National: Computer security experts and advocates: Internet voting poses risk | Politico.com

Just because online voting is possible, doesn’t mean the U.S. government should try it for national elections any time soon. That’s the message computer security experts and advocates for voting rights are trying to get across to American voters. David Jefferson, a Lawrence Livermore computer scientist, said Thursday that hosting a national election online poses a national security threat. Jefferson was part of a press conference hosted by Common Cause, a transparency advocacy organization. He pointed out three fundamental areas of attack by hackers or viruses, with no immediate solutions for online voting. “Client side” attacks would trigger malicious software in a voter’s computer or smartphone itself. “Server side” attacks could bring down the servers that would collect and count the votes and the “denial of service” attacks could actually prevent people from voting and take the server down. “There is no fundamental solution to any of these categories of problems, and at least for the client or server side, anyone in the world can initiate such an attack. It can be completely undetectable so the outcome would be wrong and no one would know about it,” said Jefferson, who serves on the board of the Verified Voting Foundation and California Voter Foundation. Even if a faulty outcome is discovered, he added, there would be no way to correct it as there would be no audit trail to “recount.”

Verified Voting Blog: Statement on the Dangers of Internet Voting in Public Elections

At a time when more and more transactions occur online, a number of election officials and private organizations are looking to the Internet as one more possible avenue for balloting. When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that would be using an online voting system to help its members choose this year’s Oscar nominees and finalists, thereby adding to the “credibility” of online voting, we find ourselves compelled to remind the general public that it is dangerous to deploy voting by email, efax, or through Internet portals in public governmental elections at this time. Public elections run by municipal, local and state governments should not be compared to elections like the one run by the Academy. The following describes our concerns about the use of Internet voting systems in public elections.

• Cyber security experts at the National Institute of Standards and Technology[1] and the Department of Homeland Security[2] have warned that current Internet voting technologies should not be deployed in public elections. Internet voting systems, including email, fax and web based voting systems in which marked ballots are cast online, cannot be properly protected and may be subject to undetectable alteration.

• Citizens ask, “If I can bank online, why can’t I vote online?” Online banking and e-commerce are NOT secure, despite massive business investments in state-of-the-art cyber-security tools.

• Banking policies protect and reimburse people whose money or credit card numbers are stolen online. If a hacker deletes or alters a ballot, the action can neither be traced nor corrected.

• Banking policies generally do not protect companies when funds are stolen from their accounts. It has been reported that as many as ten percent of small business have had money stolen from their bank accounts.[3] Even so, businesses understand and accept that money lost through cyber-crime is part of the risk of doing business online, and they seek to reduce losses by obtaining fraud insurance. We cannot take that approach in counting votes in public elections; a cyber-attack that alters or deletes just a few hundred votes, and perhaps even fewer, can change the result of an election. There is no such thing as “fraud insurance” for ballots, and we can scarcely accept online fraud in ten percent of our election jurisdictions.

• The parties in online business transactions maintain and audit account records to detect fraudulent activities. But because we vote by secret ballot in public elections, individual voters have no way to check and verify that their ballots were properly counted. Thus online voting is particularly susceptible to tampering, all but certain to go undetected.

• Internet voting system vendors make claims about the security of their products that have never been substantiated by publicly reviewable testing and research.

Canada: Risks outweigh gains with online voting | Linda Sloan/Edmonton Examiner

Last Wednesday, council voted 11-2 that an online voting option will not be made available in the 2013 municipal election. Most of my fellow councillors shared the same general concern that I did: that the protection against manipulation was not sufficiently guaranteed to warrant implementation of Internet voting. One of the most interesting comments made during council’s discussion of the report was that adopting an Internet vote would allow people to vote in their pajamas. That comment really struck a chord with me; should we have a system that allows people to vote in pajamas? I don’t believe so. I see the electoral process as an act of civic engagement. Campaigning requires door knocking, telephone calls, flyer distribution, and more, all to get a conversation going with the people an elected official hopes to represent. That sense of community and responsibility unique to a geographical place cannot be replicated online.

Arizona: Lawmaker seeks pilot program to test online voting in Arizona | Cronkite News

The future of voting is online, and moving Arizona’s elections to the Internet would save money, deter voter fraud and increase efficiency, a state lawmaker says. “We will vote online some day,” said Sen. Bob Worsley, R-Mesa. “So why not start to figure it out and get ahead of the curve and have Arizona lead the way on this?” Worsley introduced SB 1387 to create an online voting pilot program before the 2014 primary election. It would require at least one county and one city, town or other local jurisdiction to be involved and allow for votes to be cast via the Internet. … Bruce Schneier, the author of five books on cryptography, computer and network security and overall security, said he likes the idea of online voting but doesn’t think it can be done securely. “We have not, in the history of mankind, created a computer system without a security vulnerability,” he said. Worsley, founder of retail catalog giant SkyMall, insists the system he proposes can be reliable. “My business did over a million transactions a year,” he said. “I know that this can be done securely.” Worsley compared Internet voting to the millions of online banking or stock transactions that happen every day, but Schneier said there’s a fundamental difference. “The important difference is that voting, by definition, is anonymous,” he said. “If there’s electronic banking fraud, we look at what happens, we can roll it back and make everybody whole. We can’t do that with a voting system.”

Canada: Door to online voting opens ever so slightly in Calgary | Metro

Calgarians won’t cast ballots online in October’s municipal election – and probably not in the 2017 election either – but the idea is receiving growing attention at city hall. “It is now potentially worth looking at, and I wouldn’t have said that two years ago,” said returning officer Barb Clifford, who has been paying close attention to the controversial idea. … Perhaps in 10 years, Ald. Richard Pootmans said he could see online voting in Calgary, but not as things currently stand. “I’m not sure the state of the technology is there right now,” he said.

Canada: St. Albert not likely to pursue Internet voting – City council will probably follow Edmonton’s lead | St. Albert Gazette

Edmonton’s decision not to proceed with an electronic voting pilot project likely means St. Albert will drop the idea as well, but with regrets. On Wednesday Edmonton councillors voted down a proposal to test out Internet voting in the October municipal election. Edmonton had partnered with St. Albert and Strathcona County for the pilot project, which would have offered electors the chance to vote in an advanced poll later this year. Mayor Nolan Crouse conceded that, with Edmonton’s vote, the project is likely doomed in St. Albert as well. “Likely we’re going to follow Edmonton and not pursue it,” Crouse said.

Canada: Airdrie council OK’s online voting system | Calgary Herald

Airdrie city council has approved an online voting system for the upcoming election in October. After the city’s success using an online census in 2010, manager of legislative services for Airdrie, Sharon Polyck, introduced the proposal for online voting last month in hopes the system would provide Airdronians with an alternative voting option. “It provides that convenience to residents and I think with the way things are going here with technology it’s important to our residents,” she said. Edmonton, Strathcona County and St. Albert were all part of the same pilot program as Airdrie, although Airdrie officials decided not to participate in the testing phase. Edmonton’s city council on Wednesday voted against using the online voting system this fall due to concerns such as hacking and voter fraud. But security was not as big an issue for Airdrie officials.

Canada: Alberta communities weigh online voting | Fast Forward Weekly

Communities across Alberta are deciding whether or not they will participate in the province’s online voting pilot project during this year’s municipal elections. The provincial government officially selected St. Albert, Grande Prairie and Strathcona County for the experiment, but other jurisdictions have the option of signing up. Fort Saskatchewan’s town council recently decided it’s not for them. After several weeks of debate, Airdrie’s leaders voted on February 6 to give electronic ballots a try. … Governments are attracted to Internet-based voting because of its convenience — people can vote whenever they want to over the election period, from their home. And that convenience may lead to a higher turnout. Yet many in government and the public worry about the security of online voting.

Canada: Edmonton city councillors reject online voting | MetroNews.ca

Edmontonians will not be able to cast their ballots online in the fall election. City councillors rejected the notion of allowing 12 days of online voting in advanced polls for the October election, worried that the proposed system would not be secure. Coun. Linda Sloan said she was simply not convinced that online voting would be safe and that the consequences are too high. “The morning after an election, if there are irregularities, it is almost too late,” she said. Sloan also argued that online voting in some ways ran against the spirit of elections.

Canada: Alberta communities weigh online voting | FFWD

Communities across Alberta are deciding whether or not they will participate in the province’s online voting pilot project during this year’s municipal elections. The provincial government officially selected St. Albert, Grande Prairie and Strathcona County for the experiment, but other jurisdictions have the option of signing up. Fort Saskatchewan’s town council recently decided it’s not for them. After several weeks of debate, Airdrie’s leaders voted on February 6 to give electronic ballots a try. … Governments are attracted to Internet-based voting because of its convenience — people can vote whenever they want to over the election period, from their home. And that convenience may lead to a higher turnout. Yet many in government and the public worry about the security of online voting.

Canada: Edmonton City Council turns down internet voting | Global Edmonton

On Wednesday morning, Edmonton’s city council voted against allowing internet voting in this year’s civic election.The main concern for those councillors who voted against internet voting is security and coercion. “Let’s say I have 20 friends. They don’t ever vote. I get a copy of their ID. I send them into you in some way or form from different outlets, from computers, have their passwords,” said Mayor Stephen Mandel. “So now I have the power of 25 votes, 20 votes, 15 votes, 12 votes, 3 votes. Not the ones in my house, but the ones outside my house. And that’s where I have concern with this,” added Mandel. “I don’t have a problem with internet voting. I like the idea of going in that direction. I’m worried that we may have needed more time to get this totally right so that we can say emphatically, yes, we’ve done every type of testing, and I’m not convinced yet that that’s been the case,” stated Ward 2 Councillor, Kim Krushell. Ben Henderson and Don Iveson were the only members of council who voted in favour of allowing online voting.

Editorials: Online voting is too risky | Regina Leader-Post

Edmonton city council would be wise to exercise real caution before introducing Internet voting into the municipal election system. As tempting as it might be to blaze an electronic trail into the local democratic process, the notion of a vote that’s only a click away triggers some genuine concerns. Edmonton and several other Alberta municipalities are looking at becoming the first centres in Western Canada to allow Internet votes. City staff have recommended council approve online ballots in advance polls for next fall’s municipal election, following what was regarded as a successful mock vote last September that tested such a system with no discernible security breaches. That all-systems-go enthusiasm took a hit last week when a local computer programmer informed council’s executive committee that he was able to cast two ballots in the mock election without being detected.

Editorials: A vote cast against online voting | Edmonton Journal

Edmonton city council would be wise to exercise real caution before introducing Internet voting into the municipal election system. As tempting as it might be to blaze an electronic trail into the local democratic process, the notion of a vote that’s only a click away triggers some genuine concerns. City staff have recommended council approve online ballots in advance polls for next fall’s municipal election, following what was regarded as a successful mock vote last September that tested such a system with no discernible security breaches. That all-systems-go enthusiasm took a hit Monday when a local computer programmer informed council’s executive committee that he was able to cast two ballots in the mock election without being detected. Coun. Linda Sloan spoke for many citizens, and not just technophobes, when she expressed severe reservations about the integrity of a cyber-vote. “I’m not 100-per-cent confident in the security of the Internet and never have been, whether it’s my credit card information or my personal address or how I choose to vote,” Sloan said.

New Zealand: Prime Minister quashes Porirua move to trial e-voting | Radio New Zealand

Prime Minister John Key has quashed suggestions that the Porirua City Council be allowed to trial electronic voting for the 2013 local body elections. Mayor Nick Leggett wants the Government to approve new regulations enabling electronic voting to take place. Mr Leggett says Porirua has one of the youngest populations in New Zealand and with only 20% of people under the age of 35 voting in local body elections, electronic voting could help lift voter participation. He says so many everyday interactions are done electronically, voting could be as well.

Canada: Edmonton city councillors wary of online voting | Edmonton Journal

City councillors are concerned Edmonton isn’t ready to move ahead with plans to introduce Internet voting in October’s civic election. Although staff have recommended allowing online ballots in advance polls next fall, members of executive committee questioned Monday whether the process is safe. “I’m not 100-per-cent confident in the security of the Internet and never have been, whether it’s my credit card information or my personal address or how I choose to vote,” Coun. Linda Sloan said. “Would that be something you want to put out there in cyberspace?”

India: E-voting likely for 2015 panchayat polls | The Times of India

The state election commission is seriously considering a proposal to provide e-voting facility to pravasi Malayalis in the local self-government elections in 2015, said state election commissioner K Sasidharan Nair. The state election commission authorities had a preliminary discussion with the agency that executed the e-voting facility in the Gujarat elections. “The commission can implement it here only after discussing with all political parties and technical experts from the field,” Nair said after holding discussions with the representatives of Scytl, the agency which conducted the first internet voting in Gujarat, here on Monday. The commission would like to know the apprehensions of political leaders and voters while introducing such a system in the state.

Canada: Airdrie City council tables decision on Internet voting for 2013 election | Airdrie City View

Airdrie City council unanimously voted to table a decision on Internet voting, Jan. 21. The move was made after a presentation, by Sharon Pollyck, Airdrie’s manager of legislative services, and a lengthy discussion about the pros and cons of Internet voting in the next election, set to take place this fall. “I am not ready to make a decision this evening,” said Alderman Glenda Alexander. “I look forward to more information.” Pollyck presented council with a number of options for electronic voting, which is being piloted this fall in Alberta and is used worldwide, including using the method only for the advanced vote, discontinuing paper voting all together and doing a mixture of the two.

Kentucky: Military voting proposal raises fraud concerns in Kentucky | The Courier-Journal

Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes’ proposal to make it easier for members of the military to vote has been hailed by legislators of both parties and even given the honorific designation as Senate Bill 1 for this year’s legislative session. But the proposal drew opposition Wednesday from groups that say a key provision allowing electronic voting from overseas makes votes vulnerable to fraud. “We agree with almost all of the recommendations,” Richard Beliles, chairman of Common Cause of Kentucky, said in a letter he delivered to Grimes’ office Wednesday. “However, we strongly recommend against allowing ballots to be cast online via email, efax, or through Internet portals.” The letter, also endorsed by an official of a California-based public interest group called Verified Voting Foundation, argues, “Online voting presents a direct threat to the integrity of elections in Kentucky because it is not sufficiently secure against fraud or malfunction. Cyber security experts with the Department of Homeland Security have publicly warned against Internet voting.”

Editorials: Go slow on internet voting | therecord

One thing to be said for internet voting, it would thwart the kind of robocalls shenanigans that played out in Guelph during the May 2011 federal election. In that still mysterious episode, hundreds of voters were directed through recorded phone messages to the wrong polling station in what appears to have been a clear voter suppression strategy. Online voters, of course, don’t have to attend a physical polling station to exercise their franchise, and there’s no waiting in line. But a push to get more Ontario communities involved in online and telephone voting in the 2014 municipal elections should, for now at least, stay on a waiting list.

Canada: Internet voting option proposed for Edmonton civic election | Edmonton Journal

Edmonton should allow Internet voting for advance and special ballots in next October’s civic election, a report released Thursday recommends. The proposal, following more than a year of study that included a test “jelly bean election” and the verdict of a citizen jury, would make Edmonton the first western Canadian city where candidates can be chosen online. “If people are able-bodied (and) they just can’t get out to vote on election day, they don’t qualify for the special ballot. How do they vote?” asked city clerk Alayne Sinclair. “We might open the doors for more people.”

Canada: Waterloo to look into online municipal election voting | therecord

The City of Waterloo will investigate using online and telephone voting for the 2014 municipal elections. Council went against the best informed person it had at the table and voted Monday to look into internet and telephone voting for the 2014 municipal election. The city will seek proposals from companies with voting technology, and wants the cities of Cambridge and Kitchener to consider using it as well. Coun. Jeff Henry grew up in Markham which has used internet voting for several years and also been part of University of Waterloo student elections where electronic voting was used. “My skepticism comes with knowledge,” Henry said.

Editorials: Use your brains, Waterloo: rethink electronic voting | therecord

The city of Waterloo has got to let go of the idea of itself as the world’s most intelligent community. The concept appears to have gone to the heads of city councillors, and they’re making bad decisions as a result. Six years ago, a New York-based organization named Waterloo as the world’s most intelligent community, in part because of its high concentration of research institutions, such as its two universities, the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Centre for International Governance Innovation. … Of course, it’s hard to give back the tiara. Earlier this week, Waterloo city councillors were urged to investigate online voting in local elections. “As the most intelligent community in the world, it’s almost a given that we should be embracing the concept of electronic voting,” said Tim Jackson, a local entrepreneur, community leader and a vice-president at the University of Waterloo.

National: Internet Voting Not the Solution to Long Lines, Machine Breakdowns on Election Day | eNews Park Forest

The long lines, machine breakdowns and disputes over voter identification that marred the 2012 election will not be solved by moves to permit voting on the Internet, through email or by fax, Common Cause warned today. Susannah Goodman, director of Common Cause’s National Voting Integrity Campaign, told a congressional forum that online voting remains too unreliable and too vulnerable to hacker attacks to be implemented. “We are talking about our right to vote – a right we cannot sacrifice for what may be a great new idea, but one that is untested and not ready for prime time,” Goodman asserted. She added that “while many ideas will be fielded to alleviate the problems we saw last Election Day, some measures are just not ready for adoption.”

Editorials: Technology in our electoral process | Leland Yee/Daily Journal

In September, as a result of a law I authored in 2011, California launched online voter registration. Consequently, California set a new record with 18,245,970 registered voters. More than 1 million people used the new registration system in less than a month, with moe than 780,000 citizens added to the voter file. Nearly 62 percent of those who registered online were under age 35 and four out of five registered to vote for the first time. Proudly, these individuals also voted in much higher numbers than those eligible via paper registration from previous elections. … I share this frustration but I have a fundamental optimism that the barriers to online voting can be lifted if enough research and development is devoted to solving the problem. Unfortunately, Internet voting systems are not yet ready for deployment. The National Institutes for Standards and Technology and cyber security experts at the Department of Homeland Security have reviewed the currently commercially available Internet voting systems and found that fundamental security problems have not been resolved and thus should not be used yet in our public elections.

Colorado: Gessler: Colorado not yet ready for Internet vote | Fort Morgan Times

Fort Morgan played host on Monday to the Colorado Secretary of State, Scott Gessler, who wanted to hear what Morgan County folks had to say about last November’s General Election. At the Fort Morgan stop on Gessler’s statewide listening tour, the small group of area residents, elected officials and county elections shared what they learned from the election, what worked and what could have gone better. Gessler had said that he was in favor of creating a statewide voting system that all Colorado counties would use for elections. … Morgan County Commissioner Laura Teague asked Gessler about the possibility of people voting through the Internet. “There is talk, but we’re not there yet,” Gessler said. “Frankly, I don’t know if we’ll ever be.” He said the problems with Internet-based voting included no guarantee of anonymity for the voter and that the system theoretically could be hacked, potentially compromising the election’s security.

Australia: Many challenges ahead of Australia’s eVote | SC Magazine

Electronic voting isn’t likely to replace voting at the ballot box anytime soon, according to identity and security experts, despite progress in NSW and Victoria and renewed interest in Queensland. A discussion paper [pdf] on electoral reform released last week by the Queensland Government asked whether electronically assisted voting (conducted online or by phone) should be introduced for all voters in the state. While Queensland Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie said the government must review rules and processes governing the electoral system to ensure they are “right for modern times”, experts say there is a lot standing in the way of electronic voting.

Voting Blogs: Oscar Discovers, Then Denies, E-Voting Dangers | BradBlog

Last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) had to extend its deadline for Oscar nominations, after outlets like The Hollywood Reporter spread the news of extensive difficulties with AMPAS’ new online voting system. Yes, Oscar has caught the dreadedInternet Voting disease, and it seems to be working out about as well as it didfor Canada in 2012 and just slightly better (as far as we know) than it did for Washington D.C. back in 2010 orfor Honolulu in 2009 (where the same company ran that particular Internet Voting disaster.)

Kentucky: Electronic Voting for Military Chief Priority for Kentucky Senate | WKU

Giving Kentucky service members and their spouses the ability to cast absentee ballots electronically is the priority of the Kentucky State Senate heading into the 2013 legislative session, Senate President-elect Robert Stivers said on Monday. Stivers says he’s taking recommendations from Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes to allow electronic voting for overseas military personnel. The measure will be Senate Bill 1 — the title that usually goes to the chamber’s chief legislative priority every year. And Stivers says that if the legislation can be written in time, the Senate plans to pass it completely by the end of the session’s first week.

Australia: Long beta for Australia eVote | iTnews.com.au

Electronic voting isn’t likely to replace voting at the ballot box anytime soon, according to identity and security experts, despite progress in NSW and Victoria and renewed interest in Queensland. A discussion paper [pdf] on electoral reform released last week by the Queensland Government asked whether electronically assisted voting (conducted online or by phone) should be introduced for all voters in the state. While Queensland Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie said the government must review rules and processes governing the electoral system to ensure they are “right for modern times”, experts say there is a lot standing in the way of electronic voting. “It’s easy to see the appeal and convenience of online voting, without being aware that the capacity for votes to be manipulated is much higher than with older or more clunky methods,” said Vanessa Teague, electronic voting researcher and honorary fellow in the department of computing and information systems at University of Melbourne. “It’s very difficult to construct valid mechanisms for proving that each person’s vote has been handled in the way they intended,” Teague said.

National: Log-in problems confound Oscar electronic voting process | UPI.com

Some members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, Calif., said online voting system bugs kept them from casting Oscar ballots. Electronic voting was a new option this year in Oscar voting. In response to problems with user log-ins and passwords, the academy extended the voting deadline for Oscar nominations by one day to Friday. Amy Berg, an Oscar-nominated member of the documentary branch, said the voting website rejected her password three times before locking her out, The Hollywood Reporter said.