Democratic Primary E-Voting Said Dangerous

Monday, February 4, 2008 9:16 AM

By: Patrick Goodenough

Around the world, U.S. Democratic Party supporters will cast online ballots for their preferred presidential candidate in coming days, but the unprecedented "global primary" has drawn criticism.

Concerns raised by Internet voting include hacking, viruses and electronic ballot-stuffing, in the views of some experts.

In association with a San Diego-based company called Everyone Counts, the Democrats Abroad organization is encouraging expatriate Americans to vote by Internet between Feb. 5 -- "Super Tuesday," when 22 states hold their primaries -- and Feb. 12.

Participants in "the first global primary ever" also will be able to vote by fax, mail and in person at voting centers in 33 countries. The only prerequisite is age -- 18 years old by next Nov. 4 -- and that voters register first with Democrats Abroad.

Registration to vote online or by fax or mail has now closed, but would-be global primary voters can still turn up at a voting center, register on the spot, and vote, Democrats Abroad announced at the weekend. (Overseas voters may vote in either the global primary, or their own state's primary, but not in both.)

The Democratic Party has agreed to allow 22 Democrats Abroad delegates to the party's national convention in Denver next August. Expatriates taking part in the global primary therefore will wield more clout than U.S. overseas territories - Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands - although less than the smallest states.

As such, expatriates voting online are unlikely to play a decisive role in selecting the Democratic nominee.

Nonetheless, electronic voting experts David L. Dill and Barbara Simons of the nonprofit Verified Voting Foundation are uneasy about what they view as a "dangerous experiment."

Online voting raises concerns "about whether the system has been hacked by a teenager in Eastern Europe, organized crime, or even an unfriendly government," they argued in an article posted at the weekend.

Other potential problems include network failure, counterfeit Web sites and "denial of service" attacks. Moreover, they said, "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," said Dill and Simons. "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."

Everyone Counts, which moved to San Diego from Australia in 2006, cites previous Internet voting operations as successes, including voting for Australian military personnel deployed abroad during that country's federal election last November, and various local elections in Britain since 2003.

Another e-voting company, Barcelona-based Scytl, has facilitated online voting in countries including Britain, Switzerland and the Philippines.

Everyone Counts says its software and systems are open-source based tools, published and open to inspection by anyone.

"Unlike any other voting system, the voters themselves are easily able to determine if the integrity of the election has been breached in any way," the company says.

Democrats Abroad insists the online voting option is secure. The organization says it is a big improvement on the standard process of voting by mail, a system complicated by early deadlines, paperwork and sometimes unreliable mail services.

It also notes that the Michigan Democratic Party has used the system since 2004. According to Michigan Democratic Party chairman Mark Brewer, more than 46,000 voters, or 28 percent of the total, cast their ballots online in the state's 2004 presidential caucus.

'Tempting target'

Also in 2004, the U.S. Department of Defense scrapped plans for an experimental program to allow U.S. military and citizens living overseas to vote online. The decision to cancel was announced two weeks after a report by a panel of outside computer security experts warned that Internet voting was vulnerable to tampering.

"There really is no good way to build such a voting system without a radical change in overall architecture of the Internet and the PC, or some unforeseen security breakthrough," the experts said.

Last May, the Pentagon in a new report to Congress said a "complete Internet voting system" for overseas citizens and service personnel could be developed, tested and deployed within a period of 24 to 60 months.

In response, the same computer security experts repeated their earlier warnings about the risks, saying that most of the security problems with Internet voting are generic to any PC and Internet application, and "fundamentally have no effective solutions" using the current protocols and hardware and software platforms.

"We must consider the obvious fact that a U.S. general election offers one of the most tempting targets for cyber-attack ever, whether the attacker's motive is overtly political or simply self-aggrandizement," they added.

Dill and Simons conceded that voting is unnecessarily difficult for many Americans living abroad.

"That is unacceptable," they said. "But it is also unacceptable to force citizens to trust their votes to a system that has not been demonstrated to be trustworthy."

More sensible solutions could include making deadlines more flexible, having a uniform system for printing absentee ballots remotely rather than having to mail them out from the U.S., and using fast courier services to deliver completed ballot papers, they suggested.

'Good idea'

The online voting option for expatriates applies at this stage only to the primary. To vote in the presidential election in November, overseas voters will have to obtain a ballot from the authorities at their last place of residence in the U.S.

Only the Democrats are holding a global primary, although Republicans living abroad may vote in their home state's primary.

Ross Feingold, former Asia-Pacific chairman of Republicans Abroad (and now with the Mitt Romney campaign) explained Monday that unlike Democrats Abroad, Republicans Abroad is not legally connected to the party's national committee, does not receive funding, and is not considered as a "state" at the national convention.

"It is hard not to be jealous of what the Democrats are doing this year," Andy Jackson of Republicans Abroad Korea said Monday, calling the global primary initiative a "good organizing idea."

"Votes from Americans overseas have traditionally been a strong point for the Republican Party, but the Democrats appear to be out-organizing us this year," he said.

Still, Jackson said Republicans Abroad was active at a local level. He predicted that "the strength of our local country chapters will help us offset the Democrats' advantage at the international level."

More than six million expatriate Americans are eligible to vote in U.S. elections.

http://www.newsmax.com/politics/Democra ... 69894.html