The Democratic Party's Dangerous Experiment

Barbara Simons co-wrote this article.

As most of us now understand, paperless electronic voting is a really bad idea. But there is a still worse idea: voting over the Internet.

Voters may worry about whether voting machines were hacked by programmers or poll-workers who have machines stored in their homes prior to an election. But with internet voting, we must also worry about whether the system has been hacked by a teenager in Eastern Europe, organized crime, or even an unfriendly government. We must worry about network failure, "denial of service" attacks that shut down selected machines on the internet, counterfeit Internet websites, and spyware and/or viruses on the computers used to cast votes. And we must worry about whether the people running the system are engaging in electronic ballot-stuffing.

Like whack-a-mole, internet voting proposals have reappeared in different guises in the U.S. for much of the past decade. When an extremely ambitious Department of Defense proposal for internet voting in the 2004 presidential election was reviewed by computer security experts, it was terminated because of security concerns documented by those experts -- the same concerns that should cause all citizens to view any proposal for internet voting with extreme skepticism.

Nonetheless, on Super Tuesday the Democratic Party is going to deploy internet voting. Democrats living outside the country will be treated as a 51st state, called Democrats Abroad, and will elect delegates to the convention. This approach adroitly side-steps almost all regulation on election technology, which typically are matters of state, not federal, law. Internet voting won't even be subjected to the notoriously inadequate certification process that applies to almost every other voting system in the U.S. The organizers apparently maintain their confidence in the security of internet voting by not consulting anyone who might, as happened in 2004, warn them of risks. (We know most, if not all, of the independent experts in internet voting in the U.S., and none of them has been asked to examine this system).

Security may not be the only issue with this system. On their web page, Everyone Counts cites the recent "successful" election in Swindon, U.K, even though the U.K. Electoral Commission reports that "Electronic polling stations in Swindon proved more problematic, with many experiencing connectivity and application issues on polling day." For this and other reasons, the Electoral Commission recommended a moratorium on further e-voting trials in the U.K. until security and other concerns are resolved.

So, why should expatriate Democrats trust Everyone Counts with their votes? We don't know. What we've been able to discover in a few Internet searches is that the company was spun off from an Australian company in 2003, and (as of two years ago) the majority shareholder is an Australian. In 2006, they received an "injection of US private equity" from an undisclosed source. We can't tell you which candidate, if any, the source of the private equity supports.

There are only a few delegates allocated to Democrats Abroad. So it is unlikely, but not impossible, that the delegate selection resulting from the internet voting process will be decisive in choosing the Democratic nominee for president. Whatever the outcome, it will be impossible for a candidate to obtain a recount, because there will be no meaningful ballots to recount.

Even if internet voting does not impact the presidential nomination, there is a big risk. Though no one will know if the votes were correctly recorded and counted, the "success" of this experiment will be cited as a reason to expand the use of internet voting.

We understand that voting is unnecessarily difficult for many expatriate Americans. That is unacceptable. But it is also unacceptable to force citizens to trust their votes to a system that has not been demonstrated to be trustworthy. We need to consider more sensible and secure ways to assist Americans living abroad. For example, we might develop a uniform system for printing absentee ballots remotely, so that it is not necessary to mail ballots to voters weeks in advance. We might consider making deadlines for receiving voted ballots a bit more flexible. Perhaps ballots could even be delivered by FedEx or DHL.

This radically new and untested voting scheme was announced only a short time ago. Press coverage has been minimal and uncritical. Unfortunately, because voters planning to vote over the internet no longer have time to obtain absentee ballots before the primary, it is too late to kill this dangerous proposal. We urge American expatriates to vote, however they can -- even if it involves using this system -- and then to tell their representatives that paper ballots must be required in the future for all voters, including those outside the country. Americans living abroad should not be treated as second-class citizens.

Comments

[ThomasDoubting]

So called early voting concerns me. On election day, the ballots are never out of sight of election judges, from at least two political parties, however, if I cast a vote a month in advance, how do I know that my ballot is counted ?

[milo9]

The Dems need to be taken to the woodshed on these democracy killing ideas. WTF is going on?

[illinoisan]

The one use we still have for the U.S. Postal Service is as a mechanism for fair, accountable voting, a uniform, national standard with a verifiable paper trail.

[noirengineer]

You wrote: "As most of us now understand, paperless electronic voting is a really bad idea. But there is a still worse idea: voting over the Internet."
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Why is voting over the internet any worse than the system we currently have in place? I mean, seriously. If most Americans, (or at least good portion of them) feel that their votes might go uncounted in either fashion.. Whether we pull that lever, go to the town halls directly, absentee, or whether it's a drive through ATM, or direct from a certified IP address, we're still at the point, where we are left merciless to a set of a few billion 0's and 1's. Maybe, add an extra 0 here, and add a 1 here, and maybe we see a situation like... FLA 2000, OHIO 2004, N.H. 2008?

I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I'd say, that we already have lost our neutrality, since we entrust corporations like diebold to control our outcomes anyway. I can't see how having a few extra uncounted internet votes is gonna make the situation any better or worse than it is now.

[research]

No paper trail, no vote.

[DemandTruth]

NO NO NO! If there is ONE place in our world that does NOT need to be modernized, it is our voting. Even pulling a lever is going too far (think butterfly ballot in 2000 and hanging chads). Marking an X on a piece of paper or coloring in a bubble on a piece of paper that is then counted by a HUMAN BEING - several human beings from BOTH parties, with serious oversight and number-checking recounts is the only way to go. No hanging chads. No hackable vote counts. No Diebold servers in the same room with the RNC servers!

Cheap old paper and a pen or pencil is all you need, with accountable human beings counting the vote.

[BobMunck]

What does it matter how the Democratic Party selects its candidates? It's an internal party concern, not a matter of national integrity. For all the good the current primary system does, they might as well be selecting candidates in smoke-filled rooms or by inspecting chicken entrails. Same for the Republicans. A little voting fraud might do them a world of good.

As for actual elections, we have the technology to do completely safe and trustworthy internet voting. Public key encryption, open source software and hardware, third-party backup, etc. etc. See Patent 4,723,284. The trouble is that the government is completely unable to do any such technology right.

[mommadona]

Do you use an ATM or credit card overseas?

Sounds like a good example.

Do you trust those transactions?

Just a thought.

[Semaj51]

Great post. Too many times all we see is the glittering stars and promises of future technologies and forget the time-tested methods we are using today.

[amberglow]

For the life of me, i don't know why we don't have one uniform national standard for voting-- with a paper trail--even nationwide paper ballots would do it.

It's appalling.

Voting online is no good--it excludes all who aren't online. I like early voting by mail tho--i wish we had it here in NY.