service (DoS) attack on a Canadian party’s leadership election. In that post, I discussed election officials’ (and their vendors’) responsibility for hardening their systems against such attacks. Moreover, I said said this responsibility exists whether the attack comes electronically or in the real world (aka “meat space” in the words of a programmer friend). Last Tuesday, municipal elections in Anchorage were somewhat chaotic – with ballot shortages across the city and many voters turned away from the polls. The problems appear to have been caused in part by an opponent of an equal-rights proposition who used email and Facebook to urge voters to the polls. Unfortunately, those appeals included incorrect information; namely, that voters could register at the polls and do so outside their home precincts. Alaska does not have election day registration, but rather requires voters to register 30 days before an election. The result was frustration as many voters visited numerous polling places in hopes – for some, in vain – of finding a ballot. The city clerk is investigating the problems and is weighing whether or not they could have been serious enough to invalidate the election.

National: Internet Voting Is Years Away, And Maybe Always Will Be | TechPinions

In today’s New York Times Magazine, political writer Matt Bai grumbles in a short piece about his inability to vote online in an era where nearly everything else can be done over the Internet. “The best argument against Internet voting,” he writes, “is that it stacks the system against old and poor people who can’t afford or use computers, but the same could be said about cars.” That, he argues, is a problem that could easily be solved by the electronic equivalent of giving people rides to a polling place. If only it were so simple. Voting, alas, has unique characteristics that make internet implementations all but impossible given current technology. The big problem is that we make two demands of it that cannot be met simultaneously. We want voting to be very, very secure. And we want it to be very, very anonymous.

Canada: Deliberate Denial of Service Assault Disrupts NDP Internet Voting | SPAMfighter

An advanced cyber-assault, which created chaos during the federal NDP party’s election, has been attributed to a specialized Web hacker who utilized over 10,000 PCs globally for so slackening the pace of the online-voting that it started to crawl, thus published vancouversun.com dated March 28, 2012. Actually, according to the provider of the Internet-based balloting, Scytl Canada, one Denial-of-Service assault was deliberately unleashed with the objective of disrupting the voting exercise by the NDP on 24th March 2012. It was determined that the assault successfully clogged the channel of the voting mechanism so voters had to wait long to gain access. This slackening of the voting speed thus frustrated the party’s representatives gathered at Toronto.

Florida: Report: Florida one of the ‘five worst states for voting rights in 2011′ | Florida Independent

The Center for American Progress released a report today on voter suppression efforts carried out by Republican-led state legislatures around the country, listing Florida as one of “five worst states for voting rights in 2011.” As we at The Florida Independent have been reporting, Florida lawmakers passed a new voting law last year that has drawn fire from federal officials, legislators, advocacy groups and voting rights experts from all over the country. The many critics of the law have said the law is a concerted effort to keep minorities, young people, the elderly and the poor from the polls on Election Day. Florida’s contentious law places prohibitive rules and restrictions on third-party voter registration groups, creates a shortened “shelf life” for signatures collected for ballot initiatives, places new restrictions on voters changing their registered addresses on election day, and reduces the number of early voting days — among many other provisions.

National: Online Voting ‘Premature’ Warns Government Cybersecurity Expert | WBUR

Warnings about the dangers of Internet voting have been growing as the 2012 election nears, and an especially noteworthy one came Thursday from a top cybersecurity official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Bruce McConnell told a group of election officials, academics and advocacy groups meeting in Santa Fe, N.M., that he believes, “it’s premature to deploy Internet voting in real elections at this time.” McConnell said voting systems are vulnerable and, “when you connect them to the Internet that vulnerability increases.” He called security around Internet voting “immature and under-resourced.” McConnell’s comments echo those of a number of computer scientists who say there’s no way to protect votes cast over the Internet from outside manipulation. But right now a growing number of states are allowing overseas and military voters to return their marked ballots by digital fax or email, which experts say raises the same threat. It’s part of a recent push to make voting easier for millions of Americans overseas, who often are prevented from voting because of slow ballot delivery and missed deadlines.

Canada: NDP internet vote disruption worries experts | The Chronicle Herald

Although many people are attached at the hip to their laptops, few are conversant in software coding and even fewer are familiar with heavy encryption. Combine computers with the intricacies of elections, and that leaves only a handful of specialists worldwide who can claim to understand online voting. Questions about e-voting were raised after the NDP leadership convention was disrupted by a cyber attack. Not all of them have been answered satisfactorily, say software experts, despite reassurances from Scytl, the software company that handled the NDP election process, and from Halifax Regional Municipality, which has committed to use the company’s services in October’s municipal election. “Multibillion-dollar (software developers) like Windows, you know, Microsoft . . . can’t have their software bug-free. So I don’t think Scytl is able to do that,” said Daniel Sokolov, a Halifax information technology expert. Sokolov has examined several European elections that used e-voting and found at least three with troubling results.

Canada: Halifax Regional Municipality to review e-voting contract after cyber attack on NDP leadership election | Metro

The Halifax Regional Municipality will be reviewing a decision to award a Spanish e-voting company a contract for this October’s election. This in the wake of e-voting delays that plagued the federal NDP leadership convention in Toronto on Saturday. Scytl, the Spanish company that oversaw the convention’s e-voting, was awarded a contract in January to provide electronic voting for the upcoming HRM election. “With the events of the weekend … we certainly will be reviewing the situation with the company,” Mayor Peter Kelly said on Sunday. “(HRM will) determine whether or not this was an issue of just malfunction, or other factors as was indicated (by the NDP).”

Canada: Officials mum about source of cyber-attack meant to disrupt online voting | thestar.com

New Democrats remained tight-lipped Sunday about the cyber-attack that kept the country waiting for hours at Saturday’s leadership convention. Party brass refused to disclose the source of two Internet Protocol addresses that they say perpetrated an attack meant to disrupt its online voting system, as they tried to manage Thomas Mulcair’s first day as head of the federal NDP. The party is investigating the attack, in tandem with its voting system provider, Scytl, auditors Price Waterhouse Cooper and a number of “experts,” party president Rebecca Blaikie said on Sunday. “At this point, there is not a single point person,” Blaikie said of the investigation. “We’re going to investigate what (the attack) is, where it came from. . . As soon as we know that, we’ll be able to decide what to do next.” Blaikie said neither police nor Elections Canada have been contacted. The NDP identified the IP addresses, essentially identification tags assigned to web-wired devices, as perpetrators of a denial-of-service (DNS) attack. While the party insists the results were not compromised, some are questioning the integrity of the final, fourth-round ballot, which propelled Thomas Mulcair to victory after more than 12 hours of voting.

Canada: Halifax Mayor Kelly concerned by NDP e-voting problems – will use same Spanish company in municipal election | CBC

The Halifax Regional Municipality will take a close look at the e-voting problems experienced at the federal NDP leadership convention because it is planning to use the same Spanish company in the October municipal election. Mayor Peter Kelly said ensuring the integrity of the vote in the Halifax region is of the utmost importance. “We take the voting aspect very, very seriously and I think to be fair to all parties we have to make sure there is a thorough review and investigation of this situation,”he said Sunday. “Then if there is a threat of this in the upcoming election, then we need to take that very seriously and determine the best way forward.” Scytl Secure Electronic Voting, from Spain, won the contract after underbidding Intelivote Systems Inc. of Dartmouth by more than $300,000. Intelivote provided online and telephone voting for the previous two municipal elections.

Canada: NDP says hackers caused online vote delays | CTV Edmonton

Delays in online voting at the NDP leadership convention have been blamed on hackers, with party officials saying they have found evidence of the attack. Jamey Heath, the NDP’s communications manager, said the party had managed to trace the Internet Protocol addresses of two perpetrators. “They’ve isolated it to individual IP addresses. Votes that have been cast are secure,” he said. The delays had threatened to become a full-scale public relations disaster for the party that even had some people questioning the integrity of the end result. There were lineups of more than an hour at the Metro Toronto Convention centre as the system slowed down. Eligible voters across the country were also getting online error messages.

China: Hong Kong election poll shot down by DDoS cyber attack | The Register

Two local men have been arrested after an online referendum organised by Hong Kong university to poll citizens on their choice of chief executive was disabled in an apparent denial of service attack. Broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) reported that the men, aged 17 and 28, were arrested at the weekend after the online poll was disrupted for a large part of Friday and some of Saturday. … The system has been very busy,” Robert Chung, director of the university’s program, apparently told reporters. “We suspect it is under systematic attack as there are more than one million clicks on our system every second.” Chung was reportedly reticent about the potential motive for the attack but it is well known that the Chinese authorities are not a massive fan of free speech and probably viewed the referendum as undermining the result of the real vote – the outcome of which Beijing basically controls.

China: Hong Kong Mock Vote Draws 223,000 | WSJ

A mock vote that aimed to give ordinary Hong Kong citizens a voice in today’s chief executive poll drew 223,000 votes despite an earlier cyber attack that hit the ambitious project. The Chinese territory’s top political job will be decided by a 1,200 person election committee Sunday, but that hasn’t stopped many of the city’s seven million residents taking part in the University of Hong Kong’s civil referendum project. Beijing has promised the city universal suffrage by 2017. Over half (54%) posted a blank vote, meaning they wanted neither Hong Kong’s former no. 2, Henry Tang, nor its former cabinet head, Leung Chun-ying, to win. Mr. Leung won 18% of the vote, followed by Mr. Tang at 16% and Albert Ho, who chairs the city’s Democracy Party, at 11%.

Voting Blogs: The Details On How To Elect Futurama’s Bender To Whatever Election Is Using Online Voting | Techdirt

Back in October of 2010, we wrote about how some “hackers” had broken into a test of the Washington DC e-voting system, and had managed to have the system play the University of Michigan “fight song” every time people voted — University of Michigan being where the researchers (led by e-voting security expert J. Alex Halderman) were from. A day later, we discussed some more details of the hack, noting how just a tiny vulnerability could take down the integrity of the entire system.

Voting Blogs: Hacking the Polls: Vulnerability in Electronic Voting Systems | Independent Voter Network

Among those who advocate for the “modernization” of our voting systems, internet-based electronic voting and registration platforms are often offered as an ideal solution to the problems inherent in our current registration and voting processes. A newly published paper describes the ease with which a small group of researchers was able to hack a Washington D.C. based internet voting pilot project, demonstrating that these new systems are not ready for take-off. In 2010, the Washington D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics announced that it would offer a “Digital Vote-by-Mail Service” that would have allowed overseas voters registered in the District to cast their votes over the internet. The federally-funded project ran a mock election allowing for public testing of its functionality and security ahead of the November election. A research team from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor reports that it was able to gain “near complete control of the election server” in under two days time. Even more disturbingly, the hackers state that elections officials were effectively incapable of discerning that their system had been compromised.

Voting Blogs: In Theory And Practice, Why Internet-Based Voting Is a Bad Idea | Slashdot

A few countries, like Estonia, have gone for internet-based voting in national elections in a big way, and many others (like Ireland and Canada) have experimented with it. For Americans, with a presidential election approaching later this year, it’s a timely issue: already, some states have come to allow at least certain forms of voting by internet. Proponents say online elections have compelling upsides, chief among them ease of participation. People who might not otherwise vote — in particular military personnel stationed abroad, but many others besides — are more and more reached by internet access. Online voting offers a way to keep the electoral process open to them. With online voting, too, there’s no worry about conventional absentee ballots being lost or delayed in the postal system, either before reaching the voter or on the way back to be counted. The downsides, though, are daunting. According to RSA panelists David Jefferson and J. Alex Halderman, in fact, they’re overwhelming. Speaking Thursday afternoon, the two laid out their case against e-voting.

District of Columbia: Hackers Elect Futurama’s Bender to the Washington DC School Board | PCWorld

Electronic voting has earned a pretty bad reputation for being insecure and completely unreliable. Well, get ready to add another entry to e-voting’s list of woes. One Bender Bending Rodríguez was elected to the 2010 school board in Washington DC. A team of hackers from the University of Michigan got Bender elected as a write-in candidate who stole every vote from the real candidates. Bender, of course, is a cartoon character from the TV series Futurama. This was not some nefarious attack from a group of rogue hackers: The DC school board actually dared hackers to crack its new Web-based absentee voting system four days ahead of the real election. University of Michigan professor Alexander Halderman, along with two graduate students, did the deed within a few hours.

Australia: Western Australian Electoral Commission to develop telephone voting system | Techworld

The WA Electoral Commission (WAEC) has commenced work on a telephone-based voting system after the funding for its internet voting system was withdrawn by the Federal Government. WAEC IT manager, Desmond Chenik, told Computerworld Australia the full internet voting system it was scheduled to develop this year, for the blind and vision impaired along with the armed forces, had been put on hold after several months of work. According to Chenik, the WAEC has put in another request with the government for the funding but even if the request is approved later this year, the internet-based system would not be ready in time for the next state election in March 2013 (the state now has fixed four year election periods).

Connecticut: Secretary of State Merrill voices call for new tech, laws to get people voting | Greenwich Post

The ability to use more technology, Election Day registration and increased outreach are what Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill called “modest first steps” to addressing the crisis of poor voter turnout numbers. In an appearance at Town Hall last Thursday, Feb. 2, Ms. Merrill discussed election issues and looked ahead to what can be done to get more people educated and motivated to vote. The Greenwich League of Women Voters invited Ms. Merrill to speak so residents could hear about the latest initiatives coming out of her office. She discussed the impacts of technology and where she sees voting trends going in years to come.

Ireland: The Celtic Tiger’s white elephant | Enniscourthyguardian.ie

So it looks like ‘our stupid aul pencils’ got the last laugh. With Ireland’s 7,500 e-voting machines now up for sale or waste disposal if they can’t be sold, the end is finally in sight for a costly saga going back some 13 years. Following research and trial runs the machines were eventually purchased in 2002 for €50 million as the Fianna Fail led government sought to push ahead with their introduction. However, amid serious concerns surrounding the accuracy and security of the machines the government was eventually forced to set up an independent commission to look into these concerns. The commission found the concerns were justified and plans to use them in the 2004 elections were scrapped just a month before people voted in June. Since then, it has cost the stage a whopping €3.5m to store Ireland’s e- voting machines.

Ireland: €55m e-vote machines may be too old to sell | Independent.ie

The €55m e-voting fiasco could become even more expensive because the machines may now be too old to sell. The Government last night admitted it might be forced to pay someone to dispose of 7,500 machines languishing in storage for the past decade. The reason is because the machines are so out of date that finding a buyer may be impossible and they would have to be disposed of at great expense. The Department of the Environment yesterday sought expressions of interest for the ‘sale or recovery’ of 7,500 machines and associated equipment including cases, storage trolleys and tables.

Editorials: Election e-voting has its advantages and disadvantages | Star Phoenix

Like a lot of terrible ideas, voting over the Internet in federal elections is not without superficial appeal. That would explain why Elections Canada reportedly is moving us towards electronic or e-voting. E-voting certainly would make it easier to participate in the democratic process. Instead of schlepping to the polls, we could vote from the comfort of our homes simply by clicking a computer mouse or swiping a smart phone. We could vote while travelling anywhere outside the country with Internet access. Canadian astronauts could even vote from space if they happened to be in orbit on election day. … So what’s not to like about e-voting? Security, for starters.

Austria: E-Voting Pilot in Austria Cancelled by Constitutional Court | wu.ac.at

The Austrian Federal Constitutional Court cancelled the Austrian e-voting pilot conducted in 2009, cf. the Ruling of 13.12.2011 (in German). The pilot had been conducted in the 2009 Elections for the Austrian Student Association, which is an official representative body. Out of more than 230,000 students, only 2,000 had used e-voting.  The pilot was objected to by several student groups as (i) unconstitutional, (ii) using a system that violated basic voting principles and (iii) violating privacy; those student groups then filed a formal complaint after the election. On December 13, 2011, the Court ruled that the e-voting pilot of 2009 was null and void and furthermore canceled those parts of the Electoral Regulations for the Student Elections 2005 (in German) issued by the Ministry of Science and Research that enabled and regulated e-voting. The Austrian e-voting pilot 2009 can hence be considered as failed.

Canada: Halifax Regional Municipality supports internet voting decision | Enfield Weekly Press

Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) was only being financially prudent in deciding to go with a Spanish company over a Dartmouth-based company to provide internet voting options for the 2012 municipal election, the councillor for Eastern Shore-Musquodoboit Valley said. Steve Streatch was reacting to Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) regional council’s decision to award Scytl the contract for telephone and internet voting services for the October 20, 2012 municipal election over a company that had done the same task in the 2008 municipal election.

Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka To Amend Election Law To Introduce Electronic Voting | Bernama

Sri Lanka is planning to amend its elections law so as to enable electronic voting, according to China’s Xinhua news agency citing Election Commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya on Monday. Speaking to media, the official said said that the government is considering to amend the current election law so that it would be possible to initiate electronic voting instead of the laborious hand counting system that is in practice now. “Large amounts of public money are spent on elections as they are done manually with the entire process needing many people and resources,” said Deshapriya.