National: Oscar 2012 Voting – Glitches On First Day Of Online Ballots | Deadline.com

Monday was the first day that the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled its new electronic voting system for the Oscars, and today didn’t exactly go off without a hitch. I figured the big problem would be getting older voters (some are over 100) to warm up to using the world wide web. But the big problem today occurred when the system temporarily went on the fritz and voters couldn’t log in. I’m not sure if there was an avalanche of attempts to vote, but I’m told that the system wasn’t working for much of the day today, one frustrated Academy member told me. The member added that the support center, whose number was included with the ballot instructions, wasn’t sure when things would be back online.

National: If the Internet is magic, why can’t we vote on it? | Computerworld

Regular as clockwork — just after an election which generated far too many stories of people waiting far too long to vote (and far too many local election officials saying that everything went fine and that there were no problems) — come the calls for voting via the Internet. The press wonders if we are a third-world country, politicians posture and most securityexperts say “don’t go there.” Some examples: A headline in The Washington Post was “Estonia gets to vote online. Why can’t America?” New Jersey tells people they can vote via email. A famed Russian computer security expert is quoted by the BBC saying that “the lack of well-established online voting systems is a real threat to the democratic nations of the Western world” (because kids will not vote if they can’t do it online).

Anyone who has not been comatose these past few years already knows why we don’t vote over the Internet. Most vendors of electronic systems are generically incapable of producing secure ones. Just Google “voting machine security” for many examples, and if that is not enough try “SCADA security.”

California: Is California Ready for Online Voting? | KQED

It sounds logical enough. If we can buy stock, see medical records and book flights online, we should be able to cast ballots online as well. And at least one politicians thinks California should move in that direction. When State Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) announced on Monday that he is running for secretary of state in 2014, he said online voting is one of the primary planks in his platform. … That made me wonder exactly why I am still showing up at the basement of a church in my neighborhood to fill in bubbles with a pen. The answer, according to Johns Hopkins University computer security expert Avi Rubin, is that there is no way to guarantee an accurate vote count online. “I’m pretty disgusted to hear that someone is running for secretary of state with this platform,” he said.

Canada: Online voting pros & cons | Daily Herald Tribune

Grande Prairie is on the right track in terms of online voting, but serious changes need to be made before the system can be effective, says the president of a leading-edge intelligent vote company. Dean Smith, president and founder of Intelivote Systems Inc., a Halifax-based worldwide leader in electronic vote systems, says the proposed process for online voting needs to be changed if city officials expect voters to use it.

Canada: Citizen jury will recommend online voting for municipal elections | Global Edmonton

A citizens jury has decided it will recommend the city adopt internet voting as an option for the next municipal election. The jury- who voted 17-1 in favour- says internet voting will make the process easy, simple and fast. The idea behind a citizens jury is that given enough time and information, ordinary people can make decisions about complex policy issues. While internet voting is already offered in over 60 municipalities in Ontario and Nova Scotia, there are some concerns over security, fraud, privacy, accuracy and accessibility- to name a few.

Israel: Online voting breakdown dogs Israeli Likud primaries for national elections | Xinhua

Officials at branches of Israel’ s chief Likud party reported severe technical problems at polling stations countrywide Sunday morning, halting the outset of a daylong round of voting to set a party slate for national elections on Jan. 22 for the 19th Knesset (parliament). While party Chairman, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who cast his ballot at party headquarters in Tel Aviv when polling stations opened at 9:00 a.m., exhorted members to head to the polls to make their voices heard, crashed internet servers kept more than 123,000 other members from voting at sites throughout the country.

Canada: Liberal Leadership Online Voting Could Lead To Major Pwnage | Huffington Post

Just imagine: It’s April 2013 and the Liberal Party has gathered in Ottawa to hear that their new leader is… Chuck Norris. While that outcome may seem far-fetched, if the Liberals follow through with their plan to combine a new category of party membership with online voting, they may end up with an outcome just as ridiculous. The new “supporter” category was created at the Liberal Convention in January and is aimed at widening the base of participants for the leadership vote, making it more like a U.S.-style primary. Anyone interested in the party can sign up online and 30,000 people have already done so. If everything goes as planned, these supporters will vote for a new leader in exactly the same way as a full party member: in person or by mail, phone or internet. It’s the internet bit that’s interesting because, judging from the history of web, online votes have a tendency to go hilariously wrong.

Canada: Fate of Internet voting in Edmonton rests with citizen jury | Edmonton Journal

An 18-member citizen jury will decide this weekend if Edmonton should go ahead with a controversial proposal to allow Internet voting next fall. The jurors will hear presentations on security, software and other issues from almost a dozen expert witnesses before reaching a verdict in what organizers say is the first time this form of public involvement has been tried in Canada. “I think this process is groundbreaking,” city clerk Alayne Sinclair said Friday. “As a municipality, we have to think about how we can engage citizens better, how we can actually get them to be involved.”

Canada: Councillors want e-voting analyzed, question cost, length | Metro Canada

A rookie HRM councillor is calling for an end to online voting, but a couple of his vetrean colleagues would prefer to focus on how to make the system better. Coun. Waye Mason of District 7 told the CBC this week that since public turnout wasn’t any higher with a web system, the municipality should focus on traditional ballot boxes. “I’m not ready to say ‘let’s scrap’ the e-voting,” Distirct 8 Coun. Jennifer Watts told Metro on Thursday in response to Mason’s comments.

Canada: Security of e-voting questioned | The Chronicle Herald

At first blush, it appears electronic voting did little to conquer voter apathy in Halifax Regional Municipality. The 37 per cent total turnout in October matched that of the 2008 election. That plateau has prompted several councillors to call for a staff review to gauge how effective the $500,000 spent on telephone and online voting was compared to using paper ballots. Coun. Waye Mason questioned the system’s security and said he doesn’t think it should necessarily be used in 2016.

Louisiana: Secretary of State expresses concern with New Jersey online voting | NOLA.com

Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler expressed concern Monday morning over New Jersey’s weekend announcement it would be allowing those displaced by Hurricane Sandy to vote online.  “Quite frankly, I don’t think we’re there yet,” Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler told press assembled in Baton Rouge this morning. Referring to New Jersey’s recent announcement the state will allow displaced citizens to vote by email or fax as “overseas voters,” Schedler added “I’m very concerned about the methodology.”

National: Experts warn hackers will breach online voting systems | ITProPortal.com

As one of the world’s biggest electoral showdowns nears its conclusion over in the US, fears are growing in IT security that hackers may soon be able to affect the outcome of such a contest by breaching online voter databases. With governing bodies continuing to utilise Internet platforms for voter registration, and hacking collectives growing in sophistication, some experts believe a serious breach of electoral data is inevitable. While Barack Obama and Mitt Romney jostle for power in America, states including Maryland, Washington, Arizona and California have either implemented online voter registration systems already, or have passed bills proposing the move.

National: Voting For the Leader of the Free World…From Your Couch? | Fox Business

Imagine if casting a vote for the next president of the United States were as easy as waking up and turning on your PC. Cyber security experts say online voting may not be that far off in the U.S. and could breathe new life into the American electoral process. Perhaps because Americans are already comfortable using the Internet to trade stocks, manage their finances and make online purchases, calls to modernize the voting system and potentially bring it online have started to grow louder. Barriers exist today, but voting for the leader of the free world via smartphone, laptop or tablet could be a reality within the next few presidential election cycles. … The biggest threats are malware on personal devices that could, unbeknownst to the voter, alter their vote or track who they voted for, as well as hostile people or groups who could hack into the system for malicious purposes and disrupt the voting process. Another major challenge is ensuring that a vote is anonymous while at the same time re-countable for auditing purposes.  “My concern is the potential for some rogue nation to attack our voting if it moves online, and not being prepared,” Snell said.

Canada: Turnout down slightly–hard to measure effect of e-voting in Nova Scotia election | Nova News Now

Turnout for Digby’s first electronic vote was down from 2008. In town, roughly 53 per cent or 786 of the 1467 eligible voters cast a ballot over the week-long voting period. In 2008, with the added interest of a race for mayor, 75 per cent or 933 people voted out of 1236 eligible voters. Information was not available by press time about the percentage of voters from 2004, the last time the town had mayoral election.

Russia: Russian Opposition Vote Derailed by Hacker Attack | RIA Novosti

Electronic voting to the coordination council of Russia’s street opposition was temporarily suspended Saturday over a hacker attack, the movement’s central election committee said via Twitter Saturday. “It is possible that the online voting has been affected by DDoS attacks,” the committee said, referring to a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack, a common form of hacking that denies users access to targeted websites. More than 165,000 people have registered to vote electronically for official leaders to the coordinating committee, which claims it is following up on the 10-month-old protest movement’s demand for free elections and fair representation.

Russia: Opposition election hit by cyber attack – organisers | Reuters

An online election to choose a “shadow parliament” opposed to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was disrupted on Saturday by a cyber attack, activists said. “Today we already know that there are some problems with the server, there are some attacks,” Sergei Udaltsov, a prominent protest leader, said at rally on Saturday. Opponents of Putin say elections in Russia are rigged in favour of his ruling party and are instead holding their own internet contest which they hope will reinvigorate the flagging opposition movement. Information on their website, www.cvk2012.org, told visitors there could be problems casting their votes and to try again later. Organisers and activists did not suggest who was behind the attacks. The Kremlin has said it will ignore the opposition vote.

Editorials: Raise your hand if online voting spooks you | Sherwood Park News

The City of Edmonton will embark on a online election pilot later this month and Strathcona County will no doubt be watching. Despite my generation’s apparent love affair with everything technology, online voting is one of those things that should forever remain a pie-in-the-sky lust. Sort of like flying cars. Sure, flying cars sound nice — unless you realize the safest place to live is in the basement of your home because a car flown by some inebriated driver can come crashing through your roof without warning. Likewise, an online poll can be mucked with without warning. Government rules for rewarding contracts being what they are, the best security the lowest bid can buy will most likely be protecting any online vote. While I believe any bid-winning firm has what it takes to stop most hackers from having fun with the results, not every hacker can be so easily derailed.

National: How Close Are We to Internet Voting? | Mashable

You can do basically anything online. From booking a flight to securely transmitting medical records to your doctor, from buying groceries to managing your bank account, the web supports all sorts of complex transactions. But one common task has firmly resisted the lure of online convenience: voting. At least mostly. There is actually some online voting already happening in very limited ways. At least 32 states and the District of Columbia will allow military or overseas voters to return absentee ballots via email, fax or an Internet portal, in effect offering a form of remote electronic voting to some segment of the population. But for the majority of voters, a trip to a polling place will be necessary to cast a vote in this year’s election. Why is that? Surely, if engineers can figure out how to safeguard your medical records or transfer large sums of money over the Internet, beaming a vote from your living room should be a piece of cake. That’s a popular refrain among proponents of Internet voting systems, and on the surface, it makes sense. If security-obsessed industries like banking and medicine have embraced the Internet, why is voting still stuck in the relative dark ages? As with most things, the reality is a bit more complicated. According to VerifiedVoting.org, a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring the “accuracy, integrity and verifiability” of elections in a digital age, all voting systems should have a few key components. First, there needs to be a fully auditable, preferably voter-verifiable paper trail that maintains the integrity of the secret ballot. Second, voting systems need to have in place strong mechanisms to prevent any undetected changes to votes. Third, systems should not be easily subject to wide-scale service disruptions. Indeed, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), passed in 2002 as a response to the Florida recount debacle of 2000, requires some of these provisions under the law.

National: E-Mail Votes Seen Raising Election Security Risk: BGOV Barometer | Bloomberg

The Nov. 6 presidential election is the first in which almost half the states will permit Americans in the military or overseas to cast ballots via e-mail or online, raising concerns that voting may be vulnerable to hacking or cyber attacks. The BGOV Barometer shows that 23 states and the District of Columbia will permit some degree of Internet-enabled voting for armed forces personnel and U.S. citizens living abroad, according to data compiled by the Overseas Vote Foundation. Among contested states in the presidential race, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa and North Carolina will allow e-mailed ballots, raising the possibility that the winner of a state’s electoral votes might depend on a few thousand electronic ballots. “From a security point of view, it’s the riskiest form of voting ever invented,” said David Jefferson, a director of the Verified Voting Foundation, a Carlsbad, California-based non- profit that works to improve the security of online and electronic balloting.

Canada: Elections Canada wants more people to cast ballots, but online voting is still out | The Globe and Mail

Elections Canada is trying to ease registration for young voters and is pushing for more civic education in elementary classrooms, according to the federal elections watchdog. But online voting is still out of the question. Marc Mayrand, Canada’s chief electoral officer, delivered the remarks in an online discussion with Globe and Mail readers Thursday night. “Online voting would certainly make voting more convenient for everyone, including young voters,” Mr. Mayrand wrote. “That being said, there are still issues surrounding the integrity, verifiability and secrecy of the vote.” As for the robocalls affair – alleged misleading automated calls during the 2011 federal election – Mr. Mayrand said the investigation continues but he couldn’t give a timeline.

National: Electronic voting’s the real threat to elections | USAToday.com

Imagine how easy voting would be if Americans could cast ballots the same way they buy songs from iTunes or punch in a PIN code to check out at the grocery store: You could click on a candidate from a home computer or use a touch screen device at the local polling place. It’s not entirely a fantasy. In many states, some voters can already do both. The process is seductively simple, but it’s also shockingly vulnerable to problems from software failure to malicious hacking. While state lawmakers burn enormous energy in a partisan fight over in-person vote fraud, which is virtually nonexistent, they’re largely ignoring far likelier ways votes can be lost, stolen or changed. How? Sometimes, technology or the humans running it simply fail.

Editorials: Internet voting advocates ignorant of software, says computer scientist Barbara Simons | FierceGovernmentIT

Advocates of Internet voting typically form their opinions without real knowledge of how software works, said Barbara Simons, a computer scientist and board member of VerifiedVoting.org. She gave an Aug. 8 talk to the research division of Microsoft; the company posted a webcast of her presentation online. “They don’t understand why when we say you can’t find all the software bugs, you can’t,” Simons said. An analogous public policy example of how software can permit inadvertent flaws that enable later malicious exploitation is the U.S. tax code, she said. Congress periodically approves well-intentioned updates to that complex system which, once implemented, “turn out to benefit a single company in ways that have not been anticipated before the update,” she said.

National: The Problems with Online Voting | Wall Street Journal

Two years ago, hackers gained access to an online voting system created by the District of Columbia and altered every ballot on behalf of their own preferred candidates. On the “Thank You!” page that ran at the end of the voting protocol, they left their trademark—the University of Michigan fight song. The online voting system was real, intended for use that November, but the compromised election, fortunately, was just a mock-up for testing security. The infiltrators were a team of graduate students led by University of Michigan computer scientist J. Alex Halderman. Which candidates got the fake votes? Skynet from the “Terminator” movies and Bender, the alcohol-fueled robot from TV’s “Futurama.” But the hackers had a serious point: that Internet voting systems were a real threat to the integrity of the democratic process. “The question of whether Internet voting is secure is really not a political question,” Dr. Halderman says. “It’s a technical question.” As many as three million voters will be eligible to vote online this fall, according to Pamela Smith, executive director of the Verified Voting Foundation, a nonpartisan fair elections watchdog group. In all, 31 states will offer some form of online voting, usually for overseas voters.

Canada: Proceed with caution on internet voting | Campbell River Mirror

The provincial government has asked Elections BC to look more thoroughly into electronic voting. While this makes a great deal of sense, given how much business can be easily transacted on computers, it is important not to jump into the deep end. This is because voting is a privilege in a democratic society, or at least needs to be treated as such. Many people in various parts of thje world do not have the opportunity to vote. In many cases when they do, the system is rigged. It would be foolish to think that our system cannot be rigged. Political parties and their most avid supporters know no bounds when it comes to trying to work the system to their advantage. When there are opprtuinities to stack a vote,  they will do so if there is little fear of consequences.

Canada: Security of BC online voting proposal cited as a concern | Kamloops This Week

He’s spent the summer chatting with voters via Twitter and a web-based video feed, but when it come to actually casting ballots, Coun. Arjun Singh is still a fan of the voting booth. “I like the idea of being able to go into a booth where some other people are there and they can monitor whether people are being influenced or coerced,” Singh said. The B.C. government has announced it will ask the province’s chief electoral officer to strike an independent panel to examine Internet voting. Attorney General Shirley Bond said adding online voting to the range of options in B.C. could improve accessibility in elections — which could improve voter turnout that sagged to less than 30 per cent on average in the last round of B.C. municipal elections. The panel will examine “best practices” for online votes in other provinces and jurisdictions. However, critics of online voting argue there is more room for manipulation of online voting — or, just as problematically, claims of manipulation.

Canada: Mark your X online? | Kimberley Daily Bulletin

The B.C. government has officially requested that the chief electoral officer convene an independent panel to examine the potential for using Internet voting in British Columbia. Premier Christy Clark says it’s keeping a promise to modernize British Columbia’s electoral process. Columbia River Revelstoke MLA Norm Macdonald says it’s almost impossible to imagine an online voting system that would not be open to abuse of some sort. …  Macdonald says he doesn’t necessarily buy the argument that online voting will increase participation. “I don’t accept that it will draw more people in, or engage more youth. People have an obligation to be involved, it’s a civic obligation. It’s not difficult to get out and vote. People that are bed-ridden have the ballot come to them. I don’t think it’s difficulty in getting out that is the problem, especially with youth. It’s cynicism with the system. The only answer is to participate and change it. The system has to be relevant and authentic. You saw that with the Occupy movement. It was a bit misplaced but it did have youth activated and involved.” But Macdonald’s major concern is security.

Canada: Elections British Columbia studying online voting | CTV

B.C. voters may soon have the option of casting their ballots online in municipal and provincial elections. An Elections BC panel will start studying the voting method as early as September after being asked by the provincial government to research the potential risks and advantages associated with it. The request came almost a year after B.C.’s chief electoral officer Keith Archer recommended the government consider changing legislation to allow for trial-runs of new voting technologies. “Under current legislation that envisions a voting process that is entirely paper-based, Elections BC is unable to conduct trials of these new technologies,” said Archer in a November 2011 report. “Legislators may wish to consider providing greater flexibility to the Chief Electoral Officer to introduce, on a pilot basis, a variety of new voting technologies.” While there are some cities that use online voting, such as Halifax, no provinces in Canada yet do so for provincial elections.

National: Voting Machine Report: States Ranked Based On Use Of Paper Ballots | Huffington Post

Six states received the lowest grades for their abilities to accurately count election results based on their lack of access to paper ballots, according to a report released Wednesday by Common Cause, Rutgers Law School and the Verified Voting Foundation. The report — which studied election technology and administration in the 50 states and the District of Columbia — calls primarily for states to implement paper ballots in all counties in order to guard against system failures and other issues. The grading centered primarily on whether the state had paper trails in place. “The biggest problem is if those machines malfunction, there is no way to independently check,” Susannah Goodman, director of the voting integrity project at Common Cause said in a conference call with reporters. “What was the voters’ intent? You can’t do an audit.” The report showed that Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, Vermont and Wisconsin were best when it came to catching voting problems, while Colorado, Delaware, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina ranked at the bottom of the list. States were graded on whether their machines leave a paper trail, whether an audit is done of ballots, whether election officials check the vote count against the amount of voters who come to the polls, whether there are contingency plans in place in case of machine failure, and whether voting-by-mail is encouraged over online voting for military and overseas voters. Failure in the paper ballot category led to failure for states in the audit category, given the need for paper ballots to conduct the audit. “For states that don’t have paper ballots or records, it knocks them down,” Goodman said.