National: Online voting: Safe for Oscars, but not yet for elections? | TechHive

For the first time ever, this year’s Oscar winners were selected online. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided to let its members vote online, but cybersecurity and elections experts say that casting Internet ballots in public elections is still a long way off. Even picking Best Picture winners led to serious snafus. The voting deadline for the Oscars was extended in early January after some members had issues with account registration (password requests were answered by snail mail rather than email). But in public elections, deadlines can’t be extended. A group of cybersecurity and elections experts last week reiterated the dangers of modeling public elections after private ones. Companies who design online voting systems for award shows or corporate shareholder meetings may suggest these systems can also be used in congressional or presidential races. Those claims should be met with skepticism, said computer scientist David Jefferson, chairman of the nonprofit Verified Voting Foundation. “There are major differences between private and public elections: the degree of security required, the degree of privacy required, the degree of transparency required,” Jefferson said in a telephone press conference Thursday. “In a public election we’re talking about a national security situation.”

National: Online Voting For Academy Awards Must Not Become Model For Public Elections, Cyber Security & Voting Rights Experts Warn | Paramus Post

A group of concerned cyber security experts and voting rights advocates released a statement today warning that Internet voting for this year’s Academy Awards must not become a model for public elections. The group includes advocacy organizations Common Cause and Verified Voting and some of the most renowned figures in computer science including Ron Rivest, co-founder of RSA and Verisign and recipient of the Turing Award;[1] and Dr. Barbara Simons, former President of ACM and author of Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count? “When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that it 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 found 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,” the experts said. “Public elections run by municipal, local and state governments should not be compared to elections like the one run by the Academy.”

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.”

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: 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.

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?”

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.

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.)

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.

Ireland: Oscars online voting mess reminds us of a certain electronic voting machine bought by the Irish government | joe.ie

When it comes to voting do any of us really trust machines? We’ve seen so many hacker incidents in the global media, not to mention our own email and Facebook pages, that we don’t really trust our votes not to be tampered with if made electronically. The 85th Annual Academy Awards tried to upgrade their voting system to e-voting this year but has met with nothing but problems. Usually voting for the awards is done via the post. This year, there was a choice of posting the vote traditionally, or voting online. Many users found that they had more trouble trying to get their votes cast online that they would trying to perform an online banking transfer.

National: E-Voting Snafu Pushes Back Oscar Nomination Deadline | Wired.com

This year, Oscar voters are getting a deadline extension, giving members an extra day to vote on the nominees for this year’s Academy Awards after technical issues plagued the first attempt by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to allow online voting. The Academy announced in early 2012 that it would be making e-voting available to members, and as is often then case in the move from analog to digital, the transition to the new voting platform hasn’t been without hiccups. In a recent Hollywood Reporter analysis, many Academy voters complained of issues with logging in to the voting site — something an Academy representative attributed to voters “forgetting or misusing passwords”  – difficulty navigating the site once they were logged in, and even the potential for hackers to infiltrate the website and influence the vote.

National: Concern over glitches with Oscar electronic voting extends deadline | Fox News

Growing concern that problems with the new electronic Oscar voting system could lead to record-low turnout has prompted the motion picture academy to extend the deadline for members to vote for Oscar nominations. But next week’s highly anticipated announcements looming, the extension is only for a day, until Friday. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said Monday any votes received after the new deadline will not be counted. “By extending the voting deadline we are providing every opportunity available to make the transition to online balloting as smooth as possible,” said the academy’s chief operating officer, Ric Robertson, in a statement. “We’re grateful to our global membership for joining us in this process.”

National: E-voting causing problems for Oscar voters, report says | CBS News

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences opted to try online voting for this year’s Oscars, and with one week left in the voting period multiple sources have told The Hollywood Reporter that the new system isn’t working well. Voting started December 17 and is set to end on January 3. THR reached out to several members of the Academy and roughly half told the paper they experienced problems, or were concerned that older, less technically-savvy Academy members would simply give up. (The median age of the Academy’s 5,765 members is 62, according to a study done by the Los Angeles Times.) Some told of repeated difficulties logging in and being locked out of the system.

Editorials: Casting doubt on Internet voting for Edmonton | Chris Cates/Edmonton Journal

On Jan. 23, city council will decide whether Edmonton should begin using Internet voting next October in our municipal election. While city clerk Alayne Sinclair and others think Internet voting is secure, in reality it is not. Hackers have gained access to secure systems at the Pentagon, CIA and Canadian government organizations. If these groups with large budgets for network security can be penetrated, what makes a private firm think it can provide secure online voting? As a computer programmer and former network administrator, I embrace technology as much as I embrace democracy. While there are many technologies that benefit our lives, electronic voting is not one of them.