Category: Internet Voting

In late 2010 the New York Times ran an article States Move to Allow Overseas and Military Voters to Cast Ballots by Internet <read> which touted risky Internet voting. I was well refuted by Representative Rush Holt in a letter to the Times. <read>

Here we go again a very small article by Matt Bai Double-Click the Vote <read>

It’s amazing to think that I just renewed my car registration and paid my taxes online, but in November I’ll still have to wait in line to vote. The best argument against Internet voting is that it stacks the system against old and poor people who can’t afford or use computers, but the same could be said about cars. For decades, volunteers have showed up at retirement homes with rented vans. Isn’t it time they came with laptops?

What is amazing is actually that the paper of record prints such things that defy science and all the evidence <CTVoterCount Internet Voting Index>

Tech.pinions refutes Bai’s arguments, yet I suspect will reach much fewer than the flawed Bai piece: Internet Voting Is Years Away, And Maybe Always Will Be <read>

They do a great job of explaining the challenge of anonymity:

…If only it were so simple.

Voting, alas, has unique characteristics that make internet implementations all but impossible given current technology. The big problem is that we make two demands of it that cannot be met simultaneously. We want voting to be very, very secure. And we want it to be very, very anonymous.

Internet security is difficult under the best of conditions. But voting has the additional complication that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to remedy a breach. Most of the time, all that is at stake is money, and we know how to fix that. Identity theft is more complex but still there are remedies. A stolen vote is gone forever.

Anonymity complicated the problem immensely. The usual way to secure an internet transaction to to make certain that both the server and the person at the other end and who or what they claim to be. To cast a ballot at a poling place or vote an absentee ballot, you have to produce identification or, at a minimum, a signature that matches one on file. It’s not perfect. but it’s generally better than we can do on the internet. Then you are given a ballot or a card that activates an electronic voting machine, but there is no link between the ballot and your identity, guaranteeing anonymity. This is really, really hard to simulate online. The more that is done to assure your identity, the harder it is to separate that identity from the vote that is cast…

We will see more trials in this year’s voting. But widespread internet voting is still waiting for a day that may never come.

 

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Bonus: Alex Haldeman <video>

I had a front row seat last Thursday in Santa Fe, to hear Bruce McConnell from the Department of Homeland Security discuss Internet Voting. From NPR: Online Voting ‘Premature,’ Warns Government Cybersecurity Expert <read>

He ended his talk with a light lesson in Government-Speak reading several snippets warning of risks or inadequate technology which use nuanced words understating reality, hence the description of internet voting technology as ‘Premature’.

Warnings about the dangers of Internet voting have been growing as the 2012 election nears, and an especially noteworthy one came Thursday from a top cybersecurity official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Bruce McConnell told a group of election officials, academics and advocacy groups meeting in Santa Fe, N.M., that he believes “it’s premature to deploy Internet voting in real elections at this time.”

McConnell said voting systems are vulnerable and, “when you connect them to the Internet, that vulnerability increases.” He called security around Internet voting “immature and underresourced.”

McConnell’s comments echo those of a number of computer scientists who say there’s no way to protect votes cast over the Internet from outside manipulation.

Some, particularly Bob Carey, say it is a trade-off between security and convenience.

Some election officials say it’s a trade-off between security and convenience.

Bob Carey, director of FVAP, told a group of bloggers in October that there are risks to online voting, but also “inherent security risks with the current system,” such as people not getting their ballots on time and losing the opportunity to vote.

Carey added that “there’s not going to be any electronic voting system that’s ever going to be 100 percent secure, but also the current paper-based system is not 100 percent reliable either.”…

Some people think online voting is bound to happen, though, once the kinks are worked out. But as McConnell’s comments show, those who worry a lot about cybersecurity believe that time is a long way away.

We do not have to trade risk for convenience. States that follow the MOVE Act and provide express return of ballots and absentee ballot applications in a single envelope have shown that military and overseas voters can be served effectively, and much more economically than risky, costly internet voting schemes.

For more, see: <CTVC Internet Voting Index>

In a new paper the University of Michigan ethical hackers describe how all the votes were changed/stolen in the Washington, D. C. test: Attacking the Washington, D.C. Internet Voting System <read>

The paper is a good read. Recommended especially for election officials and those that believe Internet voting is a good, safe idea. From the abstract:

This paper describes our experience participating in this trial. Within 48 hours of the system going live, we had gained near complete control of the election server. We successfully changed every vote and revealed almost every secret ballot. Election officials did not detect our intrusion for nearly two business days—and might have remained unaware for far longer had we not deliberately left a prominent clue. This case study—the first (to our knowledge) to analyze the security of a government Internet voting system from the perspective of an attacker in a realistic pre-election deployment—attempts to illuminate the practical challenges of securing online voting as practiced today by a growing number of jurisdictions.

I would add:

1. It took the officials a while to detect the hack, even with the Michigan Fight song playing. Imagine if the team had only changed or added 10% or 20% of the vote and cast them for candidates actually on the ballot! What if it was a real election and the officials were not certain that several groups were likely trying to hack in!!!
2. We pay significant attention to outsider attacks, but insider attacks aremuch easier, require less expertise, and are much less likely to be detected.emember online voting is about as auditable as a paperless DRE, just more globally vulnerable.
3. Was the West Virginia Pilot hacked? How would anyone know? Maybe not, it was not a very valuable target since so few votes were involved.

Last week there was a PBS News Hour report on Internet Voting. It was fair and balanced as far as it went, but maybe a bit too fair to non-scientists and vendors touting Internet Voting. We wished it was more like the symposium in Connecticut where both pro and con members of the panel had adequate time to counter each others’ statements. At Brad Blog, Earnest A Canning has an excellent piece pointing out some additional information not covered in the short News Hour segment PBS News Hour Report Exposes Madness of Internet Voting, Officials Who Push For It Anyway <read>

Disturbingly, the new PBS documentary also reveals that, despite the spectacular failure and warnings from virtually every computer science and security expert, election and Pentagon officials are still pressing forward with what MIT Prof. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Ronald L. Rivest describes, as seen in the short PBS report, as an “oxytopian” solution. “‘Secure Internet voting,'” Rivest charges, “is a bit like the phrase ‘safe cigarettes'”…

 The Revolving Door

In some instances, like that of Paul Stenbjorn, the former Executive Director of the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics who first pushed for the live D.C. Internet vote experiment and was then embarrassed by the D.C. Internet Voting Hack, the persistent effort to damn the science, the scientists and the extraordinary failures to move ahead with Internet Voting anyway, might be explained by the fact that he subsequently became the Director of US Operations at SCYTL, a manufacturer of online voting and election systems…

 Reliance upon technology that does not exist

Where, in the PBS report, West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant (D) expresses certainty — with no evidence to back it up — that there has been “no breach in our votes,” U.C. Berkley Computer Science Prof. David Wagner, who examined the SCYTL system, reported that there “is no known way to audit Internet voting.”

If there is no way to audit the voting, there is no way to know whether the votes have been “breached” and accurately recorded as per the voters’ intent.

Where Stenbjorn advanced the unscientific prediction that a secure system will be developed in the near future, Wagner, in the same report, noted: “It is not technologically feasible today to make Internet Voting safe against attack.”…

 No security against insider threat

One shortfall of the otherwise excellent PBS report — which includes interviews with a number of computer scientists The BRAD BLOG has turned to for years for their invaluable expertise on these issues — is that it only examined the concerns of system security from the perspective of an outsider attack, like the one that occurred in the D.C. Internet Voting Hack.

Even assuming that it were technologically feasible to prevent an outside attack, this does not begin to address the far more immediate threat that, whenever there is a lack of transparency in how votes are counted, there is a risk that the count can be manipulated by insiders with access to any e-voting system, be it Internet, Direct Recording Electronic (usually touchscreen) voting machines or paper-based computer optical scan systems.

As acknowledged by virtually all computer scientists and security experts, and even confirmed by the highly compromised, GOP-operative-created Baker/Carter National Election Reform Commission years ago, the greatest threat to all such electoral systems comes from insiders. As even the phony Baker/Carter commission noted: “There is no reason to trust insiders in the election industry any more than in other industries.” Thus, there is almost nothing that can be done to protect against such exploits…

Convenience is no substitute for democracy

During the PBS report, Bob Carey, the Director of the Pentagon’s Federal Voting Assistance Program not only expresses the unscientific belief that a foolproof Internet Voting system will be developed within five to six years, but he also downplays the risks identified by computer scientists as “unfair to military voters.”

Doug Chapin, Program for Excellence in Election Administration, New Pew Report Details Progress on Military, Overseas Voting <read>

Democracy from Afar finds that “47 states and the District of Columbia enacted laws to protect the voting rights of military and overseas citizens”. More specifically, Pew found that “many states have implemented changes to their laws or administrative codes,” including –

+ Enough time to vote: 38 states and the District have laws or rules meeting or exceeding federal requirements to send ballots to military and overseas voters at least 45 days before an election AND 8 additional states changed their primary dates to accommodate the requirement;

+ Electronic transmission of unvoted ballots: All states and the District allow military and overseas voters to receive blank ballots electronically;

+ Eliminating requirements for notarization or witnesses: 46 states and the District do not call for either for military and overseas voters; and

+ Expanded use of Federal Write-in Absentee Ballots (FWABs): 34 states and the District mandate FWABs be used as a backup ballot for all elections, including state and local.

All of these changes are summarized state-by-state in a typically handy-dandy Pew chart on page 5 of the report.

It really is remarkable how far this issue has come in about three years; Pew’s election team and its huge coalition of partners including OVF, the Pentagon’s Federal Voting Assistance Program and the Uniform Law Commission (whose Uniform Military and Overseas Voting Act is one ongoing vehicle for state and local reform) should be deeply gratified at everything they have accomplished.

Looking at the state summary report on page 5, we Connecticut meets all four of the major criteria.  We would go farther in web convenience: Better web information accessible to overseas voters; ballot selection on the web based on polling place look up for each.

All of these changes are summarized state-by-state in a typically handy-dandy Pew chart on page 5 of the report.

It really is remarkable how far this issue has come in about three years; Pew’s election team and its huge coalition of partners including OVF, the Pentagon’s Federal Voting Assistance Program and the Uniform Law Commission (whose Uniform Military and Overseas Voting Act is one ongoing vehicle for state and local reform) should be deeply gratified at everything they have accomplished.

Looking at the state by state summary on page 5 of the report, we see that Connecticut scores well, employing all the items used to compare states. We could go further following the states with best practices: Providing better web information, more conveniently and web ballot access and printing based on voter registration information.

Overall, one more reason not to employ risky, expensive online voting. Conventional, less flashy, methods are just as convenient and effective while being safe and more economical.