Internet Voting

Internet Voting, more problems beyond the News Hour report

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. At Brad Blog, Earnest A Canning has an excellent piece pointing out some additional information not covered in the short News Hour segment.

“Military Grade Security” for elections is a non sequitur

Who should we believe? Vendors selling internet voting or computer scientists and government intelligence experts? We point out that the greatest danger to internet voting is insider manipulation, even easier for a single rogue election official or network insider. No need to steal paper ballots and fill them out. No risk of being caught in an audit or recount of voter verified paper ballots. UPDATE: Videos

Doug Chapin: New Pew Report Details Progress on Military, Overseas Voting

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.

Patriocracy: A lesson in information and misinformation

Duncan Buell points out that non-science nonsense slips into the movie Patriocracy. It is an ever present danger. Our minds are easily tricked.

Hacked newspaper recommends online voting

They also forget absentee voting fraud in Connecticut, while their print edition confuses tech-savvy with technical expertise.

The Courant hits some good points, yet ironically misses the mark on election accountability

Starting the year with a focus on accountability, the Courant Editorial Board overlooked integrity when it editorialized on elections. They also presented some ideas that we can and have supported

Americans Elect – A license to steal the presidency?

This is seriously dangerous. If you don’t join Americans Elect, their vote could determine the President. If you do join Americans Elect, the vote could be manipulated in the backroom or by hackers. Or the self-appointed board could override the actual vote.

If banks loose billions online, why would we leave democracy to online voting?

Even if ecommerce transactions were safe, the security technology underpinning them would not suffice for voting. In particular, the voting security and privacy requirements are unique and in tension in a way that has no analog in the ecommerce world.

Beware: Americans Elect – We were just too optimistic

We were just too optimistic, yet prophetic when we suggested the founders might not be happy with anything but their type of candidate.

Senator not impressed by Science and Online Voting Symposium

[Senator] Kane was unable to attend the Oct. 27 panel discussion, but dismissed the warnings from computer scientists. We hope he at least took the time to review the videos of the symposium online.