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| » 08 June 2009 |
| The Safeness of Internet Voting |
In a bold move during the 2008 general elections, the State of Arizona decided to accept votes over the worldwide web. To anyone who has ever used the Internet for more than a year, it's quite clear why this could be a bad idea. However, this isn't exactly an unprecedented event. Several other countries had tried out online voting for their overseas citizens' sakes whenever election time rolled in, and even the U.S.'s Pentagon has planned to create its own Internet voting system way back in 2004 before discarding it due to the expected security problems. What makes the Arizona incident unique is that the state was the first one to ever provide an online voting option during a national election to all civilian and military families situated abroad through a single website. In fact, several election officials from the state confidently demonstrated the safeness and effectiveness of their system at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference held on Thursday last week. Arizona's Chief Information Officer Craig Stender emphasizes that their online voting system is safe, secure, meets industry standard encryption, and has been successfully implemented by users from over 50 countries worldwide. As per usual, many voting rights activists were alarmed and apprehensive over the new Internet voting trend. The growing acceptance of online voting is evident with the fact that several states are already contemplating legislation on an Arizona-like Internet-enabled voting system. Nevertheless, the only other state that also ran a poll of this nature—Hawaii, for its municipal elections—suffered from dismal participation from its constituents. E-voting expert and Internet scientist Barbara Simons acknowledges the enthusiasm that some states have in introducing Internet voting schemes for civilians and military personnel living overseas. She even cited the relatively unknown and vulnerability-prone Democrats Abroad system used for the 2008 primary as an example of the push, and then discloses that news outlets didn't cover that little development in voting technology because they're more concerned about state-level voting. Despite security and tampering fears, the Arizona voting system was approved partly because of how it works. Voters either have to request online for an official ballot delivered to them through conventional mail or have a PDF of it printed out, filled in, scanned back into the computer, and then uploaded through a secure SSL system. It's a bit more complex than the expected point and click voting interface, but this is the best way to assure that no suspicious ballots are used and no botnets are employed to compromise the system or the results. As Director of Elections Amy Bjelland surmised, the Arizona system isn't true Internet voting, so it won't suffer the shortcomings associated with online polls and the like. |
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