America's Newest State Holds America's Newest Election

For too long we have tolerated the idea that elections should be difficult. If you think voting is inconvenient, too bad for you, say pundits. And if elections are expensive and a logistical nightmare to run, oh well, at least there aren't too many of them.

America's newest state, our southernmost state, has a different idea. Right now, as you read this article on the Internet, citizens of Honolulu are voting in America's first all-digital online and telephone election. Residents of neighborhoods with contested board seats received pass-codes in the mail, along with a Web address and a phone number allowing them to vote at any time, day or night, from anywhere in the world.

While I typed that paragraph, two people just voted. They may have just gotten home from work, or they may be at school, in the library, or even overseas. Someone else will vote at 3:00 am in his pajamas. And all of their votes are being secured using military-grade encryption technology: faster, more reliable, and more secure than if they had voted on paper.

At Honolulu Hale (City Hall) last week, I met a blind Hawaiian woman very interested in her neighborhood board. This month, for the first time ever, she will be able to vote in privacy: a telephone system, not her relative or neighbor, will record her vote and read it back without bias, without disclosure, and without fear of dishonesty. For the first time, she receives her Constitutional right to a private ballot.

I have had the privilege to help build some pretty interesting technology products, including MSN and Windows, but none of them has ever excited me like this. We've used the best technology in this country to increase access to shopping and checking accounts. Now it's time to get serious: we are increasing access to democracy, to the vote.

At dinner recently, a prominent Hawaiian legislator, sad about fading industries, told me that all America has left to export is our values. I love our values too, but had to protest: our technology industry remains one of our country's brightest stars. I am so proud, I told him, so delighted, to play a small part in the bringing together of election science and digital technology -- to protect and advance our finest value, democracy.

In this case the technology manufacturer, a California company called Everyone Counts (where I am Chief of Products and Partnerships), isn't just advancing the art of government. It's also saving taxpayers money, enfranchising voters with disabilities and soldiers overseas, and making life easier for hard-working citizens who may not have time between work and family to go to a polling place but who care deeply about their communities.

What better use of technology? Who would see democracy stuck in the past, a relic of the age before secure encryption, before cash machines, indeed before telephones?

Who would continue our present system in which less than one third of soldiers overseas can successfully vote? Who would leave secure digital communication to the military, while subjecting our democracy to the insecurities of a cardboard box full of papers in someone's trunk?

The introduction of technology to any process is scary. But the time has come. We have been banking online and shopping online for over a decade, and conducting important business by phone for a century. Digital technology, while no panacea, is the best method ever invented for securely delivering information and decisions.

The people of Honolulu, capital of our newest state, have shown true American leadership in pioneering the all-digital online and telephone election. I am deeply grateful to be a part of this project. It had to happen, and it is happening. We will all look back at this event in Hawaii as the most obvious, most natural, least revolutionary, yet most necessary step for American democracy, this blossoming springtime of 2009.

Aaron Contorer is Chief of Products and Partnerships at Everyone Counts, Inc.

Comments

[jimadler]

The religious wars around voting technologies (paper vs electronic vs Internet) miss the point that without end-to-end audit there is no basis to judge any of them -- "Internet Voting Combatants Miss the Point (again)" http://jimadlerblog.com/2009/06/internet-voting-combatants-miss-point.html

Jim Adler

[HalFonts]

As a certified experienced Observer of our relatively good procedural vote-by-mail, paper-based system, I am appalled at the trust implied (and required) by Hawaii's cyber-based Internet voting system.

With our self-serving bumbling political systems, trusting industry cohorts to provide, audit and certify elections is indefensible. Paper may be "primitive," yet at every step of the surprisingly complex process, it's audit-able and traceable.

Cyber-based systems can not provide absolute privacy, independent audits and traceability. Election security requirements are NOT the same as required for financial systems.

It's a brave new world coming -- and we must view cyber-systems (and their marketing) with extreme skepticism.

[leftisbest]

People are so easily taken in by terms like "military-grade encryption", etc. There are three key elements that must be present in ANY election system: Transparency, Security/secure chain-of-custody, and immediate auditability. Full transparency means the public can view any and all parts of the electoral process including delivery of ballots, testing and results of any computers utilized in the process, viewing of transport of ballots and results cartridges from point A to point B to point Z, the counting and processing of the ballots and the results cartridges, and the ability to challenge any part of the process along the way. Security means voting machines are not allowed on "sleepovers" where they remain unsecured for days before the election and a whole variety of security aspects of the election too numerous to mention in a comment. Immediate auditability means the people have the right to conduct an immediate audit on any or all aspects of the election BEFORE the deadline for filing for a recount - before the election results are certified as final. Now how can any of those things take place when a vote is defined as bits and bytes going over easily hackable Internet lines? And going to a private corporation who promises to count them fair and square - out of the view of the public. It's like the Wizard of Oz, everyone brings their buckets of votes (bits and bytes) to him, he goes behind the curtain and emerges and announces the winner.

[Ergon]

Nice advertorial though

[Ergon]

No Paper trails?
Proprietary technology?
ESS and Diebold owned by Republican party menbers who promise to 'deliver Ohio to the GOP'?
Cool.

[blueskybigstar]

Read this article and write a letter to your congress people about it. Don't ever forget about it.

http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/24/rolling-stone-interviews-a-diebold-whistleblower/

http://www.hellerlegaldefensefund.com/oakland2.html

This was a terrible miscarriage of justice.

[blueskybigstar]

That is what Diebold told us in CA before they started stealing elections. I hope they have it secure.

[ncvoter]

So we can trust internet voting because it relies upon "military grade" security?

Aren't the escapades of such as Gary McKinnon enough to show the vulnerability of anything connected to the internet?

Using a mere *dial up* internet connection and commercially available software programs - Gary McKinnon hacked the US Govts windows based computers.
He hacked into 97 computer systems, belonging to the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Department of Defense and NASA. McKinnon also said he determined that he was not alone in hacking these systems.

One US prosecutor accused him of committing "the biggest military computer hack of all time".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4715612.stm

Internet elections mean that the election is vulnerable to a hacker from anywhere in the entire world. The entire election, not just some votes, not just a few, but ALL of the votes -subject to change at the whim or skills of a hacker or group of hackers or various hackers who want to change the outcome of the election - either for giggles, or for great riches.

Then there's always the threat of the inside attack, but of course if you buy into internet voting, you are a very trusting person and you would never believe that anyone would steal elections.

[karela]

If not Internet, then mail in for sure. Oregon has been doing it for years and has perfected the system. Everyone should be able to vote without pressure and without risking their job to do it. Everyone should be registered to vote and everyone should be able to vote as easily as they pay their heating bill. There is absolutely no reason to go through all these shenanigans with cheating, moving the polls, arguing about whose votes count and all the rest. If not Internet, then mail ins. Time to make voting fair and accessible for everyone.

[ncvoter]

Vote by mail has an added vulnerability - vote selling. So much easier to do since ballots are automatically mailed out to people who may not even care to vote. And in our current financial crises, more will be tempted to sell their votes.

Voting is best done in person in private, so that the ballot secrecy is protected from prying spouses or overbearing bosses.

Cheating happens just as much with vote by mail. Vote by mail has its own problems, including a lengthy chain of custody. In Florida, in one election tens of thousands of ballots were lost in the mail ( voters did not get the ballots) and it was a mess.

[TransparencyFirst]

Military-grade encryption. So important military systems never get hacked?

The Air Force's air traffic control system has been hacked. Chinese hackers have penetrated the Joint Strike Fighter program - the most expensive weapons system in U.S. history. Let us hope that those Chinese hackers weren't interested in the contested board seats in Hawaii:)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027491029837401.html

"Computer spies have broken into the Pentagon's $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project -- the Defense Department's costliest weapons program ever -- according to current and former government officials familiar with the attacks.

Similar incidents have also breached the Air Force's air-traffic-control system in recent months, these people say. In the case of the fighter-jet program, the intruders were able to copy and siphon off several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems, officials say, potentially making it easier to defend against the craft."

[TransparencyFirst]

Secret-ballot elections are a world apart from any kind of commerce done online.

Mr. Contorer writes, "We have been banking online and shopping online for over a decade, and conducting important business by phone for a century."

Indeed. I literally can't remember when I stopped getting paper bank statements. But I am comfortable without paper statements because I can - and have many times - logged in to my bank account and checked old transactions. By contrast, when a voter submits a secret ballot, the contents of the ballot cannot be connected to the voter. The voter mentioned in the post's fourth paragraph, who had the contents of her ballot read back to her, cannot confirm with her election officials that her ballot was recorded as she intended. It would be illegal for the election office to know how she voted. Sure, the election offiice could tell her THAT she voted, but the meat of the transaction - the votes - are not traceable to her. Who would do any kind of online commerce if there was no permanent physical record of a transaction, and the most important details of a transaction were not verifiable after the transaction was done?

With secret ballots, there simply has to be a permanent physical record of each vote, verified by the voter before she casts her ballot, that also cannot be traced to the voter, and is retained by election officials and can be used to verify the election result.

[loncowber]

So many are spooked by new technology. Why don't we throw the computers in a tub of water? If they sink they are o.k., but if they float they are a witch.

[TransparencyFirst]

Computer scientists are among those gravely concerned about the security of Internet voting. The signers of this statement are the opposite of Luddites:

http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=5867

A couple of choice quotes:

"There must be reliable, unforgeable, unchangeable voter-verified records of votes that are at least as effective for auditing as paper ballots, without compromising ballot secrecy. Achieving such auditability with a secret ballot transmitted over the internet but without paper is an unsolved problem."

"The internet has the potential to transform democracy in many ways, but permitting it to be used for public elections without assurance that the results are verifiably accurate is an extraordinary and unnecessary risk to democracy."

[Agentprovokatur]

How soon we forget the debacles of recent past elections.

We NEED an AUDIT TRAIL.

Period.

End of story.

End of line.

[NVG1981]

As shown with American Idol, if voting is made easy a lot of people cast votes. :) I would definitely vote more often if there was an easy system like this online election in Hawaii. I think a lot of people would...

[Brad Friedman - Huffpost Blogger]

Even if there was no way to know whether votes had been accurately counted or not, NVG?

[Brad Friedman - Huffpost Blogger]

Aaron Contorer, as part of his press release for his voting product, unconscionably posted by HuffPo, says in one of the comments below:

"The solution, though, is not to give up on all technology -- it's to use technology in a secure and transparent manner, so that election officials are free to test and verify the correct functioning of the system."

Wrong. Election officials do not own our elections. The people do. And where your technology does not allow the the *citizenry* to transparently verify the accuracy of their own elections, you are undermining democracy, and thus, the very basis of our republic.

I'm sorry to see that you interest in making money, Aaron, seems to out weigh the need to support the foundation on which our form of self-governance is meant to stand.

I'll be happy to offer my apology in advance, if you're able to demonstrate how I, as a citizen, may verify -- without having to rely on trust in computer scientists and/or election officials -- the accuracy of the election that your company has now taken ownership of.

Brad Friedman
The BRAD BLOG (www.Bradblog.com)
Huffington Post contributor

[alixg1]

In 2006, I monitored an election with a capable IT systems professional. He said, 'There will never be a computer program that is not hackable." This seemed so obvious and true. Computer votes will never be a safe way to go if we want to have a verifiable election.

[Agentprovokatur]

I agree - I mean this is no better than the "News Stories" I see all the time on local and national news discussing some entertainment event or new product. They are just corporate press releases that should be confined to their website or PRNewswire and not presented as "News".

Thanks for the head's up Mr. Contorer.

Be assured I'll be writing my Senators and Congresswoman - Speaker Pelosi - as well as State representatives, to make sure that they don't consider this system.

[pakaal]

And if the neighborhood boards here we're voting on had any real political power it'd be even cooler.

[TRYKER]

Thanks Aaron, it sounds like a good start.
If it works, the republicants aren't going to like it. How are they going to cage votes so easy? How are they going to High 5 Diebold when another repub doesn't "take" an election? You're taking all the joy out of stealing elections...they'll be whining forever.

[Brad Friedman - Huffpost Blogger]

No, they'll LOVE this one. When it's hacked, it'll be more difficult than ever to find out. I suspect Diebold cant' wait to buy up Mr. Contorer's company and slap their name on this nonsense.

[Agentprovokatur]

YOU are missing the point.

These systems are all hackable.

The point is there needs to be an Audit Trail.

These electronic systems do not provide a reliable one.

If you want to prevent the Republican lawlessness of past elections enforce the laws currently on the books and send them to jail.

Do not create a system that can be tinkered with by flicking a switch.