New Jersey: Storm Victims Struggled to Have Their Votes Counted | ABC News

Displaced victims of the storm-ravaged New Jersey coastline faced a new challenge on Tuesday, as their attempts to vote in person, by email, and by fax failed. New Jersey, at the last minute and prompted by the displacement of residents from superstorm Sandy, was the first state to ever allow electronic voting for a significant portion of its population. Other states have allowed some electronic voting for military members or overseas residents in the past. The effort in New Jersey on Tuesday, however, showed the difficulties of maintaining an orderly and efficient election when phone lines and inboxes are overwhelmed with voter requests. “This is an unprecedented disaster,” Essex County clerk Chris Durkin told the Montclair Times. “People will be disenfranchised because of this unprecedented disaster.”

National: Pentagon unit pushed email voting for troops despite security concerns | McClatchy

As Election Day approaches, county clerks’ offices in 31 states are accepting tens of thousands of electronic absentee ballots from U.S. soldiers and overseas civilians, despite years of warnings from cyber experts that Internet voting is easy prey for hackers. Some of the states made their techno leaps even after word spread of an October 2010 test of an Internet voting product in the nation’s capital, in which a team of University of Michigan computer scientists quickly penetrated the system and directed it to play the school’s fight song. The Michigan team reported that hackers from China and Iran also were on the verge of breaking in. Election watchdogs, distraught over what they fear is a premature plunge into an era of Internet voting, lay most of the blame on an obscure Defense Department unit that beckoned state officials for 20 years, in letters, legislative testimony and at conferences, to consider email voting for more than 1 million troops and civilians living abroad.

Editorials: New Jersey’s Vote-by-Email Meltdown | The Atlantic

When New Jersey announced over the weekend that it would allow voters displaced by the storm to vote by email or fax, many people were concerned about the possibility of hacking or other vote-tampering. “E-mail voting is insecure because it’s hard to authenticate the voter, the ballots can be intercepted and changed, and the computer servers that store them can be hacked,” Bloomberg reported. Additionally, the plan had provoked confusion among voters, as at first the state said no paper ballot was necessary, and later reneged, saying a mailed-in paper confirmation was also required.

New Jersey: State extends email voting to Friday | POLITICO.com

The election will last until Friday — at least for some voters in New Jersey. State officials announced Tuesday afternoon that they will continue to accept email and fax ballots through Friday night, after election supervisors there reported they were overwhelmed by requests from voters displaced by Hurricane Sandy. The state is seen as securely enough in Obama’s column that many expect that he’ll be able to be called as the winner of the state’s electoral votes nonetheless. Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) announced last Saturday that voters affected by the storm could use an email ballot process set up for overseas voters. However, many voters reported this week that email boxes designated to receive the ballots were already full and not able to accept any more ballots. In addition, some voters said they’d gotten no response to their emailed requests for ballots.

New Jersey: Storm Victims Struggled to Have Their Votes Counted | ABC News

Displaced victims of the storm-ravaged New Jersey coastline faced a new challenge on Tuesday, as their attempts to vote in person, by email, and by fax failed. New Jersey, at the last minute and prompted by the displacement of residents from superstorm Sandy, was the first state to ever allow electronic voting for a significant portion of its population. Other states have allowed some electronic voting for military members or overseas residents in the past. The effort in New Jersey on Tuesday, however, showed the difficulties of maintaining an orderly and efficient election when phone lines and inboxes are overwhelmed with voter requests.

New Jersey: Election Official Uses Hotmail to Collect Voter Ballots | Bloomberg

As if voting by e-mail weren’t insecure enough, an election official in New Jersey has now instructed citizens who can’t get their ballots through to swamped government e-mail servers to send them instead to his personal Hotmail account, according to BuzzFeed. You read that right: Hotmail. For voting. The vote-by-e-mail idea came about as a result of the destruction leveled on New Jersey by Hurricane Sandy, and the concept by itself has some merit as a what-else-are-you-going-to-do emergency measure in a disaster zone.

Voting Blogs: Regardless of Presidential Race Results, Voting Issues Likely to Spark Lawsuits | The BLT

Even if tonight’s presidential vote is not close enough to spark a contested election and a major legal battle for the White House, election law experts have already identified plenty of voting issues today that could mean post-election litigation. If the presidential election is not extremely close, “the press and the public won’t care for another three and a half years,” said Richard Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine. But any number of races further down on the ballot that are close could be pushed into the courts, said Hasen, who wrote about how election litigation has more than doubled since the Bush v. Gore election in his new book, The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown.

New Jersey: Email vote rule raises storm of protest | phys.org

Citizens of New Jersey’s Ocean County vote at the Ocean County Administration building in Toms River in a special early mail voting arrangement. New Jersey’s decision to allow voters displaced by superstorm Sandy to cast ballots by email has prompted a flood of warnings over security, secrecy and a potential for legal entanglements. New Jersey’s decision to allow voters displaced by superstorm Sandy to cast ballots by email has prompted a flood of warnings over security, secrecy and a potential for legal entanglements. State officials in New Jersey announced the plan Saturday, saying it could help victims of the unprecedented storm along with rescuers who may also be unable to get to polling places.

New Jersey: Emergency email voting is a risky experiment, warn experts | The Verge

Tomorrow’s election is coming, and there’s nothing New Jersey can do to postpone it. So to cope with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which left millions in the Northeast without power and forced many to evacuate from their homes, state officials decided late on Saturday to allow displaced citizens to vote using email or fax. Citizens who want to vote remotely can request a ballot via phone or email, and then return a completed ballot via email or fax to their county clerk’s office. As Lt. Governor Kim Guadango explains, “the State of New Jersey is committed to holding a fair, open, transparent, and accessible election on Tuesday.” The order seems well-intended, and could make voting more accessible for many citizens, but experts are concerned that email voting forces voters to give up their anonymity, that votes submitted by email may not be counted, and that security vulnerabilities could allow the election to be manipulated.

New Jersey: Email Voting Fails Some New Jersey Residents | Buzzfeed

New Jersey’s last-minute offer of email voting to displaced residents was greeted by concern by security experts, who warn that email offers a fast track to voter fraud. But the system may have another problem as well: County election administrators are, according to anecdotal reports, simply not responding to all requests for ballots. In two major counties, the email address advertised on the website of the county clerk is not even accepting email. The email address listed on the website of the Morris County Clerrk, asmith@co.morris.nj.us, is not receiving email. Nor is the email, info@essexclerk.com, listed on the website of the Essex County Clerk, info@essexclerk.com and the County’s site. (The Essex County Clerk posted to his Facebook page Monday that voters could email requests to his personal Hotmail account.

New Jersey: After Sandy New Jersey Becomes Unwilling Test Case for Internet Voting | AllThingsD

Holding an election is complicated. Holding an election eight days after a historically significant disaster? Probably exponentially so. This is the circumstance in which the state of New Jersey will find itself tomorrow. Gov. Chris Christie has ordered counties to provide ways for people who have been displaced by Hurricane Sandy to vote in Tuesday’s election by fax and email. The system will follow in part a similar scheme developed for New Jersey residents serving overseas in the military to cast their ballots. To say that no one is going to be happy with the result, no matter what it is, is probably understating it. To the extent that the process is understood — it was at this writing still in the process of being implemented — it will work like this.

New Jersey: Displaced New Jersey Voters Allowed to Vote by Email | NBC New York

New Jersey election officials say they will allow registered voters to vote electronically and will also accept ballots paper through Monday, November 19th, as long as they are postmarked by election day, November 5. The directive is intended to help first responders whose recovery efforts may keep them away from home and their local polling place on election day, as well as those displaced by the storm. “To help alleviate pressure on polling places, we encourage voters to either use electronic voting or the extended hours at county offices to cast their vote,” said Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno.

Voting Blogs: Matt Blaze: Voting by Email in New Jersey | Crypto.com

New Jersey was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy, and many parts of the state still lack electricity and basic infrastructure. Countless residents have been displaced, at least temporarily. And election day is on Tuesday. There can be little doubt that many New Jerseyans, whether newly displaced or rendered homebound, who had originally intended to cast their votes at their normal neighborhood polling stations will be unable to do so next week. Unless some new flexible voting options are made available, many people will be disenfranchised, perhaps altering the outcome of races. There are compelling reasons for New Jersey officials to act quickly to create viable, flexible, secure and reliable voting options for their citizens in this emergency.

Voting Blogs: Lt. Governor invites voters to submit invalid ballots | Andrew Appel/Freedom to Tinker

On November 3rd, the Lieutenant Governor of New Jersey issued a directive, well covered in the media, permitting storm-displaced New Jersey voters to vote by e-mail.  The voter is to call or e-mail the county clerk to request an absentee ballot by e-mail or fax, then the voter returns the ballot by e-mail or fax:

“The voter must transmit the signed waiver of secrecy along with the voted ballot by fax or e-mail for receipt by the applicable county board of election no later than November 6, 2012 at 8 p.m.”

We see already one problem:  The loss of the secret ballot.  At many times in the 20th century, NJ political machines put such intense pressure on voters that the secret ballot was an important protection.  In 2012 it’s in the news that some corporations are pressuring their employees to vote in certain ways.  The secret ballot is still critical to the functioning of democracy. But there’s a much bigger problem with the Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno’s directive:  If voters and county clerks follow her instructions, their votes will be invalid.

California: Internet Voting In California? | California Progress Report

Election integrity advocates recently launched a campaign to block a bill, SB908, that would have introduced email voting for Californians living overseas. We fought it for several reasons.

First, paperless voting itself is dangerous because there is no independent way to check the results claimed by the machines, and no way to recover when something goes wrong, and it will. Voting across the Internet is worse, because it opens up the voting system to several more types of attack, from anywhere in the world, all of them dangerous. Voting by email attachment is even worse, because no attempt is made to encrypt the ballot as it travels from computer to computer across the globe on the way to its destination.

Any of these computers is quite capable of “photoshopping” or simply blocking any ballot that passes through. A ballot sent from Afghanistan could pass through computers in China, Iran, Russia, or any other country interested in “fixing” ballots headed for California. This is only one of several severe vulnerabilities in Internet voting.

Alabama: Secretary of State Chapman praises state lawmakers for passage of Alabama military voting bill | Shelby County Reporter

Alabama Secretary of State Beth Chapman on June 1 praised the Alabama House of Representatives for passing the final version of a bill that would make it easier for military and overseas voters to vote while serving abroad.

Senate Bill 55, created by Chapman and Sen. Gerald Dial, R-Lineville, was approved with a 97-0 vote and now goes to Gov. Robert Bentley for approval.

Alabama: House passes bill creating new voting options for Alabama military, other overseas voters – allows electronic submission of voted ballots | The Republic

The Alabama Legislature is creating new ways for the military and other Alabama voters who are overseas to return their ballots.

Currently, the military and other Alabama voters who are overseas can only use the mail to return an absentee ballot. The legislation allows them to use fax, a commercial carrier like UPS and FedEx, and secure electronic transmissions.

Oregon: Why Return of Voted Ballots Should Not be Permitted via Email | Voting Matters Blog

Email voting?  Why not, one might ask?!  A lot of folks use the false analogy of  online banking to argue that email voting should be allowed for the convenience and accessibility of voters.  Not a moment of thought is given to the security risks involved.  So I’ve done a brief Fact Sheet summarizing the major arguments against returning voted ballots via email.  I’m OK with distribution of blank ballots via email but not the return of voted ballots by the same method.

Oregon, like many other states, considering authorizing email return of ballots — the bill is HB 3074 and this post is directed toward that proposed law, but could effectively be applied to a host of other states which are considering similar legislation (or perhaps need to review already adopted laws in light of these arguments).