National: Which Parts of the Voting Process Have Moved Online? | StateTech Magazine

If the average citizen is looking forward to the day when ballots can be cast on the Internet in the same manner in which people buy groceries and pay bills, they’ll have to be patient — it’ll be a while. While online voting has been deployed in small and specific cases (largely for absentee or military voters), serious security concerns exist about the integrity of online voting. “We believe that online voting, especially online voting in large scale, introduces great risk into the election system by threatening voters’ expectations of confidentiality, accountability and security of their votes and provides an avenue for malicious actors to manipulate the voting results,” said Neil Jenkins, an official in the Office of Cybersecurity and Communications at the Department of Homeland Security, according to an article in The Washington Post.

National: Online Voting and Democracy in the Digital Age | Consumer Reports

Considering the importance of elections in the U.S., the country sure does make voting a challenge. National elections are held on a Tuesday in November, a workday for most people. In 11 states and Washington, D.C., you can register to vote on Election Day. (Maryland allows same-day voter registration only for early voting.) Other states have registration deadlines of eight to 30 days before an election. Some states have expanded voting by mail, online registration, absentee voting, and similar practices. But others have become more restrictive: 33 states request or require voters to show identification at the polls, and 17 of those states request or require a photo ID. And voters in places like Maricopa County in Arizona, where budget cutbacks have significantly reduced the number of polling spots, can find crowded conditions more reminiscent of a Depression-era breadline than a polling site in the Internet Age. Why, then, when everything from buying airline tickets to filing federal income taxes is routinely done online, is voting for most Americans still such a manual, show-up-in-person, paper-ballot-based process? … Whatever the political system, efforts to introduce Internet voting face the same overriding issue: how to make sure ballots aren’t subject to manipulation or fraud by hackers or compromised by a system failure.

Arizona: Threat of hackers keeps Arizona’s online voting program small | KPHO

Thousands of Arizona service members were offered the chance to cast a ballot over the internet in Tuesday’s special election, but state and county officials say the threat of hackers makes widespread online voting unlikely anytime soon. Election officials sent ballots to more than 4,000 Arizonans stationed out-of-state or overseas ahead of the election, either by mail or through the state’s relatively new online process. The number of ballots cast online wasn’t immediately available, but five counties distributed at least 2,172 electronic ballots, according to the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office. “I mean these people are overseas serving our country, serving us, so we want to make sure they’re able to vote,” said Maricopa County Recorder’s Office spokesperson Elizabeth Bartholomew. Maricopa County sent 1,205 electronic ballots to Arizonans in several countries, according to state data.

Pennsylvania: Common Cause/PA Opposes Electronic Overseas Ballot Measure | CBS

A prominent good-government group says it’s strongly opposed to legislation that would allow military and overseas voters to send their ballots electronically in Pennsylvania elections. Barry Kauffman, executive director of Common Cause/PA, says the current state of the Internet does not make online voting practical. “Every credible Internet and computer security expert says don’t do this,” Kauffman said, “you cannot make a system secure for voting.” But the sponsor of the bill, Fayette County Senate Republican Patrick Stefano, says his measure is not an online voting bill. He says it merely allows overseas voters to submit their paper ballots electronically, by converting them to PDF files and sending them via email.

National: Election fraud feared as hackers target voter records | The Hill

A series of data breaches overseas are spurring concerns that hackers could manipulate elections in the United States.Since December, hundreds of millions of voters in the U.S., the Philippines, Turkey and Mexico have had their data discovered on the web in unprotected form. In some instances, legitimate security researchers found the information, but in others, malicious hackers are suspected of pilfering the data for criminal purposes.The data breaches are raising questions as the U.S. considers whether to move toward electronic balloting. More people than ever are using the internet to register to vote and to request mail-in ballots. Some states have even become vote-by-mail only in recent years. “If you can’t keep the voter registration records safe, what makes you think you can keep the votes safe?” asked Pamela Smith, president of election watchdog Verified Voting.For a politically inclined hacker, insecure voter data could “very easily” create a pathway to “massive” voter fraud, said Joseph Kiniry, CEO of Free & Fair, which advocates for secure digital election systems. “If you can go in there and delete rows based on someone’s name or political affiliation, we will have a massively screwed up election process on the day,” he said.

National: Future of online voting | WLFI

As voting wrapped up Tuesday on one of the most significant primaries in Indiana history, some people walked away after standing in line for a few minutes but other places had long delays. That in turn, had some people asking: why online voting isn’t an option? … Eugene Spafford is a computer science professor at…

National: The state of election technology is… improving | Joe Kiniry & Daniel Zimmerman/TechCrunch

With the U.S. knee-deep in what has been an unusual presidential primary season, to say the least, many eligible voters are highly engaged in the process, passionate about their preferred candidates. But when it comes to voting trends, a reality check is in order: Voter turnout in the U.S. during the last midterm election hit the lowest point since the 1940s. In fact, the number of Americans heading to the polls each election has been declining for the last 50 years, which helps explain a concerted push by election officials to deploy technology that simplifies the process of, and increases participation in, elections. Before delving into the current and future state of election technology, let’s summarize how we arrived at this point. Most jurisdictions today are using election technology developed in the 1990s, and the typical voting system is running an operating system that is no longer vendor-supported, no longer has security updates (which couldn’t be applied anyway because of certification requirements) and relies on technology that wasn’t considered “cutting edge” even when it was purchased. All of which begs the question: Why are these outdated systems still in use?

National: How the U.S. Ended Up With Today’s Paper Ballots | TIME

We send emails instead of hand-written letters, we buy Kindles instead of books, we use iPads instead of pen and paper—and yet, voting is still mostly left to good old-fashioned paper. Voting technology has essentially remained at a standstill for decades. Still, some things have stayed the same even longer: the same concerns for security and secrecy that have kept paper dominant were also the driving forces behind voting policy in the early years of the United States. … Most states use a combination of electronic and paper technology. Only five states (Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey, South Carolina) have paper-free voting and some states (Colorado, Oregon, and Washington) send all constituents a paper ballot in the mail. Even more states use a combination of electronic and paper at polling places. Given how much technology has advanced in recent years, it’s fair to wonder why we continue to vote with paper. However, there are good reasons why the U.S. is hanging on to paper ballots.

Singapore: Online voting not feasible for overseas Singaporeans: Chan Chun Sing | The Online Citizen

On 6 April in Parliament, it was decided that online voting for Singaporeans living abroad using the SingPass portal still remained unfeasible due to concerns over authenticity of votes and the privacy of voters. This decision comes in response to queries from Non-Constituency Member of Parliament (NMP) Dennis Tan with regard to whether online voting will be implemented for overseas Singaporeans. Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Chan Chun Sing said in Parliament that while a system of online voting was considered by the Elections Department, the traditional tried and tested voting method still had the upper hand. Using paper ballots at polling stations still stayed the “simplest and most transparent method of voting that can ensure the integrity and secrecy of our voting process,” according to Mr Chan.

Bulgaria: Online Voting to be Tested in 2018 | Novinite

Remote online voting will have its first experimental introduction starting 2018, Bulgarian lawmakers decided on Wednesday. The emergency session of full Parliament, that has been holding marathon debates and votes since Tuesday to pass a final version of the new Electoral Code, was the first to set a clear timetable for e-voting after the latter was overwhelmingly approved in a referendum last year. A total of three tests will be held throughout 2018, each in a single Bulgarian region. If they prove successful, online voting will be officially introduced as a legitimate means to take part in an election for the 2019 European Parliament vote. By 2018, electoral officials will have to organize at least three simulations of online voting with fictitious parties, coalitions and candidates.

New Zealand: Online voting trial canned | IT Brief NZ

The online voting trial for this year’s local body elections are not going ahead, the Government has announced. Associate Local Government Minister Louise Upston says there is more work to be done to ensure a trial of online voting meets public and government expectations. “Public confidence in local elections is fundamentally important. Given real concerns about security and vote integrity, it is too early for a trial,” says Upston. “Due to timing restrictions, preparations for the proposed trial have not yet met the legislative requirements and cannot guarantee public confidence in the election results,” she explains.

New Zealand: Government scraps e-voting trial | The Register

New Zealand’s online voting trial, slated for local government elections this year, has collapsed with the national government scrapping the plan. Associate minister for local government Louise Upton yesterday sent a statement to Radio NZ saying they couldn’t “meet legislative requirements” in time for the elections. Last November, the NZ government published a requirements document that stated the local governments involved in the trial had to get independent assurance that their proposed solutions meet both national and local government technical requirements, including the security and accuracy of the system.

Maryland: State goes back to paper ballots for primary election | Associated Press

Maryland is going back to basics — an ink pen and paper ballot — for this month’s presidential primary. Like every new voting system, this one has some quirks that likely will become more apparent when the November general election brings more than 2 million Maryland voters to the polls. The system requires most voters to mark their ballots by filling in ovals, similar to those on standardized tests, with pens provided by election judges. Voters feed their marked ballots into scanning machines that tabulate the results. The new system largely replaces touch-screen terminals, which eliminated the “hanging chads” and other difficulties in discerning voter intent on paper punch-card ballots highlighted by the 2000 presidential election. Maryland implemented electronic voting in 2002 but glitches and security concerns prompted the General Assembly to vote in 2007 for a return to paper balloting.

Bulgaria: MPs Adopt Set of Amendments to Electoral Code | Novinite

After sitting for more than fourteen hours on Tuesday, members of Bulgaria’s parliamentary legal affairs committee adopted at second reading a set of amendments to the Electoral Code. The amendments, which were discussed at three extraordinary sittings of the committee that lasted for over 28 hours in total, will be subject to final vote in the plenary chamber on Thursday, daily Dnevnik informs. Among the main amendments adopted by MPs is the classification of voting as a civil duty and the introduction of compulsory voting. Voters might be entitled to rewards, which will be determined by the Council of Ministers, while those not casting their ballot will be subject to penalty by being deregistered from the electoral rolls for participation in the next elections. Those deregistered will be able to be signed back on the electoral register by submitting a request to the competent authorities.

New Zealand: Online voting trial axed amid security concerns | Newshub

Two councils that signed up to trial online voting at this year’s elections are disappointed at the Government’s decision to can it. Associate Local Government Minister Louise Upston says more work needs to be done and there are “real concerns” about security and vote integrity. “Due to timing restrictions, preparations for the proposed trial have not yet met the legislative requirements and cannot guarantee public confidence in the election results. “Security testing has been planned but has not yet occurred. Without seeing the results of testing, we cannot be confident the systems are secure enough and the trial could not be authorised.”

Florida: New law sets study of online voting for overseas military | Palm Beach Post

Florida Gov. Rick Scott finished off his duties from the 2016 legislative session on Friday by vetoing perhaps the most controversial bill of the year — the proposed overhaul of the state’s alimony and child-custody laws — and signing two others bills. With those moves, the Republican governor finished acting on all 272 bills — including the state budget — approved by the Legislature this year. He signed all but three. One of the last two signed by Scott could lead to an online voting system for overseas military personnel from Florida, and the other is expected to help people get mental-health or substance-abuse treatment.

New Zealand: Time is running out for go-ahead for online voting trials | Manuwatu Standard

Online voting trials are looking increasingly unlikely to take place at October’s local body elections in Palmerston North, Whanganui and six other centres. The Department of Internal Affairs will only say a decision is expected to be announced “shortly”. But at least one Palmerston North City councillor is concerned that with six months to go, time is running out. The council has set aside $100,000 in the budget included in its proposed Annual Plan that is out for consultation. Cr Aleisha Rutherford, who pushed for Palmerston North to sign up for the online trial, said councillors were telling residents who asked in discussions about the Annual Plan that it was “highly unlikely” the money would be spent.

National: Many hurdles preventing emergence of online voting | Purdue News

The search for solutions to increase voter numbers on Election Day continues as states rack up underwhelming turnouts in both presidential and non-presidential election years. But Eugene Spafford, a computer science professor at Purdue University, says online voting is not one of those solutions. The most important aspects of an election are privacy and accuracy for citizens and, from the standpoint of candidates, the vote total accountability. However, current online technology available to the average citizen dictates that you can’t have it all, says Spafford, the executive director of Purdue’s Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security. “Voting by Internet sounds attractive, but either we have to give up the anonymity of the ballot, which is not a good practice, or we have to give up the ability to confirm that the count is correct,” he said.

Utah: Jay Evensen: Utah GOP wants to keep online voting, despite worries | Deseret News

Two weeks have passed since Utah Republicans got to vote online for the first time. Was it a success? Computer experts would say it’s impossible to know. The key to hacking an election is making sure no one knows what you’ve done. Utah GOP Chairman James Evans, however, says yes. “I think we had tremendous success,” he told me Tuesday by phone. About 27,000 people cast ballots that way. People, mostly LDS missionaries, voted from 45 countries. He is planning to recommend to the Republican Central Committee that online voting happen again in 2020, if there is a presidential caucus.

Singapore: Voting at polling stations still ‘most transparent’ method: Chan Chun Sing | Channel NewsAsia

Voting using paper ballots at polling stations is still the “simplest and most transparent method”, said Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Chan Chun Sing in Parliament on Wednesday (Apr 6). He said this in response to queries on whether online voting for overseas Singaporeans using SingPass was feasible amid security and secrecy concerns of postal voting. “The Elections Department has studied the feasibility of Internet voting for overseas Singaporeans,” he said. “While Internet voting may appeal to some, it has various challenges, like difficulties in authenticating voters, preventing impersonation and ensuring voter secrecy. In addition, there are system reliability issues and security risks such as vulnerability to hacking and cyberattacks.”

National: Tech tiptoes into the voting process | GCN

While the country is probably still a long way from online voting, some states are testing the waters and building technology into election-related processes. For the 2016 presidential election, Ohio will incorporate a common data format in its election management systems that will help election officials quickly and accurately collect election data from precincts with non-interoperable election management systems, and then quickly release that information to the public and news outlets. It’s hoped that the common formats will reduce the opportunities for error on election nights, when deadlines are tight and pressure for results is keen. Ohio’s changes are based on the methods outlined in the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s special publication: A Common Data Format for Election Results Reporting. … Many believe that no matter how strong companies like Smartmatic make their security, it’s impossible to secure votes across the hardware and networks that would make up an electronic voting system.

Verified Voting in the News: Blockchains & Elections: Don’t Believe the Hype | Free & Fair

The cryptocurrency Bitcoin has risen into public consciousness over the past few years. It is the first digital currency to reach this level of success and notoriety. Bitcoin is based on a decades old cryptographic concept called a blockchain. As people and companies seek new ways to conduct elections that make better sense in our high tech world, several startups have proposed using blockchains, or even Bitcoin itself, to conduct elections. Using Bitcoin (or a blockchain) as an election system is a bad idea that really doesn’t make sense. While blockchains can be useful in the election process, they are only appropriate for use in one small part of a larger election system. A blockchain is basically a public database of information that is distributed across many different computers so that all users are able to verify that they have the same overall data even if some of the computers go down. There is no need to trust a central server or authority. A blockchain is a fundamental concept in cryptography that existed for decades prior to being used in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

Utah: Online Caucus Gives Security Experts Heart Attacks | Wired

Security researchers pretty much uniformly agree that letting people vote online is a very bad idea, one that is fraught with risks and vulnerabilities that could have unknowable consequences for the future of democracy. This week, the Utah GOP is going to give it a whirl anyway. On Tuesday, registered Republicans in Utah who want to participate in their state’s caucus will have the option to either head to a polling station and cast a vote in person or log onto a new website and choose their candidate online. To make this happen, the Utah GOP paid more than $80,000 to the London-based company Smartmatic, which manages electronic voting systems and internet voting systems in 25 countries and will run the Utah GOP caucus system. Smartmatic’s system allows people to register to vote online. Then they receive a unique PIN code to their mobile phones or emails, which they use to vote on election day. Once the vote has been cast, the system generates a unique code, which voters can use to look themselves up on a public-facing bulletin board. Each code will match up to the name of a candidate, so people can check that their votes have been properly recorded. As of Monday morning, 59,000 Utah Republicans had registered to vote online. The new online process was spearheaded by Utah GOP chairman James Evans, who was looking for ways to make the caucus process more convenient and accessible for voters. That stands to reason, given the fact that voter participation in Utah has been in decline in recent years. Evans says he was aware of the potential security risks, but in a call with WIRED last week, he dismissed many of these oft-cited vulnerabilities as “far-fetched” and said that as a private political party, the Utah GOP isn’t held to the same security standards as the government. “We are a private political organization, so we can choose the acceptable level of risk that we choose,” he said, “and we will not be compared to a government-run election.” That idea alone should give anyone who cares about the integrity of this country’s elections pause. Just because a political party accepts a certain level of risk when it comes to online voting, should we?

Utah: GOP’s online voting experiment has some hiccups | The Salt Lake Tribune

About one-fourth of 40,000 who applied were rejected, because they couldn’t verify their party membership, Republican chairman says. The Utah Republican Party’s first foray into online voting in Tuesday’s presidential caucus was not without snags, with voters stymied by long waits and confused by the registration process. Utah Republican Party Chairman James Evans said about 90 percent of the calls from people having problems with the online voting system were from people who thought they had registered to vote online, but either couldn’t be approved because their membership in the party couldn’t be verified or they had misplaced the personal identification number (PIN) that was emailed to them. Evans said about 40,000 applied to vote online but 10,000 of those were rejected because their records couldn’t be verified. Many didn’t realize they had been denied until they tried to vote Tuesday.

Utah: GOP to Test First-Ever Statewide Online Voting in US | VoA News

This Tuesday, March 22, when Republicans in Utah caucus to nominate a candidate for U.S. President, many of them won’t actually be in Utah. In fact, some won’t even be in North America. That’s because for the first time ever in the United States, a state party will allow voting via the Internet. Members of the Utah Republican party who either can’t make it to a caucus site, or simply choose to participate via the Internet, will be able to cast their ballot by registering online at the party’s website. Once registered, online voters will have all day – from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. MDT – to select which candidate they want to be this year’s Republican presidential nominee. “I think it’s going to be great,” Utah Republican Chairman James Evans recently told the Deseret News during a demonstration of how the online voting will work. “There’s not a reason for anyone not to participate.” (Utah’s Democratic state party is not allowing online voting this cycle.)

Utah: Republicans Open Caucuses to Online Voters | Wall Street Journal

In what is expected to be one of the biggest online votes conducted so far in the U.S., Utah residents will have the option of casting ballots in the Republican presidential contest using computers, tablets and smartphones next week. In-person caucuses and absentee voting also will remain options for GOP voters in the March 22 contest. Democrats aren’t offering an online option. It is the largest experiment with online presidential voting since 2004, when Michigan allowed Democrats to vote in a party caucus via the Internet. Estonia has had online voting in national elections since 2005, while Norway, France, Canada and Australia have experimented with it. … Although trials, pilots and experiments in online voting have been conducted over the past 20 years, it has been slow to be adopted—in part over security concerns about election integrity. “It’s the internet. It was not built for security when it was built. It was built for open communications,” said Pamela Smith, president of the nonpartisan nonprofit Verified Voting, which advocates for secure, verifiable elections and voting standards.

Utah: GOP caucus will be online, but don’t expect Internet voting to take hold elsewhere | Deseret News

When it comes to innovative ways to increase voter turnout, Utah seems to break all the rules. This is a state that lets you vote by mail, vote early and, at least for a three-year trial period, lets you register on the day you vote. Conventional wisdom says that if Republicans run your state, you aren’t supposed to have all those things. “When I go to national election conventions, people are all scratching their heads,” Mark Thomas, chief deputy to Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox, told me. “We’re doing things that only some of the liberal states are doing.” So it shouldn’t be terribly surprising that, if you are a registered Republican in Utah, you will have the chance to vote online in the upcoming presidential preference caucus March 22. That’s just another bold step in a conservative state that’s surprisingly progressive about elections, right? Well, it’s bold all right. As Shakespeare said, “Boldness be my friend.” But as English essayist Charles Lamb said, “’Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected.”

Switzerland: E-voting suffers setback in parliament | SWI

The OSA has called for an end to discrimination of the about 147,000 Swiss living abroad who have registered to take part in votes and elections. “It is difficult to understand how the government gives priority to cantonal autonomy as the introduction of e-voting for the Swiss Abroad is a task of the [national] government,” says OSA co-director Ariane Rustichelli. She says last year’s parliamentary elections are a case in point to prove that the current policy of leaving the introduction to the individual 26 cantons has been a failure. “Registered Swiss Abroad citizens of four cantons had the right to use e-voting in 2015. This has already been the case in 2011,” she says.