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

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

Estonia: EU Parliament member involved in Reform Party election scandal | Baltic Course

Estonian Reform Party court of honour convened for a meeting Tuesday evening to discuss the conclusions of the party’s working group that investigated the internal elections fraud in the party, which, among others, involves Estonian European Parliament member Kristiina Ojuland, LETA/Postimees Online reports. The report of the working group should next be discussed by the party board on Wednesday. The head of the working group, Reform Party MP Väino Linde told Postimees that the materials and testimonies they had collected confirmed the suspicions of the working group that Reform Party’s Lääne-Virumaa county organisation development manager Taimi Samblik, the county organisations chairwoman, European Parliament member Kristiina Ojuland and Lääne-Viru County Governor Einar Vallbaum were connected to the voting fraud that was committed at the elections of the party board in 2011 and 2013.

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

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

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

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

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

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

France: Fake votes mar France’s first electronic election | The Independent

Former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s political party, already enfeebled by a chaotic national leadership election last year, faces further ridicule in a Paris town hall primary election which ends tonight. An “online-primary”, claimed as “fraud-proof” and “ultra secure”, has turned out to be vulnerable to multiple and fake voting. The four-day election has also the exposed the poisonous divisions created within the centre-right Union Pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) by the law permitting gay marriage which took effect last week. France’s first “electronic election” had been expected to anoint a rising star of the moderate right, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, 39, as the party’s candidate in the election for mayor of Paris next spring. The former environment minister, known as “NKM”, was runaway favourite to win in the first round  until she abstained in the final parliamentary vote on same-sex marriage in late April. … What was already shaping up as a tense and close election was thrown into utter confusion at the weekend. Journalists from the news site Metronews proved that it was easy to breach the allegedly strict security of the election and vote several times using different names.

France: French website casts fake votes in online Paris mayoral election | UPI.com

A French news website says it was able to cast “fake” votes in France’s first digital election by registering under different names. To register a vote in the opposition UMP party’s “open primary” to select a candidate for next year’s mayoral election in Paris, voters were required to provide a name, address, date of birth and credit card payment of three euros ($3.90). But website Metronews said it used the same card to pay for multiple votes and even registered once as ex-President and UMP leader Nicolas Sarkozy, the BBC reported Monday.

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

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

Russia: Kremlin ‘outraged’ by electoral fraud… in Eurovision song contest | CSMonitor.com

Russian authorities have finally found a case of alleged voting fraud that they can get really incensed about. No, it’s not the 2011 Duma elections, which experts from across Russia’s political spectrum now agree were probably falsified on a huge scale. That has never been the subject of official outrage, or even investigation. This is something far more important: the continental song competition, Eurovision. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told journalists yesterday that he was “outraged” to learn that the voting system in neighboring Azerbaijan had eliminated the votes cast for Russian Eurovision contestant Dina Garipova in that country. Voters registering their preferences by cellphone had given a second-place finish to Ms. Garipova – which should have given her 10 points in the overall contest – but they had somehow disappeared in the reporting process.

California: Debate Over California Online Voting Bill Weighs Accessibilty Against Security | IVN

Independent voters now account for approximately 40 percent of all voters in the United States. Following the national trend, California voters are increasingly leaving the two major parties, with almost 3.7 million voters now registered under “No Party Preference” in the state. Overall voter turnout, however, decreased in 2012 election, with one million fewer Californians casting a ballot in the general election than in previous presidential elections. With independent voters now accounting for 21 percent of the electorate in California, how can the state ensure their voices are heard in Sacramento? Assemblymember Philip Ting proposes exploring online voting with Assembly Bill 19, or the “Internet Voting Pilot Program.” Passed on April 23 by the California Assembly Elections Committee, AB 19 proposes to change the legal definition of “voting system” to include the use of systems connected to the Internet in future California elections. This would authorize the creation of an Internet Voting Pilot Program, under which counties could offer voters the choice to vote online.

Canada: Liberal Party Holds Online Primaries While Security Experts Scowl | TechPresident

Canada’s Liberal party elected a new leader last week. And for the first time in the party’s history, the voting took place online. Justin Trudeau, the telegenic son of the late Pierre Trudeau, Canada’s most famous prime minister, won in a landslide with over 80 per cent of the vote. But online voting critics say that despite the decisive results, the Internet remains an unsafe place to cast your vote. “If the Conservative party want to select the next Liberal party leader, this provides them with the perfect opportunity,” says Dr. Barbara Simons, an online voting expert, and co-author (with Douglas Jones) of Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count? “I am not saying the Conservatives would do this — I’m just saying this is a very foolish and irresponsible thing for Liberals to be doing, because they open themselves up to vote-rigging that would be almost untraceable, and impossible to prove.”

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

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

Verified Voting in the News: California Assembly committee passes Internet voting bill with secret amendments | Kim Alexander’s Weblog

Last Tuesday at the California Assembly Elections committee hearing,AB 19 by Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) was heard and passed on a 4-3 vote. If enacted, the bill would create a California online voting pilot program. Over the weekend, while cleaning out some old papers, I had deja vu moment when I came across a December 4, 2000 news release issued by then-Assembly Majority Leader Kevin Shelley announcing the introduction of AB 55, which among other things, as originally introduced would have established an online voting pilot program under the direction of the Secretary of State. That provision was ultimately amended out, and Mr. Shelley would go on to become the Secretary of State of California and one of the nation’s first political leaders to support a voter verified paper audit trail and mandatory election recounts.

Canada: Elections Canada finds more than 165,000 voted improperly in 2011 | National Post

More than 165,000 people seem to have voted improperly in the last election, a new Elections Canada report has found, and the system for voting needs to be overhauled, although there isn’t enough time to do that before the next election. Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand commissioned the report after irregularities in the Toronto riding of Etobicoke Centre led to a court challenge that went to the Supreme Court of Canada. Former Elections Canada executive Harry Neufeld audited 1,000 polls from the last election as well as three recent byelections, and discovered systematic errors in the processing of the 15 per cent of voters who show up on election day without having been registered.

Canada: Elections Canada drops plan for online voting due to cuts | CBC News

Elections Canada has abandoned plans to experiment with an online voting pilot project before the 2015 general election due to budget cuts. Elections Canada also has concerns about the security of online voting, but a new report indicates that voting irregularities happen frequently at polling stations on voting day even when paper ballots are used. A spokesperson for Elections Canada said Tuesday that experiments with online voting are postponed “for the long term,” and the reasons for the delay are due to an eight per cent budget cut that took effect this year, translating into a loss of $7.5 million per year. A plan to try out online voting in a federal byelection sometime before 2015 has been quashed.

Kentucky: Special election first test of military voting law | Kentucky.com

A special legislative election in central Kentucky could be the first test of the state’ new military voting law passed earlier this year to help ensure soldiers deployed to foreign countries get to cast ballots back home. Gov. Steve Beshear set the election for June 25 to replace former state Rep. Carl Rollins, who resigned earlier this week to become executive director of the Kentucky Higher Education Assistance Authority. The election date, some two months off as required now, will allow more time for county clerks to send absentee ballots to military personnel and others serving overseas.

Voting Blogs: Los Angeles County Registrar Says ‘No’ to Internet Voting, But ‘Yes’ to Touch-Screen Voting | BradBog

The good news: When the largest voting jurisdiction in the nation gets its new voting system, perhaps as early as 2015, it will not including Internet Voting, according to Dean Logan, Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk of Los Angeles. The bad news: It will very likely include touch-screen computers and, with them, 100% unverifiable voting. I interviewed Logan last week on my KPFK/Pacifica Radio show [full audio interview is at the bottom of this article], and we had a very informative discussion about what voters in Los Angeles may have to look forward to in the coming years, as well as many of you in the rest of the country, since the new system is being designed with an eye towards selling it to other counties in California as well as in the rest of the country.

Sweden: Swedes could cast ballots online by 2018 | The Local

Neighbouring Norway and Finland have already done digital voting test runs. Now some Swedish municipalities could follow the trend after a majority of members in the parliamentary election law committee voted in favour of a new proposal. “If it works well, it would be a natural step to introduce it in the 2022 elections,” Billy Gustafsson, Social Dem. … However, the proposal was not met with unanimous approval.

California: Bills seek updates to voting, election systems | San Jose Mercury News

In use for the first time last year, California’s online voter registration system proved so popular that lawmakers want to build on its success this year. Wider promotion of the system and a push toward online voting are among several election-related bills under consideration as the Legislature approaches a midyear bill deadline. Other changes under consideration would shine more light on campaign financing and update how elections are run. About 800,000 Californians used the online registration system to join the state’s voter rolls, according to state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, who authored the original bill. An analysis of turnout figures by Political Data Inc. indicated that those who registered online were significantly more likely than other voters to cast a ballot last November. This year, Yee’s SB44 is proposing that all state websites link to the secretary of state’s voter registration page in an effort to publicize the system. Others want the state to move even further online and are pushing for a pilot program to test the casting of ballots over the Internet. Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, has put forward AB19 to review the security of online voting software and eventually create a pilot program for counties.

Canada: Online voting pilot squashed by Strathcona council after warning from Province | Sherwood Park News

After what seemed like a possible second chance for an Internet voting pilot project in Strathcona County, council squashed the plan for the upcoming general election, following a warning from the province. On Tuesday, April 9, council approved three recommendations that would effectively send the Internet Voting Pilot project back to the drawing board until the province and the municipality had conducted further research into the plan. According to Jacqueline Roblin from Legislative and Legal Services, the pilot project was first considered by council to be used during the upcoming 2013 general election. “The initial Internet voting pilot that council authorized Strathcona County to participate in was a collaborative effort between Municipal Affairs, Edmonton, St. Albert and Strathcona County to pilot Internet voting in conjunction and forming part of the 2013 general election,” she clarified. After Edmonton and St. Albert dropped out of the pilot project, Municipal Affairs Minister Doug Griffiths advised the county that the department would not be supporting the initiative and withdrew the promised funding.

New Zealand: Digital votes ‘less secure than paper’ | NZ Herald News

The Electoral Commission has warned those calling for an electronic voting system that there is, as yet, none which could completely guarantee the security of ballot papers in the way that the paper-only system does. Speaking at the Justice and Electoral Committee yesterday, the Commission was asked about the security of voting information after a series of privacy breaches across the public sector. Chief Electoral officer Rob Peden said there was virtually no risk of privacy breaches relating to people’s voting information because it was not stored electronically in any form. The law required the Electoral Commission to deliver all ballot papers to Parliament’s clerk where they were stored for six months before they had to be destroyed.

Pakistan: ‘Prohibitively expensive’: Election Commission opposes online vote for expatriates | The Express Tribune

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) took an unexpected U-turn when it opposed an online voting system for overseas Pakistanis, terming it expensive, time-consuming, and impracticable. In its report submitted to the Supreme Court on Monday, the ECP contended that facilitating eligible overseas Pakistanis to cast their votes in the upcoming general elections was not advisable.
Quoting the unanimous decision of a committee comprising officials from ECP, NADRA and IT ministry, the commission stated that allowing overseas Pakistanis to vote through an uncertified computer system could be disastrous for the electoral process. The Supreme Court had earlier directed the secretaries of law and justice, information technology, foreign affairs, ministry of oversees Pakistanis and the ECP, as well as the chairman NADRA to undertake coordinated efforts for devising a mechanism which would enable overseas Pakistanis to cast their votes in the coming polls.

Canada: Citing budget cuts, Elections Canada delays pilot project on Internet voting | Vancouver Sun

Budget cuts at Elections Canada have pushed a pilot project on Internet voting off the agenda indefinitely. The body that runs Canada’s federal voting had hoped to introduce online voting for byelections held in 2013, in an effort to see whether making voting more convenient would help boost participation. But according to figures in the agency’s recently tabled report on planning and priorities, spending will fall from $84 million in 2012-13 to a forecasted $74 million in 2013-14. “As part of the fiscal reductions taking place across government, we took an eight-per-cent decrease in our budget,” said Diane Benson, an Elections Canada spokesperson. “So a lot of it is focusing on core priorities we have to deliver for the next election.”

Kentucky: Internet Voting Security: Wishful Thinking Doesn’t Make It True | Duncan Buell/Freedom to Tinker

On Thursday, March 21, in the midst of Kentucky’s deliberation over allowing votes to be cast over the Internet, the daily poll of the Louisville Courier-Journal asked the readers, “Should overseas military personnel be allowed to vote via the Internet?” This happened the day before their editorial rightly argued against Internet voting at this time. One of the multiple choice answers was “Yes, it can be made just as secure as any balloting system.” This brings up the old adage, “we are all entitled to our own opinions, but we are not entitled to our own facts.” The simple fact is that Internet voting is possible – but it is definitely NOT as secure as some other balloting systems. This is not a matter of opinion, but a matter of fact. Votes cast over the Internet are easily subject to corruption in a number of different ways.

Missouri: Senate Moves To Ease Foreign Voting | Ozarks First

The legislature is moving to make it easier for Missourians overseas to vote in state elections.  The sponsoring senator is his own example. Senator Will Kraus of Lee’s Summit defended our right to vote by flying Army helicopters in Iraq and 2003 and 2004.  But when he wanted to vote, he had to start applying for his absentee ballot about nine weeks before the election.  He says he downloaded the application off the internet but then had to use regular mail to send it in-a process that took two to three weeks.  It took about that long to get the ballot  and about that long to send it in in time to be counted.

Canada: Airdrie can’t offer online voting, says province | Calgary Herald

Thanks to the province’s refusal to allow online municipal election ballots, voting in Airdrie this fall will be as difficult as heading to the nearest poll station and marking Xs on paper. The city of 45,000 people immediately north of Calgary was slated to become Alberta’s first online voting community after council endorsed the idea earlier this year following extensive study and testing. But Municipal Affairs Minister Doug Griffiths has scotched the plan for the 2013 civic election, telling Airdrie Mayor Peter Brown in a letter last month he worried e-voting would erode “public confidence” in elections.

Maryland: Lawmakers near agreement on early voting bill | The Washington Post

Maryland’s General Assembly is expected to reach final agreement in coming days on a measure promoted by Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) that for the first time would allow residents to register to vote and cast a ballot on the same day. Same-day registration would occur during early voting, which under the bill would beexpanded from six days to eight. In addition, the number of early voting sites would be increased.With thousands of voters in the Washington suburbs and beyond standing in line for hours at polling places in November, the measure would also require state election officials to study how to reduce the average wait to 30 minutes or less. Although it has been warmly received by much of the General Assembly, the legislation has been caught up, in part, over efforts to fix a provision that would allow absentee voters to receive ballots over the Internet instead of by mail. Advocates for people with disabilities have lobbied heavily for the measure, saying it would allow those who need a lot of time to vote or who cannot vote without the help of others to do so more conveniently from home. But a group of election technology experts warned last month that the online system could be exploited on a mass scale, potentially jeopardizing election results.

Pakistan: Authorities in a fix over overseas voters | The Express Tribune

The Supreme Court’s insistence on enabling overseas Pakistanis to vote in the May 11 general elections has placed the relevant authorities in a fix. Severely castigated by the court for their inability to devise a workable mechanism, the authorities, including the Election Commission of Pakistan, have deliberated several options but found them all to be flawed. Talking to The Express Tribune, sources in the ECP and the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) said that none of the proposed mechanisms had been tested and even a minor error could sabotage the entire electoral exercise. … In their report submitted before the SC, NADRA’s IT experts said exercising the internet option would compromise electoral rolls severely due to risks, such as hacking, which could not be mitigated within the short time given for polls. In addition to this, they maintained internet voting could not reliably confirm voters’ identities and would also compromise their privacy. “Such confirmation can only be ensured through biometric verification… in its absence the possibility of casting votes against someone else’s identity cannot be ruled out,” the experts added.

National: Cyberattack on Florida Primary Election Not First Such Attack | The New American

In what is being touted as the first known cyberattack on a U.S. election, many mainstream news outlets are reporting on the approximately 2,500 bogus absentee ballot requests that were flagged as suspicious by Miami-Dade County’s absentee ballot processing software in last year’s primary elections. A Miami-Dade County grand jury investigated the incident and described it as: a scheme where someone created a computer program that automatically, systematically and rapidly submitted to the County’s Department of Elections numerous bogus on-line requests for absentee ballots.

Fortunately, the software had safeguards that verified IP addresses on the absentee ballot requests. That was instrumental in detecting this cyberattack, but the incident still leaves questions unanswered regarding the inherent insecurity of the Internet and why it should be used at all in the balloting phase of elections. There’s also the question of how many cyberattacks might have been carried out elsewhere or at other times that were not detected.

Canada: Wasaga clerk proposes online, telephone voting | Simcoe

Wasaga Beach is considering a switch to internet and telephone voting for the next municipal election. Council has given town clerk Twyla Nicholson the green light to explore the voting methods and provide additional information to council members. The next municipal election is not until October 2014. If approved, telephone and online voting would replace the touch screen voting terminals used in the last two elections.