Guest Blogged by Ellen Theisen of VotersUnite.org
[Updated: The bill has been defeated! See bottom of article for details.]
Even though reports from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), and dozens of computer security experts who strongly and unanimously warn of insurmountable threats to the privacy and security of ballots cast over the Internet, the Washington State legislature is proposing — and fast-tracking — a bill to allow Internet voting for its military and overseas voters (S.B.5522 in the Senate, and its identical companion H.B.1624 in the House).
Even though the U.S. Department of Defense canceled its Internet voting project (SERVE) in 2004 citing security concerns, and even though the DoD has still been unable to establish the secure and private Internet voting demonstration project that Congress mandated in 2002, the Washington State legislature is seriously considering a bill that would authorize the Washington Secretary of State to create an Internet voting scheme and declare it secure and private — without any oversight or review by the legislature or the people…
Even though the U.S. Homeland Security Department spent $6.6 Billion in 2008 to protect the Federal network systems and in November 2008 failed to prevent an unprecedented and strategically timed attack on the Pentagon and military networks that house classified information, the Washington State legislature’s bill would task the Secretary of State with creating a secure and private system using only “alternate funding.”
Even though the Pew Center on the States found that Washington State was one of the leading states in providing the time and the means for its military and overseas voters to vote, as required by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), the Washington State legislature is proposing to use its UOCAVA voters as guinea pigs, claiming that we owe it to them.
VotersUnite believes we owe them opportunities to cast a secret ballot with the maximum assurance that their votes will be counted accurately and that their ballots won’t be hijacked in cyberspace.
VotersUnite does not believe in using military and overseas voters as guinea pigs in a voting scheme that has already been determined by experts to be an “essentially impossible” task given the current architecture of the Internet.
VotersUnite does not believe in legislation that authorizes a project from which only the private vendor implementing the project stands to benefit.
Unfortunately, Washington is not the only state proposing to risk the votes of military and overseas voters by offering them Internet voting. Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, and New Mexico are also considering such schemes.
Despite the well-documented warnings by computer scientists and security experts alike, voting over the Internet appears to be attracting the interest of legislatures and state election officials who see only the convenience of the Internet and are ill-informed about the severe risks to the ballots. If hackers from foreign countries can penetrate the Pentagon and military computer networks with strategically-timed attacks, what would prevent them (or home-grown hackers) from destroying or changing the votes of Americans casting ballots over the Internet — potentially impacting results of American elections?
State decision makers need to value the actual votes of the voters — and the ability for those voters to have confidence that their votes were accurately counted — more than the convenience offered by unreliable, unobservable systems. Experimentation in Washington and elsewhere in the country, using live voters during real elections, needs to stop. Our military deserve better, and so does every citizen in our democracy.
Related material:
- Ellen Theisen’s Testimony to the WA legislature
- John Gideon’s Testimony to the WA legislature
- Timeline of related events
- Quotes on Internet voting from Experts, submitted to the WA legislature
- How Pew Center on the States Compares WA to Other States
UPDATE 3/2/09: The bill has been defeated. One of the Washington state representatives said that the Appropriations Committee killed the House version when they found that the fiscal impact was significantly greater than the fiscal note reflected. The Senate version also died in the Senate.
Amazing! Those are some good reasons for not allowing internet voting, but one really important one is missing. Secret vote counting is unconstitutional! See Virginia’s Elections Are UNCONSTITUTIONAL?!?! Also, don’t miss the video of the fun that I have with the Virginia election officials. The link is in the first comment.
Of course, votes cast by internet are counted in secret as no one can see a computer count. Although secret vote counting has always been a favorite of tyrants who want to fool some of the citizenry about their power or actually their lack of power to influence the government and after all of the problems since Bush & Co. took power and rammed HAVA through, you would think that representatives who truly believed in preserving our democratic republic would make sure that our votes were counted accurately and in a constitutional manner.
Perhaps, they are in the dark about this like most of the public, but shouldn’t they consider the constitution when considering legislation?
As I recall (don’t have time to read it again for the moment), your article on “unconstitutional” e-voting, refers to the Virginia constitution. Not Washington state’s, or the U.S. Constitution for that matter.
So don’t know that unconstitutionality would apply here, at least in WA (and, at least, without having reviewed their constitution to find out if a similar clause as the one you point to in VA actually exists there.)
Not unconstitutional okay, but how about, “This is a really really bad idea.”
Why can’t a pair of General’s (effectively a mobile Secretary Of State), The Remote general prints (or distributes out) up paper ballots, the men fill them out and turn them in by a specified time, they are counted, by the men, and chain of custody maintained by the men. Finally the Remote General calls the Local General from overseas, and REPORT the results. The troops can compare the counted results to DOD published results. Transparency is maintained, while binary data can not be manipulated in transit.
Oh but go ahead Senators you can figure something out that will cost billions more and be exploited.
Not that my rant in this blog will make any bit of difference than a rant in a letter to you.
Brad – as a WA resident and exec board member of our local LD Democrats, you’d better believe I’m going to be bringing a resolution to the LD to oppose this measure, particularly as our own State Senator (a Democrat and nat guard vet) is sponsoring this. This and a union-busting education refinancing bill, it’s a busy week for me.
Soul Rebel,
Hurrah and thank you!
I hope Congress gets around to replacing The Help America Vote (Republican) Act of 2002. National standards are needed. Security, accuracy and verifiability of votes at a fair cost to taxpayers should be the ideal. Voting rights are civil rights. I thought we achieved these goals long ago when we had lever machines.
A federal ban on Internet voting is in order. The Internet is notoriously not secure. This bill in Washington violates the civil rights of soldiers, sailors and overseas voters. Because this is a civil rights issue, a federal ban trumps state law.
Soul Rebel
I too live in WA. I am a member of my Democratic LD. I have a resolution ready to go. I am hoping to get a few more LDs to vote on the resolution. My state senator is a sponsor of this horrible bill.
I don’t want to post my email here. I will forward an email to Brad, and if he feels so inclined,he can pass on my email to you.
I am all for making the elections more accessible through online voting – just NOT LIKE THIS! There’s a great essay on the changes we need to make in our election system in the new book from the Progressive Ideas Network – Thinking Big. It points out that we already have a government body responsible for overseeing our elections – The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) was established after the 2000 Florida debacle as part of the Help America Vote Act, to oversee and help fund improvements in election administration. But it has been underfunded and was by design not given any enforcement capability. According to Thinking Big – “The EAC needs the resources and the authority to set and
enforce national standards in a number of critical areas. Key issues include voting machines with public software and stringent audits, accurate voter lists, adequate poll worker preparation, identification requirements that do not discourage voters, and expanded voter registration opportunities.” – and the essay goes on to talk about how the last of these includes online voting – but we need NATIONAL ELECTION STANDARDS.