Canada: Vancouver online voting pilot nixed by province | CBC News

A pilot program for online municipal election voting in Vancouver won’t get off the ground in time for the upcoming civic election. Earlier this year, Vancouver city council passed a resolution to set up online voting for the advance polls of this year’s municipal election on Nov. 19, which would have allowed eligible voters to cast a ballot by home or mobile computer.

However, the city needed provincial approval to get the program up and running — and the province says there’s not enough time to ensure a fair and accurate process is in place.

Switzerland: OSCE monitors to observe Swiss elections | swissinfo

Experts from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) are coming to Switzerland to monitor this month’s federal elections.
Their two main focuses of attention will be electronic voting for voters living abroad, and campaign financing, according to a joint statement issued on Friday by the federal chancellery and the foreign ministry.

The experts are hoping to learn from the Swiss e-voting experience so as to be able to apply the lessons in younger democracies and to help develop new election technologies. However, the OSCE monitors determine their programme themselves and will only give the Swiss authorities operational details at short notice.

Editorials: Should We Think Twice About Online Voting? | The Mark

Seduced by technology’s ability to facilitate the mundane tasks of daily life, many Canadians are finding the act of going out and voting too disruptive. With the exception of a slight uptick of around three per cent in the most recent federal election, voter turnout continues to decline.

What can be done to compel more people to take part in this fundamental function of a healthy democracy? Elections Canada is now exploring the possibility of “e-services” such as internet voting. Yet, as we wade into considerations of altering our voting practices, we must ask ourselves an important question: In addressing the participatory deficit plaguing our democracy, should our primary focus be on making voting more convenient?

In its report on the 41st general election, Elections Canada is careful to identify its core mandate: to ensure that Canadians can exercise their democratic right to vote or to run as a candidate. Note that its mandate is not to increase voter turnout. Nevertheless, the federal agency wants to meet Canadians’ expectations of convenience by exploring new options such as internet voting, and it is seeking approval to experiment with this method in a 2013 by-election.

Mississippi: County seeking DOJ approval to remove voting machine printers | Leader Call

Jones County Circuit Clerk Bart Gavin is waiting for a decision from the U.S. Department of Justice about the legality of removing printers from the county’s voting machines. Gavin gained the approval of the Jones County Board of Supervisors in August, but at the suggestion of District 5 Supervisor Jerome Wyatt, Gavin has to provide information stating that no laws will be violated if the printers are removed.

“Our voting machines were not designed to have these printers,” said Gavin. “The Mississippi Legislature decided we should add the printers after we switched to electronic voting machines.” The printers are extra attachments that were added to the voting machines at the request of then-Secretary of State Eric Clark. Gavin said he understands the desire to have a back-up record of votes cast, but the printers are not needed for back-up.

Voting Blogs: Pennsylvania County Begins Exam of Failed ES&S Touch-Screen Systems; Will Vote on Paper Instead in November | The Brad Blog

“What is a vote worth?” Venango County, PA Election Board Chairman Craig Adams asked last week. “If the vote is counted it is priceless. If it is not counted, I don’t care what it costs. Let’s get a right.”

“After months of legal wrangling,” Marybeth Kuznik of the non-partisan Election Integrity advocacy group VotePA told The BRAD BLOG last week, Venango County’s landmark independent forensic examination of the notoriously unreliable and 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, most often touch-screen) e-voting system finally got under way. Kuznik explained that the study comes in the wake of the county having experienced “numerous reports of vote-flipping, candidates missing from screens, write-ins missing, and high undervote rates in their May 17 Primary.”

National: Researchers hack e-voting system for US presidential elections | Macworld UK

Researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory this week showed how an electronic voting machine model that’s expected to be widely used to tally votes in the US 2012 elections can be easily hacked using inexpensive, widely-available electronic components.

Roger Johnston, head of the Vulnerability Assessment Team at the US Department of Energy’s science and engineering reseaech lab, said the hack, which requires about $25 and very little technical expertise, would let cybercriminals “flip” votes gathered on Diebold Accuvote TS machines and change election results without raising any suspicion.

Johnston and his team have long warned about vulnerabilities in e-voting machines. And two years ago, the team demonstrated how a Sequoia touch screen e-voting machine could be similarly manipulated using cheap components. The latest research was first reported by the Salon news site.

Canada: Online elections sought by B.C. municipalities – concern that online voting could fall prey to hackers | CBC News

B.C. municipal leaders have endorsed the idea of online voting for the 2014 municipal elections — but debate on the issue has revealed deep divisions within the Union of B.C. Municipalities at its convention in Vancouver. A majority voted Wednesday to ask the province to do the work required to have online voting ready for the elections in three years.

Online voting is fraught with danger, said Coun. Donna Shugar, of the Sunshine Coast Regional District. “Particularly because you don’t know who is in the room with the voter, coercing or persuading,” Shugar said.

Many at the convention agreed with Shugar, and also expressed concern that online voting could fall prey to hackers.

National: E-voting machines vulnerable to remote vote changing | CNET News

U.S. government researchers are warning that someone could sneak an inexpensive piece of electronics into e-voting machines like those to be used in the next national election and then remotely change votes after they have been cast.

The Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne Laboratory, which is a division of the Department of Energy, discovered this summer that Diebold touch-screen e-voting machines could be hijacked remotely, according to team leader Roger Johnston. Salon reported on it today, noting that as many as a quarter of American voters are expected to be using machines that are vulnerable to such attacks in the 2012 election.

Basically, when a voter pushes a button to record his or her votes electronically, the remote hijacker could use a Radio Frequency remote control to intercept that communication, change the votes, and then submit the fraudulent votes for recording.

National: Argonne researchers ‘hack’ Diebold e-voting system | Computerworld

Researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory this week showed how an electronic voting machine model that’s expected to be widely used to tally votes in the 2012 elections can be easily hacked using inexpensive, widely-available electronic components.

Roger Johnston, head of the Vulnerability Assessment Team at the U.S. Department of Energy’s science and engineering reseaech lab, said the hack, which requires about $25 and very little technical expertise, would let cybercriminals “flip” votes gathered on Diebold Accuvote TS machines and change election results without raising any suspicion.

Johnston and his team have long warned about vulnerabilities in e-voting machines. And two years ago, the team demonstrated how a Sequoia touch screen e-voting machine could be similarly manipulated using cheap components. The latest research was first reported by the Salon news site.

Canada: Online voting for municipal elections still years away: Ida Chong | Vancouver Sun

The provincial government wants to bring in online voting for municipal elections as early as 2014, but has to change legislation first, Community, Sport and Cultural Development Minister Ida Chong said Wednesday. Speaking to reporters at the Union of B.C. Municipalities Convention in Vancouver, Chong said both she and Premier Christy Clark support the concept of voting over the Internet.

“I don’t believe it is impossible. We’re very keen on it,” she said, but cautioned, “It is still two-and-a-half, three years away in terms of changing legislation. I think it is possible.”

Her comments came as UBCM delegates called on the province to enact changes that would allow them to conduct online votes, even though some delegates raised concerns about security and the potential for ballot fraud.

Voting Blogs: In which I help the news media | Paper Vote Canada

1) Delvinia releases a report
“Our latest DIG report examines the Town of Markham’s experience with Internet voting in the 2003, 2006 and 2010 municipal election” Source
This is good.

In 2010, with the support of Ryerson University, Delvinia secured an Engage Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) to commission Nicole Goodman, a PhD candidate specializing in Canadian political institutions and alternative voting methods, to provide a scholarly perspective on the data collected following the 2010 election as well as a comparison to the data Delvinia collected in the 2003 and 2006 elections.

It is also excellent to see academic research in this field and a rigorous report.
2) However

The DIG report is available online at www.delvinia.com/dig. The full research report is available for purchase through Delvinia. Please refer to our order form to obtain a copy of the report. Source

So objective fact 1: Delvinia is selling the full report.

Philippines: Comelec opposes Internet ballots for absentee Filipino voters abroad | GMA News

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) on Monday opposed proposals to have ballots downloadable over the Internet for Filipinos abroad who will cast their votes as overseas absentee voters.

Comelec Commissioner Armando Velasco said ballot secrecy might be compromised if downloadable ballots are included in amendments proposed for Republic Act 9189 or the Overseas Absentee Voting Act of 2003.

“There is a violation of the sanctity of the ballot and questions on security,” he said in a joint hearing by the House committee on suffrage end electoral reforms and the House committee on foreign affairs Monday morning.

National: Diebold voting machines can be hacked by remote control | Salon.com

It could be one of the most disturbing e-voting machine hacks to date.

Voting machines used by as many as a quarter of American voters heading to the polls in 2012 can be hacked with just $10.50 in parts and an 8th grade science education, according to computer science and security experts at the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. The experts say the newly developed hack could change voting results while leaving absolutely no trace of the manipulation behind.

“We believe these man-in-the-middle attacks are potentially possible on a wide variety of electronic voting machines,” said Roger Johnston, leader of the assessment team “We think we can do similar things on pretty much every electronic voting machine.”

Editorials: The case against internet voting in Canada | Troy Media

Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer recently mused about experimenting with internet voting in a by-election, which many believe would result in a higher voter turnout (especially by those in remote locations, or with disabilities).

Besides ameliorating voter turnout, which has sagged badly in recent elections, it is believed that internet voting might reduce costs and provide quicker reporting of results.

But is e-voting a good idea? I’m not so sure. Meaningful observation of the voting process would be difficult. If the system has no paper trail, there’s no external evidence it has operated correctly.

Kenya: IIEC showcases latest election technologies – cautions Kenyans against rushing to embrace the electronic voting system | KBC

Interim Independent Electoral Commission chair Isaack Hassan has cautioned Kenyans against rushing to embrace the electronic voting system without prior a feasibility study on it. Hassan says the system requires time and pumping of resources before it is implemented.

Speaking Thursday during the IIEC election technology exhibition in Nairobi, Hassan cited various countries that have banned the e-voting system. He noted that India succeeded to implement the system after 30 years while German and Nigeria banned it.

National: Election Assistance Commission Releases Survey of Internet Voting | EAC

The EAC Certification Division has released the technical report “A Survey of Internet Voting,” a comprehensive review of Internet voting systems used in elections worldwide between 2000 and 2011. EAC staff conducted the study to assist in the development of electronic absentee voting guidelines, specifically to assist the Commission’s efforts to identify technologies that could improve services for military and overseas voters and voters with disabilities.

[From the report]

… Risk is a difficult concept to express, understand and measure. This is apparent in the means used to address risk from one project to the next. The EAC has knowledge of 13 formal risk assessments, and seven of these risk assessments are publicly available. Nearly every project used a different assessment methodology to measure risk.

Maldives: E-voting for 2013 presidential election | Asian Tribune

The Maldives Election Commission announced plans to introduce electronic voting for the first time at the 2013 presidential election. The commission said the members unanimously agreed on the matter and necessary amendment to the election laws will now be made.

Electronic voting technology can vary from punched cards, optical scan voting systems and specialised voting kiosks. It can also involve transmission of ballots and votes via telephones, private computer networks or the internet. On previous occasions, the Commission planned to introduce e-voting although it did not materialize.

Ghana: Lessons from the foiled Ugandan e-voting system | ModernGhana.com

The Centre for Open ICT Policy Analysis has noted, with grave a concern, similarities between Ghana’s impending e-voting system and that of the Uganda. The Ugandan project, also known as the voter registration database implementation system, was a failure as shown in their 2001 and 2006 elections. The District Electoral Commission (EC) of Uganda had been smoothly organising the country’s elections until in 2000 when they initiated a programme to rid the voters’ register of names of imposters, double voters, and dead voters by photographing all qualified voters. This programme was also meant to create an election database to be used to verify the 2001 elections. Therefore the government of Uganda invested $22 million on equipment, consultancy services and operations.

However, things went wrong at the early stages of the project, particularly during the bidding and delivery of equipment. This led to a strong public outcry about the transparency of the process. The public outcry came from stakeholders such as civil societies groups and the opposition political parties. Ugandan EC ignored these criticisms. And a s result a number of court cases between government and opposition groups, on one hand, and Ugandan EC and some companies, on the other hand (as it has already started in Ghana) were filed.

Maryland: Takoma Park Board of Elections Eliminates Online Absentee Voting | Takoma Park, MD Patch

Takoma Park voters who use an absentee ballot this November will have to mail or deliver their paper ballot because the Board of Elections (BoE) decided not to accept online voting as an alternative to for filing a paper absentee ballot. However, the BoE opted to maintain the online system to confirm a paper absentee ballot has been recorded.

At its meeting Wednesday evening, the BoE passed a resolution directing paper absentee ballots have to be cast in order for the vote to be counted. That resolution is: “That the ballot of record for absentee ballots is the paper ballot, and we will not accept only the electronic record as a ballot vote.”

The need for the resolution was the result of the language for the Internet Confirmation Guidelines for absentee voters produced by Scantegrity, a security system for optical scan voting systems that uses confirmation codes to allow a voter to ensure their ballot has not been changed and is included in the final tally, and presented to the BoE by Filip Zagorski. The confirmation guidelines for the absentee ballot are listed under the heading “Internet Confirmation.”

Norway: All ready for the 2011 municipal and county council elections | Reuters

Municipal and county authorities throughout Norway have now completed their technical preparations and are ready for the elections to be held on 11 and 12 September. An extensive apparatus of IT systems, vote counting machines, technical equipment and election material is now in place at all the authorities across the country ready for the elections. This information comes from a review carried out by EDB ErgoGroup, which is a supplier of election systems for this year’s elections.

“Running the elections is a very big task for the country’s municipal and county authorities. As part of our deliveries, we have distributed around 3.1 million polling cards to eligible voters. Around 45 million ballot papers had been printed and distributed to local voting districts and party organisations”, explains Håvard Larsen, Head of the Solutions business area at EDB ErgoGroup.

In addition to deliveries from EDB ErgoGroup, a number of municipalities source some of their requirements through other channels. EDB ErgoGroup’s estimates indicate that the total number of polling cards distributed throughout Norway is in the order of 3.75 million, and that a total of as many as 60 million ballot papers are ready for use in the voting districts. EDB ErgoGroup has provided training for more than 1,500 election officials in municipalities throughout Norway.

India: Online voting not feasible: Chief Election Commissioner | Times of India

Making voting hi-tech will make the entire democratic process of voting an unsafe venture, feels S Y Quraishi, Chief Election Commissioner of India. He said on Tuesday that India was not yet ready for bringing in technology into the voting system. The CEC spoke to TOI on the utility of the voter ID cards and put the onus on the citizen to step out and vote. Excerpts:

Is e-voting feasible for India? Technology is not an issue for implementing e-voting. But it is not feasible in India at this point of time. How do we know who is voting on whose behalf? It is not possible to provide security for every voter with a gunman behind him/her. Online voting is not good, though it looks simpler.

New Zealand: Porirua mayor lobbies for internet voting test | dominion-post

Porirua Mayor Nick Leggett wants his city to be a testing ground for new e-voting technology. Today he said he would lobby the Government to bring online voting to Porirua for the 2013 local body elections.

“New Zealand is long overdue for offering the option of voting online. The 2001 Local Electoral Act allows it to be used, which means Cabinet can make it happen through simple regulatory action. Officials, perhaps understandably, are exhibiting excessive caution — but our political leaders should embrace the democratic possibilities offered by this technology,” he said.

Editorials: Canada isn’t ready for online voting | National Post

Elections Canada intends to seek approval to implement a system of online voting, according to a report released Wednesday.

Let me say first that, on the one hand, it’s positive that an organization that is as culturally-conservative and traditional as Elections Canada is even pondering exploring alternate methods of service delivery. Some years back I interviewed their chief information officer a few weeks into the job. He’d come from the private sector and was amazed at the degree of institutional resistance to even minor technological advancement. They had their way of doing things. It was all laid out step-by-step in a big binder.

On the other hand, while voter registration seems like an obvious step, I’d have a very hard time trusting Elections Canada to devise a secure and reliable system for online voting when every time I try to use their online contributions database, I want to cry over how unnecessarily complicated and cumbersome even simplest tasks is.

But online voting is one of those things that sounds great in theory — vote easily and quickly wherever you are, you don’t need to travel or wait in line — but, upon further reflection, loses some of its lustre.

Voting Blogs: ‘There is No Way for Them to be Tampered With’: Mississippi Election Clerk Gets Approval to Remove Paper Trail Printers from Diebold Touch-Screens | The Brad Blog

The Jones County, Mississippi slogan is “A Great Place to Live”. While they may or may not be true, I’ve never been there, it’s clearly not a great place to vote. At least if voting in a way that is verifiably accurate for the citizenry is something one might care about. A remarkable statement by the county’s Circuit Clerk, and a unanimous decision in support of it by the County’s Board of Supervisors this week has made that as clear as can be.

You may recall that just last week, e-voting system failures — such as, as e-voting machines that wouldn’t start up at all, and votes that were counted twice — led to chaos and uncertain results in Mississippi’s state primaries, leading one official to declare days afterward, as they were all struggling to sort out results of several close elections: “At this point there is no election…Everyone is baffled.”

Against that back drop then, behold what Jones County, MS Circuit Clerk Bart Gavinis now calling for — and receiving unanimous approval from the Jones County Board of Supervisors for(!) — as irresponsibly reported without even a hint of fact-checking by Laurel Leader-Call reporter Charlotte Graham under the laughably misleading headline “Improving the voting process” [emphasis added].

Canada: Elections Canada lobbies for test of online voting | CBC News

The head of the agency in charge of federal elections says it’s time to modernize Canada’s elections, including testing online voting and ending a ban on publishing early election results. In a report on the May 2 election (pdf), released Wednesday, Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand writes about his plan to test online voting and encourages parliamentarians to update the Elections Act. Improvements to the electoral process, Mayrand writes, will depend on changes to the law.

“Elections Canada has reached a point where the limited flexibility of the current legislation no longer allows us to meet the evolving needs of electors and candidates,” Mayrand reports. “We look forward to working with parliamentarians as we prepare for the 42nd general election.”

See also – Readers’ Responses: Would you trust your vote to a computer?

India: Maharashtra governor calls for online voting | Mumbai DNA

The state governor, K Sankaranarayanan, has advocated major electoral reforms in the form of introduction of online voting system in elections. He was speaking at the launch of the official website of the state election commission at Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration (Yashada), in Pune on Tuesday.

“If we can have online banking, why can’t we have online voting?’’ he asked, making a strong plea for the educated to be involved in the process of elections and the political system at large. “There is a general feeling that the political process is too corrupt to be involved in. It is wrong to blame politicians for all ills in society,’’ he said.

United Kingdom: Logica tests Scottish e-voting technology | ZDNet UK

Along with technology supplier Logica it held a dummy run to count 160,000 ballot papers in Perth on Friday. This was the latest stage in testing the system, which uses off-the-shelf software from Opt2Vote.

Aileen Campbell, the Scottish government minister for local government planning, said: “Compared to a manual count which would take at least two to three days, e-counting will be much faster and more transparent. This test is a crucial milestone in the project to make e-counting a reality in 2012.”

Logica is providing the programme management, training services, printing services and more than 40 project and count centre managers for the election under a contract awarded in October 2010.

Kenya: IBM completes e-services master plan for Kenya including e-voting system | Daily Nation

Kenya’s masterplan on how to utilize technology to become a middle income country by 2030 is ready. An international team from IBM’s Corporate Services Corps program has completed a month-long term in Kenya to prepare the plan that would also see Kenya fully digitize its voting system.

This comes days after the government launched an open data portal providing crucial information on government services, income and expenditure to the public. The masterplan complements government’s efforts to digitize records to enhance e-services delivery.

The IBM team also laid out a framework on how citizens can access government services via mobile phones through data digitization. The digitization of records means citizens can track public expenditure to the last shilling. You will for example know what I have been paid and for what purpose.  Of course I also talked about e-procurement and judiciary.

Estonia: Tallinn Calls in Expert to Denounce E-Voting | ERR

Yesterday, July 20, the City of Tallinn bolstered its drive to bar the nation’s much-touted e-voting system from local elections, holding a press conference where prominent US computer scientist Barbara Simons said that such systems are inherently vulnerable.

The University of California, Berkeley PhD and former Association for Computing Machinery president spoke about risks such as malware, attacks on the server managing the election, insider threats and false websites.

Speaking in general terms, not about Estonia’s system in particular, she said that the nature of e-voting makes it impossible to audit or recount the votes. She also warned of the possibility of software viruses or worms that could infect a computer, casting votes without the user’s knowledge.