Canada: Financial fears prompt Halifax to seek back-up for electronic voting in 2016 elections | Metro News

Halifax Regional Municipality is looking for a back-up company to handle telephone and electronic voting in the next municipal election after fears that the company that holds the contract is financially unstable. A tender posted online Thursday seeks bids from companies that could administer telephone and e-voting for October’s 2016 municipal and school board elections, and any special elections after that till April 2020. But the winning bidder’s services will only be needed if the company that already has a standing offer — Dartmouth-based Intelivote — is unable to do the job.

California: Online voting will be vulnerable to hackers | Los Angeles Daily News

Fraud will be massive if we let people register online to vote, the doomsayers warned in 2012 as California’s then-Secretary of State Debra Bowen put the finishing touches on software now used by all 58 of the state’s counties. Those skeptics were wrong. So far, there are no signs of massive fraud or even moderate fraud in use of that online registration system, available to anyone at the secretary of state’s website. This system is now widely accepted, and there are very few known cases of false registrations, signups by non-citizens or fake names being registered online. Now comes an initiative aiming for a spot on the November ballot that would take online voter registration much farther, authorizing actual voting via the Internet. Doomsayers have many of the same objections today as in 2012, and this time they may be correct. …Backers insist votes can be made secure and encrypted in ways that are almost impossible to hack. But the same was said of electronic voting machines. That was before Bowen conducted her “top to bottom” review of those gadgets and essentially ordered almost all of them scrapped or resold to other states and countries because of the ease with which votes cast on them could be “flipped.”

National: Super Tuesday is still offline. What’s the catch? | ESET

The US presidential election is fast approaching and the nation, along with the rest of the world, is waiting to see who will be chosen to run for the White House. … Yet, even though the US is among the most technologically advanced nations in the world, most of its voters cannot cast their ballots online. This is despite the fact that nowadays we can do pretty much anything in the virtual world: work, entertainment, paying bills or buying things are now part of our everyday online lives. So is internet voting really such a risk? And if so, where’s the catch? There are actually several of them. First of all, cyberspace isn’t actually as safe as everyone thinks, not even for banking or paying for for online shopping … that is if you’re not properly protected. The upside is that potential fraud affects only a small portion of all online transactions. Due to this, online merchants, banks and big companies can ‘hide’ the costs that the victims of fraud would normally have to pay. The rather unpopular downside is that everyone ends up covering these losses in the form of fees or higher prices. But this approach doesn’t apply to online voting. Who would pay for the damage done by electoral fraud? And what would be the mechanism to fix glitches, especially if they were uncovered years later? Making things ‘even worse’, voting is anonymous, so by design there should be no way to find out who rigged the results or who cast the fraudulent ballots.

Verified Voting Blog: California’s Internet Voting Initiatives

This article was originally published in Communications of the ACM on February 24, 2016.

California, home of an underabundance of rain and an overabundance of ballot initiatives, may be confronted with one or two initiatives on this November’s ballot that, if passed by the voters, will mandate the establishment of Internet voting in the state.

A total of three such initiatives are under consideration so far. The first, poorly written and probably a long shot, represents one of the hazards of the initiative process: anyone can pay the fees and submit any crazy idea for a new law. But the other two are closely related, with the same sponsor and largely identical content. We expect only one of those two will go forward. Since they represent the most significant concern, for the rest of this blog we discuss only them.

The two initiatives, numbered 15-0117 and 15-0118, can be found at the CA Attorney General’s site. They are carefully drafted to avoid ever using the terms “Internet voting” or “online voting” or “email” or “web,” etc. Instead, they refer throughout to “secure electronic submission of vote by mail ballots.” Presumably, this is in part because the computer and elections security communities have managed to give “Internet voting” a bad name.

National: Want honest elections? Meet America’s new election integrity watchdog | Public Radio International

With the 2000 presidential election’s voting debacle still raw, President George W. Bush in 2002, signed into law the “Help America Vote Act,” which he promised would help “ensure the integrity and efficiency of voting processes in federal elections.” A key component: the Election Assistance Commission, a new, bipartisan federal agency tasked with adopting voting system guidelines, distributing grants and otherwise aiding states in improving their election processes. But the little commission soon hit downdrafts. Congress routinely cut its already modest budget. The federal government moved its headquarters from prime digs in downtown Washington, DC, to a nondescript office tower in suburban Maryland. Then in 2010, the Election Assistance Commission began a nearly five-year stretch where it lacked enough appointed commissioners to conduct meetings, and, therefore, conduct its most important business. Some members of Congress tried, and failed, to kill what had effectively become a zombie agency.

India: 2019 general elections to have paper-trail electronic voting machines | The Economic Times

Polling for 2019 general elections will be conducted through paper trail-based electronic voting machines to “enhance transparency”. Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Nasim Zaidi also said that voting through the internet is not on EC’s agenda in the near future though it is going to use information and communication technology (ICT) in a big way to reach the voters in the coming days. “We have reached a stage where people are demanding hundred per cent deployment of paper audit trail machine. We have preserved the secrecy (in this system) as well. Our plan is that by 2019, the whole country will be covered by paper audit trail machines. The budget for this has been committed now,” Zaidi said while addressing an international seminar today. The next general elections are due in 2019.

National: Google wants you to be able to vote online | Computerworld

Like the idea of using Google to vote online for the best airline, steamed dumpling or health app? What about using Google to vote for governor or president? That seems to be Google’s plan. The search giant received a U.S. patent for a voting user interface (VUI). The interface would appear along with search results and would allow the user to vote for one or more contestants competing in a campaign. The patent application was filed on Oct. 30, 2013, and the patent was awarded to Google on Tuesday. What does the company plan to do with the technology? Google did not respond to a request for comment.

Australia: Flux Party seeks to be the bitcoin of Australian politics | Reuters

A new Australian political party is using the virtual currency bitcoin as a model to replace what they say is an outdated political system – representative democracy – with a streamlined new polity for the information age. The Flux Party says its goal is to elect six senators. They will propose no policies and will not follow their consciences, but will support or block legislation at the direction of their members, who can swap or trade their votes on every bill online. “If they didn’t have to be senators, if they could just be software or robots they would be, because their only purpose is to do what the people want them to do,” Flux Party co-founder Max Kaye told Reuters in an interview. Australia is set to hold an election in September or October after a period of turmoil that brought five prime ministers in as many years.

National: Online Voting: It Could Be Easier, But Is It Better? | HowStuffWorks

It seems so obvious that people should be able to vote online. After all, we bank, email and keep detailed employee profiles under virtual lock and key, and those endeavors are all going so well, right? Uh, maybe not. Numerous big-ticket entities like Sony, the U.S. government and just about every bank in the world is all too familiar with the perils of cybercrime, as are the innocent bystanders whose hard-earned cash and identities are compromised. Still, in a society where people have grown accustomed to accomplishing every task electronically, from ordering pizza to renewing a driver’s license, many are scratching their heads wondering what the deal is with an antiquated voting process that often feels like we’re partying in 1999. One might argue that today’s touch-screen precinct kiosks are still light-years ahead of the easily misread and misused paper ballots of yore (you know Al Gore still screams “hanging chad!” in his sleep), and they wouldn’t be wrong. In a world where technology is constantly changing to make everything faster, it seems counterintuitive that most countries have yet to adopt online voting as a standard. It seems even more incredible that many U.S. states have reverted back to paper ballots, thanks to electronic machines that have broken down or become unreliable, and have yet to be replaced. To some voting experts however, this trend is par for the course.

New Zealand: Is internet voting secure enough to use? | Radio New Zealand

Serious weaknesses exposed in an online election in Australia are a warning for upcoming New Zealand local body elections, a computer security expert is warning. Eight councils throughout New Zealand are due to trial online voting in local body elections later this year: Selwyn, Wellington, Porirua, Masterton, Rotorua, Matamata Piako, Palmerston North and Whanganui. University of Melbourne computing expert Vanessa Teague did an analysis of the iVote internet voting system used in the New South Wales (NSW) state election last year, and she and the University of Michigan’s Alex Halderman have found a way to break into the system and interfere with votes. She told Nine To Noon there had been a lot of assurances about the safety of the system, and she wanted to test it and see if this was true.

New Zealand: Warning given over online voting trial | New Zealand Herald

Whanganui is getting too committed to being part of a costly online voting trial, according to councillor Rob Vinsen. Mr Vinsen has been a staunch opponent of Whanganui District Council being part of the test, which could happen in this October’s local body elections. While no final decision has been made, the council has put its hat into the ring and been shortlisted as one of eight local authorities to conduct the trial. The Government is expected to announce within days if the trial will go ahead and which councils will take part. Mr Vinsen said mayor Annette Main had given an assurance that councillors would get the chance to vote whether or not to be involved, but he was alarmed to read in the Manawatu Standard that the Palmerston North City Council believes Whanganui is committed to this trial. He said many of his council colleagues saw it as a waste of $75,000, which is the expected cost of the online voting trial.

Canada: Liberals’ no-referendum stance on electoral reform appears to soften | Ottawa Citizen

Another Liberal MP responsible for electoral reform won’t absolutely rule out a national referendum to change how Canadians vote. “It’s not something that we’re ruling in or ruling out,” Mark Holland, parliamentary secretary to Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef, told reporters Wednesday. His remark follows a recent, similar comment from Monsef. Compare that with the statement by Government House Leader Dominic Leblanc in late December that seemed to categorically reject the possibility: “Our plan is not to have a national referendum. Our plan is to use Parliament to consult Canadians,” said Leblanc. “That’s always been our plan, and I don’t have any reason to think that’s been changed.”

National: Why You (Still) Can’t Vote Online | National Journal

When Hur­ricane Sandy hit in 2012, it threw New Jer­sey in­to an ad hoc ex­per­i­ment in on­line vot­ing. … Had New Jer­sey’s ex­per­i­ment gone well, it would have been a ma­jor vic­tory for ad­voc­ates of on­line vot­ing, who’ve long ar­gued that the in­ter­net could be a valu­able tool to pro­tect the right to vote and in­crease dis­mal U.S. vot­ing rates. It did not, however, go well at all: Email serv­ers were over­whelmed, leav­ing voters un­able to re­quest or re­turn their bal­lots. In an at­tempt to fix the situ­ation, one elec­tions of­fi­cial gave out his per­son­al email ad­dress to voters to sub­mit their bal­lot re­quests—and a se­cur­ity re­search­er dis­covered that his pass­word re­cov­ery ques­tion was ap­par­ently his moth­er’s maid­en name after look­ing at Hot­mail’s pass­word-re­set form. The of­fi­cial says he was nev­er hacked. … Se­cur­ity ex­perts cried foul at the elec­tion, which saw an es­tim­ated 50,000 bal­lots cast elec­tron­ic­ally. They were con­cerned that voters’ per­son­al data was po­ten­tially ex­posed, and were wor­ried that there was an op­por­tun­ity for bal­lots to go un­coun­ted. “We don’t know how many of these votes were ac­tu­ally coun­ted or shouldn’t have been coun­ted versus lost, or how many people tried to use this sys­tem but were un­able to get bal­lots,” Ed Fel­ten, who was then the dir­ect­or of Prin­ceton Uni­versity’s Cen­ter for In­form­a­tion Tech­no­logy Policy, told Al Jaz­eera in 2014. “We can’t meas­ure it, but cer­tainly there are in­dic­a­tions of over­flow­ing mail­boxes, big back­logs and prob­lems pro­cessing re­quests. So I don’t think you could con­clude at all that this was a suc­cess­ful ex­per­i­ment.”

National: Internet voting is just too hackable, say security experts | USA Today

Three ballot initiatives have been proposed in California to require the state to allow online voting, but security experts and some voting officials say the technology is nowhere near secure enough for something so crucial as the democratic process. “When people stop me in the supermarket and ask, ‘When am I going to be able to vote on my cell phone?’ I say ‘Pretty soon—in about 20 years,’” said Dana DeBeauvoir, the county clerk for Travis County, Texas. She was one of three speakers Wednesday in a session on online voting and security issues at Enigma 2016, a computer security conference held in San Francisco. So much of daily life now happens online, including shopping, banking, communication, that voters naturally wonder why voting can’t too, said J. Alex Halderman, a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich. who researches voting and security. However, the ongoing litany of breaches, hacks and crashes in those realms are an object lesson in why voting shouldn’t happen there. It’s just too important, he said. “Imagine the incentives of a rival country to come in and change the outcome of a vote for national leadership. Elections require correct outcomes and true ballot secrecy,” Halderman said.

Estonia: European human rights court accepts appeal of Estonian e-voting critics | The Baltic Course

NGO Ausad Valimised (Honest Elections) connected with the Estonian Center Party announced that European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) accepted their appeal regarding a fine which was imposed on them by the Consumer Protection Board for a campaign which criticized Estonia’s e-elections, informs LETA/BNS. “The European Court of Human Rights decided to accept the appeal of MTU Ausad Valimised regarding a fine which was imposed on the NGO for a campaign that notified about the dangers and risks of e-election, and proposed to the sides a deal according to which the state would have to pay the NGO 9,000 euros,” said member of the NGO’s board Siret Kotka who is also a member of the Center Party board. According to Kotka, it means that the NGO won against the Estonian state.

Nebraska: Legislature weighs future of state’s election technology | StateScoop

With most of Nebraska’s election technology now roughly a decade old, its Legislature is considering a pair of bills that would help chart the future of voting in the state. Secretary of State John Gale coordinated with state Sen. Tommy Garrett to introduce a bill last week that would convene a task force to spend 2017 studying the state’s voting technology, and investigate whether a move to all-mail or online voting would be feasible in the next few years. Meanwhile, state Sen. Matt Hansen introduced a measure earlier this month to convene a legislative committee to conduct a similar study over the next few months. Neither of the measures would result in immediate changes, but Gale told StateScoop that both bills represent meaningful first steps for the state. “We really don’t have a crisis at this point, but it’s timely to start thinking ahead,” Gale said.

Utah: GOP to hold presidential primary poll online | KUTV

Utah will make history during the upcoming presidential primary season with an online vote. State Republicans will hold the first ever caucus where registered voters can cast their ballot in person or online. Utah’s caucus day is set for March 22, a move putting Utah in the middle of the early voting, instead of the end where the primary was originally scheduled for June. Utah Democrats and Republicans will hold what is being called a “presidential preference poll.” Democrats will have to show up at their neighborhood caucus for that poll, Republicans will have options.

National: When Will We Be Able to Vote Online? | Scientific American

Sooner or later everything seems to go online. Newspapers. TV. Radio. Shopping. Banking. Dating. But it’s much harder to drag voting out of the paper era. In the 2012 presidential election, more than half of Americans who voted cast paper ballots—0 percent voted with their smartphones. Why isn’t Internet voting here yet? Imagine the advantages! … It’s all about security, of course. Currently Internet voting is “a nonstarter,” according to Aviel D. Rubin, technical director of Johns Hopkins University’s Information Security Institute and author of the 2006 book Brave New Ballot. “You can’t control the security of the platform,” he told me. The app you’re using, the operating system on your phone, the servers your data will cross en route to their destination—there are just too many openings for hacker interference. “But wait,” you’re entitled to object, “banks, online stores and stock markets operate electronically. Why should something as simple as recording votes be so much more difficult?” Voting is much trickier for a couple of reasons. Whereas monetary transactions are based on a firm understanding of your identity, a vote is supposed to be anonymous. In case of bank trouble, investigators can trace a credit-card purchase back to you, but how can they track an anonymous vote? And credit-card and bank fraud goes on constantly. It’s just a cost of doing business. But the outcome of an election is too important; we can’t simply ignore a bunch of lost or altered votes.

Editorials: The Challenges of Digital Voting | David Pogue/Scientific American

In researching my Scientific American column about the dismal prospects for online voting, I interviewed Avi Rubin, Professor of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University, technical director of Johns Hopkins’s Information Security Institute, and author of Brave New Ballot: The Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting. He’s been deeply immersed in the research surrounding electronic voting for decades. Since I have more room on the Web than I do on the printed page, I would like to share more of our conversation here.

David Pogue: Are there any steps that would make you, a security researcher, comfortable with electronic voting?

Avi Rubin: In principle, I think that paper ballots are far superior to electronic voting machines. Even if the machines are high quality (and none of the current ones on the market have proven to be that), the inability to manually recount, to audit, and to prevent rigging and the potential for widespread, wholesale fraud are deal breakers for purely electronic voting. Paper ballots are not a panacea, but without them there is an opportunity for fraud that is much more widespread.

Mississippi: Early voting among election changes Hosemann would like to see in Mississippi | Sun Herald

Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann is asking legislators to update Mississippi’s election laws, including allowing online voter registration and early voting at county courthouses. Republican Hosemann unveiled his proposals Tuesday. Voters will be able to change their addresses online as well. “That saves a lot of time and effort and a lot of mad people,” said Hosemann. “The process costs about 83 cents to do it by mail. This will cost us about 3 cents so there’s a big cost savings.” There won’t be online voting, nor voting at shopping centers and the like, which other states have tried. “I’m not going to do that because I can’t tell you it’s secure,” he said of online voting.

Editorials: Online Voting Is the Future — And It Could Lead to Absolute Disaster | Jack Smith IV/Mic

This year, we’re going to choose a new president. We’ll debate with disgruntled friends on Facebook, monitor every debate on Twitter and use Google to find polling places. And then, those of us who are willing to make the trek will drive, walk, carpool or take trains to small outposts in order to vote. It’s 2016. Why don’t we have an app on our smartphones that allows us to vote remotely and instantly? … What’s holding back online voting? In short, security risks. If we’ve learned anything from the past few years of cybersecurity scandals — like the Office of Personnel Management hack, the Sony Pictures Entertainment fiascoor the Ashley Madison breach — it’s that no digital system can be proven to be totally safe. There’s a common refrain that digital voting experts are tired of hearing: “If I can bank online, why can’t I vote online?” If the internet is safe enough to store our money, shop, file our taxes and perform other sensitive tasks, why can’t it be used to vote? The truth is, we don’t bank or shop safely online. Major retailers and banking systems deal with hacking, fraudulent charges and identity theft every day. Companies like Amazon are used to a small percentage of transactions being fraudulent. And when fraud occurs in a financial transaction, those problems can be fixed after the fact.

Bulgaria: Parliament to Debate Online Voting | Novinite

Bulgarian MPs are set to hold a debate on the introduction of online voting after a referendum in October showed strong support for the step. On Tuesday the Legal Affairs Committee with the Parliament backed a draft resolution according to which e-voting should only be enabled if vote secrecy, civic control on the electoral process and security of information systems are guaranteed under the law. Its decision leaves up to Parliament to discuss and decide on the introduction of online voting.

Canada: Dartmouth phone/Internet voting firm fights ACOA claim | The Chronicle Herald

The judicial stage is set for a dispute between Dean Smith’s Intelivote Systems Inc. and a $1.3-million claim filed by the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. Smith’s Dartmouth company claims the amount sought by ACOA represents portions of “non-repayable amounts” it received from the federal agency in four instalments in recent years, according to documents reviewed Thursday at Nova Scotia Supreme Court. A defence filed by Intelivote on Dec. 21 denies an assertion by ACOA the company has ceased operations and, as a result, owes the agency the $1.3 million. “The defendant has become insolvent, resulting in an event of default as defined in the terms and conditions of the agreements,” according to a statement of claim filed by ACOA.

Florida: How other states have modernized elections offers lessons for Florida | Miami Herald

This November in Austin, Texas, voters will pick a president during their regular trip to the grocery store. Maine residents who have never voted will register on Election Day. Every Colorado voter will get a ballot in the mail that they can mail or drop off anytime before the polls close. And some Alaskans will simply mark their ballots online. More and more, waiting in line at a neighborhood school or church to vote on a Tuesday in November is becoming archaic. Around the country, states are changing their laws accordingly, hoping to make casting a ballot as convenient as possible. And then there’s Florida, a state that has shunned same-day voter registration and vote centers as an alternative to busy precincts. Citizens here have to request a mail-in ballot every other election year or set aside time to go to a polling place.

Press Release: Smartmatic’s i-voting and e-voting Empower Citizens in Chile | Smartmatic

Smartmatic, the world’s leading election technology and services provider, empowered Chilean citizens during a three-day election in the Commune of Maipu last weekend. Using Smartmatic’s multi-channel voting platform, Chileans had the opportunity to cast a ballot either online or to vote in person in precincts equipped with electronic voting machines. Citizens 14 years of age and older were eligible to vote from December 11-13 to decide on how best to allocate public funds. “We are proud to bring to Chile an integrated solution which includes class-leading electronic voting machines and the world’s most advanced Internet voting system,” said Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, Smartmatic’s Chairman.

South Dakota: Only 27 voters used state’s $668K program to help military members vote | Rapid City Journal

Secretary of State Shantel Krebs is considering ending a voting system paid for with a $668,000 federal grant but which attracted only 27 voters. Krebs told legislators last week that the high cost might force her to shut off the electronic voting system for military personnel started by her predecessor, Jason Gant. But Gant said he is proud of the effort, even though only 27 military personnel used it to cast ballots in the 2014 election. Krebs said the system was developed using a $668,000 grant from the Federal Voting Assistance Program. State records show Gant signed a contract on Aug. 23, 2013, to pay a software company to build the iOASIS program for military personnel. It was intended to be a much-faster and more attractive substitute for traditional absentee ballots.

Switzerland: The battle for the future of electronic voting | SWI

Government-owned Swiss Post has become the latest player to enter the electronic voting market, announcing that it will work with Neuchâtel to offer an e-voting system next year. But its partnership with Spanish firm Scytl has some questioning whether the use of foreign voting systems could leave the Swiss exposed to security concerns. The move by Swiss Post follows the government’s decision, on security grounds, to reject the use by a consortium of nine cantons of a voting system developed by American company Unisys during the October 18 parliamentary elections. Since the first trials at electronic voting in 2003, Swiss cantons have been wrestling with the development of secure e-voting systems. To date, canton Geneva has been the most successful in rolling out an approved system, due in large part to the platform being 100% publicly funded and locally developed. The model has so far been adopted by three other cantons: Lucerne, Basel City and Bern. Aside from the failed attempt by the consortium of nine cantons to introduce the use of an American e-voting system, Neuchâtel has been the only other canton to enter the fray. In partnership with Syctl, a global leader in the field, it has developed a unique online voting platform that offers the possibility of voting directly from a computer keyboard. Having eyed the market for some time, it is this system Swiss Post is banking on to provide its entry into the world of e-voting.

Australia: E-voting: Why Australia isn’t voting electronically on election day | Daily Telegraph

We are the pioneers of the secret ballot electoral system, but when it comes to electronic voting, Australia has long been behind the pack. Kazakhstan, India, Brazil and Estonia are among the countries who long ago swapped pencil-and-paper ballots for e-voting at polling stations or over the internet. Meanwhile, in Australia, most of us continue to bemoan the chore of queuing for hours at the polling booth. … During the NSW state election in March, residents who were vision impaired, disabled or out of town on election day were able to cast their vote with the remote voting system, iVote, in what was the biggest-ever test of e-voting in the country. … But the success of iVote was marred by reports two security experts had exposed a major security hole that could potentially affect huge numbers of ballots and maybe even change the election outcome. University of Melbourne research fellow Vanessa Teague said she and Prof Alex Halderman from the University of Michigan found iVote had a vulnerability to what’s called a man-in-the-middle attack when they tested the system with a practice server in the lead-up to the election. “We could expose how the person intended to vote, we could manipulate that vote, and we could interfere with the return of the receipt number and thus prevent the person from logging into the verification server afterwards,” she told news.com.au.

Canada: Will Canadians ever be able to vote online? | rabble.ca

Like rocket-packs and hover boards, the ability for a Canadian to vote in a federal election via the Internet continues to be a sci-fi dream. “With elections it’s unlike any other system in a cyber security system because everyone’s a potential adversary — the voters, the voting vendors, election officials, third parties. So you have to imagine how to protect against all those possibilities,” explains Aleksander Essex, an Assistant Professor of Software Engineering at the University of Western Ontario. “Internet voting has been used at the national level in other countries, but none as big as Canada,” says Nicole Goodman, Research Director, Centre for e-Democracy and Assistant Professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs. She has a list of factors that she says are stopping us from implementing it at the Federal level “from concerns about security and the process of authentication, to the reluctance of government to embrace digital technology to policy and scalability.”

Australia: To defend iVote, the NSW electoral commission went to Switzerland | The Mandarin

Last month, the New South Wales Electoral Commission’s ongoing battle to defend the integrity of its online voting system took chief information officer Ian Brightwell all the way to Switzerland — the last bastion of modern direct democracy. After requests from commissioner Colin Barry were knocked back by two other academic conferences, Brightwell finally got his chance to explain the NSW experience of implementing iVote in direct response to a pair of crusading academics who have doggedly attacked the online voting platform both in Australia and abroad. The organisers of the VoteID 2015 conference, held last month in Bern, Switzerland, deemed the claims and counter-claims interesting enough to design a special session around them. By now, most people who’ve heard about online voting in NSW would have also heard the persistent warnings of Vanessa Teague, a research fellow at the University of Melbourne, and J. Alex Halderman, an associate professor of computer science and engineering from the University of Michigan.