Nigeria: Electoral Commission inaugurates committee on e-voting system | Premium Times

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has inaugurated a 20-member Inter-Agency Technical Committee to assess a newly-developed e-voting system. The commission disclosed this in a statement issued by INEC Director of Voter Education and Publicity, Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, on Thursday in Abuja. The e-voting machine was developed by the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI). The agency, led by the Minister for Science and Technology, Ogbonnaya Onu, had in June paid a visit to the commission for a demonstration of a prototype e-voting machine developed by NASENI.

Botswana: Congress Party in talks with electronic voting machine experts | Mmegi Online

Dumelang Saleshando told Mmegi on Monday as a follow-up question to the press conference that was held by the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) on Saturday at Thapama Hotel here. The BCP is an official constituent member of the UDC as was confirmed by the UDC president, Duma Boko during the press briefing. “There are some people that we are talking to about the issue of EVMs. It is not necessary at this stage to state who those people are. We have not taken a decision that the people we are talking to will end up being our experts,” said Saleshando.

India: Doubts over electronic voting security again as RTI reveals theft of 70 voting machines | Times of India

Information accessed under Right to Information (RTI) Act is once again fueling questions about security of electronic voting machines (EVMs), which are at the centre of a debate on tamper-proof technology. The Election Commission of India, however, has brushed aside all such suggestions and maintained that it follows strict protocol to guard EVMs, and once looted, these machines are condemned and never find their way back into the system. Information provided by the Election Commission under RTI has revealed at least 70 cases of theft of EVM across three states – Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh – over successive elections.

Nigeria: Electoral Commission bars journalists from presentation of e-voting machine | Nigerian Tribune

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on Thursday, barred journalists from covering the official presentation of electronic voting machine to the commission by the Minister of Science and Technology, Dr Ogbonnaya Onu. The solar powered electronic voting machine, which was developed by the National Agency of Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), an agency under the supervision of Dr Onu, was to address the numerous challenges bedeviling Nigeria during the general elections.

Nigeria: Science ministry unveils locally made electronic voting machine | The Guardian Nigeria Newspaper – Nigeria and World News

Federal Ministry of Science and Technology has unveiled an electronic voting machine locally made by the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI). The Minister, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, disclosed that the machine would eliminate the challenges associated with electronic voting in the country. He listed the challenges to include delay in logistics, distribution of electoral materials, ballot box snatching and disparity in results collated at polling centres with those announced by the electoral body. The minister expressed satisfaction with the performance of the machine, which was presented yesterday at NASENI headquarters. Onu added that the machine would also eliminate rigging in elections and allow the choice of the electorate to be upheld.

Editorials: Internet voting and paperless machines have got to go | Barbara Simons/Minneapolis Star Tribune

“They’ll be back in 2020, they may be back in 2018, and one of the lessons they may draw from this is that they were successful because they introduced chaos and division and discord and sowed doubt about the nature of this amazing country of ours and our democratic process.” — Former FBI Director James Comey, testifying about the Russian government before a House Intelligence Committee hearing, March 20, 2017

We are facing a major national security threat. As former Director Comey stated, we know that Russia attacked our 2016 election, and there is every reason to expect further attacks on our elections from nations, criminals and others until we repair our badly broken voting systems. Despite a decade of warnings from computer security experts, 33 states allow internet voting for some or all voters, and a quarter of our country still votes on computerized, paperless voting machines that cannot be recounted and for which there have been demonstrated hacks. If we know how to hack these voting systems, so do the Russians and Chinese and North Koreans and Iranians and ….

India: Row over India’s electronic voting machines leaves electors dazed | Al Arabiya

The brouhaha over use of smart electronic voting machines (EVMs) in India’s legislative elections has reached an ear-splitting pitch, leaving the 850 million constituents confused and confounded. All set for the five-year general polls scheduled for 2019, India’s Election Commission has time and again asseverated that the voter-friendly devices are tamper-proof and cannot be manipulated, but opposition parties have been demanding a ban on the high-tech gizmos and want the poll panel to return to the good old paper ballot system. Browned off by the belligerent mood of seven national and 35 recognized state parties bent on blowing the whistle, the exasperated commission has now thrown a gauntlet before them and invited politicos of all hues to examine the EVMs from June 3 onwards and show how the indigenously-manufactured machines can be hacked.

Georgia: As millions pour into Georgia’s congressional runoff, the voting machinery is among the worst in America | Salon

There are so many disturbing aspects to the special election happening in Georgia’s sixth congressional district, it’s hard to know where to begin. For starters, the election runs on Microsoft Server 2000. That is not a typo. “That’s a crap system,” said Douglas Jones, a computer science professor at the University of Iowa in a phone interview; adding that the database in use, Microsoft Access is a “toy database” that should never be used for industrial applications. nFulton County Elections Director Richard Barron acknowledged in testimony on the troubled first round of the election, that the system is “inflexible.” But delving into his testimony further, and speaking to both local and national computer experts it’s evident that the results of the first round of the election on April 18th are legitimately suspect and that no election running on this type of computer system can be verified as accurate.

India: Electronic Voting Machine row: Why Election Commission is not going back to ballot paper for polls | India Today

Since 2000 the country has witnessed 107 Assembly elections and three Lok Sabha polls (2004, 2009, and 2014) where EVMs were used to cast and record votes in all the constituencies and at all the poll booths. The parliamentary polls of 2004 were the first general elections to be fully conducted through electronic voting machines (EVMs). The incumbent government lost power. Before that the Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry and West Bengal in 2001 were completely conducted using EVMs. During the first two Lok Sabha elections in 1952 and 1957, and simultaneous Assembly polls, each candidate was allotted a separate ballot box. The poll symbol of the candidate or his party was pasted on the respective ballot boxes.

National: Hacking US Voting Machines Is Child’s Play | CleanTechnica

Thanks to the embarrassing incompetence of Humpty Trumpty and his virulent assault on America’s political institutions, many people are already looking forward to the 2018 elections as a way of throwing the Trump supporters out of Congress and putting America back on the path of being a true world leader and not a pale imitation of a banana republic. Much of the public anger focuses on deep cuts to programs like the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, and Social Security, but others are equally motivated by Trump’s obdurate ignorance about climate change. … J. Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan, and Ph.D. student Matt Bernhard have assembled a number of reasons that they say render US voting machines susceptible to outside interference that could affect the accuracy of their tallies. In 2002, after the chaotic presidential election two years before, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act. The legislation provided funding for several private electronic voting machine manufacturers, including Diebold.

Botswana: Bharat Electronics not part of Botswana EVM hackathon | Mathrubhumi News

Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) on Tuesday denied reports that has appeared in sections of media related to the EVM hackathon by Botswana Election Commission. In an official media communication directly from BEL Chairman M V Gowtama, BEL termed the news reports as ‘completely baseless and false.’ Reports have said that BEL would be participating in a demonstration-cum-hackathon of EVMs being organised by Botswana Election Commission on May 18.

India: Future elections will be held with paper trail, Election Commission tells political parties | Telugu 360

The Election Commission on Friday ruled out any possibility of the EVMs being tampered with in elections even as it announced that all future elections will be held with VVPAT slips to prevent any doubts while the AAP demanded ‘hackathon’, a view others were not apparently enthusiastic about at an all-party meeting convened to discuss worries over the machines. At the end of the day-long meeting, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi that the poll panel will hold a “challenge” for political parties to prove their allegations that the machines were or could be tampered with. “All future elections will be mandatorily held with VVPAT (Voter-verifiable paper audit trail),” he said. “The Commission will hold a challenge and offer an opportunity to political parties to demonstrate that the EVMs used in the recently-concluded assembly elections were tampered or the EVMs can be tampered with even under the laid down technical and administrative safeguards,” he added.

India: Electronic voting machine tampering, electoral reforms: Election Commission to meet with political parties today | The Indian Express

The Election Commission of India will today hold an all party meeting to discuss the issue of alleged EVM tampering as well as electoral reforms that it has proposed. The EC has invited seven national and 48 state parties to the meeting during which the commission is also likely to throw an “open challenge” to prove allegations of EVM tampering.

India: Assembly passes resolution on use of VVPAT slips as directed by Supreme Court | The Tribune

Three days before the all-party meeting called by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to discuss the concerns over electronic voting machines’ (EVMs) reliability, the AAP on Tuesday conducted a mock poll inside the Delhi Assembly to back its allegations that EVMs can be “hacked” and claimed “such rigging” has led to BJP’s successive wins in the recent elections across the country. To lend credence to the whole exercise in the House, the Arvind Kejriwal-led party had invited representatives of the CPI (M), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD, Trinamool Congress (TMC), Janata Dal (U) and Samajwadi Party to see EVMs hacking. CPI-M leader Nilotpal Basu, RJD’s Manoj Jha and leader from the TMC were seen seated in the gallery to see the live demo.
In course, the AAP dared the BJP-led Centre and the ECI that given a chance it can get the EVMs “tampered” through its engineers within 30 hours and in poll-bound Gujarat it requires “just three hours” for the same, before the House adopted a resolution demanding that every election in the country henceforth be held using voter-verified paper audit trail or VVPAT slips as directed by the Supreme Court.

Botswana: Hackers invited to disrupt Botswana’s electronic voting machines | ITWeb Africa

Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) officials have invited hackers to prove whether or not the country’s proposed electronic voting machine (EVM) system can be manipulated. The new voting system is expected to be used for the country’s next general election in 2019. The IEC, along with a team of experts from the system’s supplier Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) of India, will demonstrate how the EVM (with the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT)) works, amid calls for the government to abandon the project. BEL is a state-owned company of India that produces EVM internationally known as Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines because they record votes directly in electronic memory.

India: Election Commission slams ‘so-called demonstration’ of electronic voting machine tampering, Kejriwal‘s party accepts hackathon challenge | Hindustan Times

The Election Commission on Tuesday trashed the Aam Aadmi Party’s claims of hacking an electronic voting machine (EVM) during a demonstration in the Delhi assembly, saying anyone can make a “lookalike” gadget to justify “magic or tampering”. The poll panel issued a strongly worded statement shortly after the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP claimed to have hacked a replica of an EVM to proved allegations that the system can be tampered with to favour a particular party. “The so-called demonstration of tampering of ‘look alike’ EVM cannot be exploited to influence intelligent citizens and electorate to assail or vilify the EVMs used by the commission in its electoral process,” it said. The commission, which is mandated to conduct elections to the state assemblies and the Lok Sabha, said it was possible for anyone to make any electronic gadget, which looks like the ECI’s EVM and demonstrate any “magic or tampering”.

Iran: Electronic Voting Machines to Be Installed in 145 Cities across Iran | Tasnim News Agency

Electronic voting machines are planned to be installed in 145 cities tomorrow as Iran prepares to hold the 5th City and Village Councils elections concurrent with the upcoming presidential vote, an official said on Monday. Speaking to the Tasnim News Agency, Qassem Mirzaee Nekou, an ICT official at the central board responsible for monitoring the 5th City and Village Councils elections said all the necessary measures have been taken to provide the required facilities, including hardware and software, to hold the polls electronically.

India: Election Commission calls all-party meeting to discuss issues related to electronic voting machines | Times of India

The Election Commission has convened a meeting with all seven national parties and 48 recognized state parties here on May 12 to discuss issues related to electronic voting machines and voter-verfiable paper audit trail (VVPAT), besides seeking their suggestions regarding its upcoming EVM “hackathon” challenge. The Commission has written to the chiefs of all national and state recognised parties, attaching a status paper on EVM/VVPAT. It has also sought their views on proposed electoral reforms such as making bribery in elections a cognizable offence and disqualification arising out of framing of charges for offenses of poll bribery.

National: How easy would it be to rig the next election? | ThinkProgress

On May 25, 2014, Russian state broadcaster Channel One reported the winner of the day’s presidential election in Ukraine: with a surprising 37 percent plurality, Dmytro Yarosh, leader of the extreme-right paramilitary group Right Sector, would be the new Ukrainian president. According to Channel One, previous favorite Petro Poroshenko received only 29 percent of the vote. These numbers were particularly unexpected because only 0.7 percent of voters had voted for Yarosh, versus the 54.7 percent who had voted for Poroshenko — numbers that news outlets in Ukraine and elsewhere were accurately reporting. Barely a half-hour prior to the announcement of the election results, a cybersecurity team at Ukraine’s Central Election Commission (CEC) removed a virus that had been deployed in its computers. That virus was designed to total 37 percent of votes for Yarosh, and 29 percent for Poroshenko.

India: Election Commission gears up for upcoming electronic voting machine ‘challenge’ | The Financial Express

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and BSP supremo Mayawati had alleged that EVMs were tampered during recently concluded assembly elections. The controversy had rocked Parliament and EC had reportedly challenged political parties to hack the EVMs. Now, the Election Commission is framing guidelines, according to The Indian Express report. According to the report, EC is considering a proposal to allow political parties and their leaders to hack an EVM of their choice. It has been learned CM Kejriwal or Mayawati can pick up an EVM from the strong rooms in Punjab or Uttar Pradesh and try to prove the charge. But EC will not allow challengers to take the machines out of the EC building premises.

Georgia: Fulton County vote totals delayed by card error | Atlanta Journal Constitution

A “rare error” with a memory card that didn’t properly upload its vote tallies caused a long delay Tuesday night as Fulton County reported election results. The issue was with a card with vote totals from the 6th congressional district, said Richard Barron, Fulton’s director of registration and elections. While no votes were compromised, the problem delayed counting for more than an hour while the card was identified and reread, Barron said. “While we’re looking for it, we can’t let any more results come through,” Barron said. “When you’re reading memory cards, if you don’t have something right, it can happen.” Barron said when the county moves to export vote totals to its website, it should get a dialog box that says “operation successful.” Instead, the result was “just a line of gobbledygook, just a line of junk, just letters,” Barron said.

Afghanistan: E-voting System Not Practical in Afghanistan: Task Team | TOLOnews

The e-voting system assessment committee on Thursday said that the complete implementation of e-voting system in Afghanistan is not practical. According to the commission, it would be difficult to conduct the country’s parliamentary and district council elections in the current year. According to the committee, currently, the e-voting system is applicable only in a few areas of the election process which include the voter registration process, the certification of voters’ identity during voting and the transfer of results of voting. But, the CEO’s office has said that investigations and assessments of the process are underway.

Kenya: Spat over electronic vote tender goes to court | AFP

Six Kenyans urged a court on Wednesday to suspend a controversial decision by election officials to scrap a tender process and directly procure an electronic voting system for the August polls. The petition is the umpteenth disruption to already chaotic election preparations, a sensitive process in a country where accusations of rigging accompany almost every vote. The tender was awarded to French defence and biometrics company Safran last month, pushing aside another French company Gemalto, which was lined up to win the contract in a bidding process launched in December. In court documents seen by AFP, the six petitioners argue that the entire process was “manipulated and rigged… to culminate in an artificial crisis that would then be used to justify the single sourcing”.

India: Cabinet clears Election Commission’s proposal to buy new paper trail machines | The Indian Express

The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, cleared the Election Commission’s proposal to buy new Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines on Wednesday. Ahead of the 2019 General Elections, the EC has been given the go ahead to procure 16,15,000 units, at an estimated base price of Rs. 3,173.47 crore. Since June 2014, the EC has reportedly given at least 11 reminders to the Centre seeking funds for VVPAT machines. “Amount of Rs. 3173 crores have been approved to acquire 16.15 lakh VVPAT machines,” confirmed Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday, reported news agency ANI.

Afghanistan: Election Commission Rejects Technical Team’s Proposal on E-Voting System | TOLOnews

The Independent Election Commission (IEC) on Monday said it had rejected the first proposal of the technical team on the e-voting system, and that it had called for the plan to be reviewed. The IEC said it had raised 38 queries with regards to the proposal and that the plan needs to be reassessed, said IEC spokesman Gulajan Abdulbadi Sayad. This comes a day after the (IEC) said the team tasked with reviewing an e-voting system for Afghanistan would send their results to the commission within the next three days.

Editorials: The Indian Election Commission’s challenge to show hacking of electronic voting machines needs to be backed with an action plan | Poorvi L Vora/Scroll.in

The controversy over electronic voting machines refuses to die down. There continue to be allegations, claims and counter claims about election rigging. Some of the claims, we read, were due to misreporting or do not stand up to scrutiny. Every time a claim about malfunctioning EVMs is found to be false, it hurts public understanding of the real issue: elections that use EVMs are anything but transparent. Sixteen opposition parties have written to the Election Commission asking to revert to the use of paper ballots, In turn, the Election Commission is said to have issued a challenge to political parties, scientists and technical experts to prove that EVMs could be tampered with. This could be a step in the right direction. But it cannot be all.

Let’s not forget that such a so-called challenge was also given in 2009. The examination of EVMs should be treated as an opportunity to make the process more transparent and open. In 2009, however, when the Election Commission allowed the public to examine EVMs, the examination was hugely circumscribed so as to prevent anyone from carrying out any substantive – albeit practical – attack.

India: Election Commission wants more funds to buy VVPAT machines that generate paper trail of votes | Hindustan Times

The Election Commission has again knocked on the government’s door for immediate release of funds to procure voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) machines, following the Opposition parties raising their pitch for abandoning electronic voting machines (EVMs) for paper ballots. In a terse letter to the law ministry, the election commission has made an oblique reference to the skepticism over the use of EVMs by the Opposition parties. “It is felt that the process of procurement of VVPATs cannot be delayed any longer given prevailing environment,” the commission said in its letter on March 22. Sources said this is the 11th reminder to the government, though EC officials did not confirm this.

Malta: Electronic vote counting for all elections from 2019 | The Malta Independent

The Electoral Commission has taken the plunge and issued a tender for an electronic vote counting system for use in all elections from 2019 onward. The advent of electronic voting will substantially trim down the time it takes to count votes, particularly given Malta’s laborious Single Transferable Voting system, which takes days on end to produce the full results of electoral polling. The new system is expected to produce election results in a matter of a few hours. In its tender announcement issued this week, the Electoral Commission has made it clear that the system will certainly not be employed in the next general election, whether that is to be held this year or next, and specifies that it will be first used for tallying the results of the 2019 European Parliament and Local Council Elections.

India: Come, prove electronic voting machines can be tampered with, EC challenges sceptics | Times of India

With Congress, Left, AAP and others claiming that electronic voting machines were manipulated to favour BJP, the Election Commission on Wednesday threw a challenge to political parties, scientists and technical experts to prove that EVMs could be tampered with. The open challenge, which will be on the lines of a similar exercise undertaken in 2009, follows doubts raised by several opposition parties which met the EC and have also petitioned the President. These also include BSP, SP and RJD. The allegations have been raised in the context of BJP’s landslide win in the UP assembly elections.

India: Election Commission challenges political parties, experts to hack, tamper their electronic voting machines | News Nation

The Election Commission on Wednesday dared political parties and experts through “open challenge” by inviting them to hack their EVMs and show they can be tampered with. While the Commission is yet to decide on the exact date, it said the challenge would be held in the first week of Mayand could continue for ten days. The last time such an event had taken place was in 2009 when 100 machines from different parts of the country were kept at Vigyan Bhawan. No one, EC claimed, could hack the electronic voting machines. When Delhi Chief Minister and AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal had met Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi with a complaint on EVMs last week, he was told that the poll panel is planning such an event. This time, the venue could be Nirvachan Sadan, the ECheadquarters. The specifics would be decided by the Commission’s technical expert committee on EVMs and the details would be made public in the next couple of days.