Is E-Voting A Pipe Dream?

Security Nightmares Although the FVAP program was torpedoed by a “minority report,” there’s plenty of overall skepticism about the potential for a secure Internet voting system. For any kind of remote voting system, making sure that only legitimate voters can cast ballots is a challenge. Without an advanced digital identifier like Estonia’s smart card ID, a pre-registration step similar to the typical application for an absentee paper ballot is required. In the U.K. trials, fraud fears led to the use of a double mailing to voter’s homes, in which two codes required to vote online were sent separately through the mail: according to Quigley, this caused confusion and probably lost votes. Sean Eby, chief financial officer of Poll Everywhere, which markets a product designed to collect opinions from an audience via text messaging, said, “I think [remote voting would be] only marginally easier than the way we do it now,” noting that two non-electronic steps would be reduced to one, the pre-registration. Once voters are authenticated, there are even bigger problems conducting Internet voting with a PC: namely, the PC and the Internet. “Once you’re using your generic laptop, running a buggy, virus-infested operating system, to cast a vote, it’s not a stretch to imagine virus authors would start tampering with your Web browser,” said Dan Wallach, PhD, associate professor for the department of computer science at Rice University and associate director of Accurate, a voting technology research center funded by the National Science Foundation. “Once you type in the URL of the voting authority, the Web browser could show you one thing while doing something completely different,” Dr. Wallach said. Without a trusted platform, the best-written voting software could be subverted. The Internet itself is also an issue. “One of the first things people say when defending e-voting is that the voting machines are not connected to the Internet,” said David Dill, PhD, computer science professor at Stanford University. Dr. Dill founded VerifiedVoting.org in response to the controversies around paperless electronic voting (e-voting) machines. “With Internet voting, you’re exposing yourself to [hackers], along with all the Internet scams, like phishing.” Another potential problem is the denial-of-service attack, which is routinely used to shut down Web sites by flooding them with bogus traffic from botnets; such an attack could block people from voting (an SMS voting system would be similarly vulnerable). “I’m not saying I oppose Internet voting, but if someone has a magically great Internet voting scheme that solves these problems, they should show us how it works,” Dr. Dill said. UR Vote By TXT What could be more patriotic, more participatory, than American Idol? Last year’s season finale pulled in 97.5 million votes by phone and text message. The show, an imitator of British TV’s Pop Idol, has spawned a host of its own global imitators, and the evident appeal of voting by text has inspired vote-by-SMS trials in the U.K., South Korea, and Sweden. “The 2001 general election was the lowest turnout ever in a U.K. election; it was 59 percent, a landmark low,” Delib’s Quigley said. Quigley oversaw the U.K.’s e-voting trials (which included both Internet and SMS voting) in 2002 and 2003. “SMS was seen as a way to make voting relevant to young people’s lives,” he said. “The thought was also that people from lower economic backgrounds wouldn’t use the Internet as much, but have mobile phones. It could bridge the digital divide.” Text messaging has proven potential as a political tool. Using a service called TXTmob (www.txtmob.com), protesters organized decentralized demonstrations against the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. The Student Public Interest Research Group found that text message reminders increased the likelihood of a recipient voting by 4.2 percent, at a cost far below other mobilization tactics. But when it comes to actual voting, the technology hasn’t taken off. “SMS [voting] was not successful in the U.K.,” said Alexandros Xenakis, PhD, a former doctoral researcher for the International Teledemocracy Centre who followed the pilots. Quigley explained that a combination of a complicated registration procedure and political fallout from a scandal around postal ballot fraud contributed to the program’s demise. Trials in other countries appear to have largely petered out. “Nobody’s talking about this on a serious level [in the U.S.],” said Poll Everywhere’s Eby. “We’ve thought about it, because being involved in political voting would be great for our business, but getting over the [security] problems would be challenging,” he said. The practical limitations of text messaging also demand consideration. “From a technological standpoint, SMS voting would be challenging due to the length of many U.S. ballots,” said Princeton’s Strauss, noting that the character limits of most text messages would impose a complicated multimessage system. The Future is… Paper For now, voting electronically from the comfort of wherever we happen to be remains an elusive dream. “I think it’s unlikely that we’ll see Internet voting for everyone anytime soon,” said Thad Hall, PhD, coauthor of Point, Click, and Vote: The Future of Internet Voting. He said Internet voting could creep into the U.S. via special programs for overseas voters, but even partial availability for average citizens is a ways off. “I could imagine that by 2020, it will be done in some places, but not nationwide,” Dr. Hall said. Beyond the technical hurdles, there’s the fragmented nature of election management in the U.S. “We have such a decentralized system,” said Katrin Verclas, cofounder of MobileActive.org, an international community that uses mobile technology for social impact. “There are 351 towns and cities in Massachusetts, and everyone has someone who can decide what [voting technology] to implement,” she said. The FVAP program was designed to assist states, but the federal government doesn’t have overarching authority to determine voting mechanics. A unified Internet voting system is hard to imagine in this environment. Verclas also questioned the real demand for more accessible voting technologies. “I believe that in this country, there isn’t a whole lot of interest in opening up the election process,” she said. “The fact that we’re not seeing voting being made easier without additional technology, like same-day voter registration, which is proven to increase voter participation and turnout, makes me think we have political issues here.” Whether we stick with paper ballots (which are far from perfect) or use hybrid electronic-paper machines, it seems that for the future, getting out the vote won’t be a simple matter of point and click.