Defense Dept. Cancels Internet Voting Project

NY Times ^ | 1/5/04 | JOHN SCHWARTZ

[ZGuy]

Citing security concerns, the Department of Defense canceled a $22 million project today that would have allowed Americans overseas to vote over the Internet.

The system, the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, or Serve, was developed with financing from the Defense Department.

The decision was announced in a memo from Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to David Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.

Paraphrasing the memo, a department of defense spokeswoman said "the department has decided not to use Serve in the November 2004 elections. We made this decision in view of the inability to ensure legitimacy of votes, thereby bringing into doubt the integrity of the election results," the spokeswoman said. The memo also states that efforts will continue to find other ways to cast ballots electronically for Americans overseas, but "the integrity of the election results have to be assured," the spokeswoman said.

The decision to cancel the project, which was developed by Accenture, the consulting and technology services company, was announced two weeks after members of a panel of scientists who were asked by the government to assess the project's security recommended that it be canceled because any system based on off-the-shelf personal computers and run over today's Internet was inherently insecure.

Aviel D. Rubin, an author of that report, said today that the Serve project was a noble idea that could not be carried out in a secure way using today's technology. "While we appreciate their efforts to allow this segment of the population to have more accessible voting, we applaud their decision to cancel this project because of the security concerns, he said.