Posted on 02/06/2004 12:15:19 PM PST by Calpernia
The Defense Department is deep-sixing an Internet voting program over concerns about security, a Pentagon spokeswoman said today.
The Federal Voting Assistance Program, which aids Americans serving overseas in the voting process, will not use the SERVE system in November. The acronym stands for Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment.
"The department has decided not to use the SERVE program in the November elections because of our inability to ensure the legitimacy of the votes," the spokeswoman said. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz signed the memo on SERVE Jan. 30.
The cancellation follows a report by four of the 10 computer security experts asked to test the system. Those four concluded the system did not ensure the legitimacy of votes. The report they issued said there were a number of ways that computer hackers could crack into the system.
Wolfowitz said he will reconsider his decision only if researchers can prove integrity can be maintained, the spokeswoman said.
The program is not new. In the 2000 election, counties in South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Florida participated in a proof-of-concept demonstration. A total of 84 voters in 21 states and 11 countries voted in those jurisdictions. DoD had hoped to expand the program to include about 100,000 voters.
The program was open to U.S. citizens who fall under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.
Congress mandated the program in the fiscal 2002 National Defense Authorization Act. DoD will seek legislative relief from the project if it's needed.
The decision does not end Internet voting research, the Pentagon spokeswoman said. Research will continue. Under the project, eligible voters would have been able to register and vote electronically via any Windows-based personal computer with Internet access from anywhere in world. Seven states had signed up for the project: Arkansas Florida, Hawaii, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Washington
Overseas voters can still vote by regular paper ballots, or via fax. The Federal Voting Assistance Program has more information on its Web site, and service members also can contact their unit voting assistance officers.
Private Mail to be added to or removed from the GNFI (or Pro-Coalition) ping list.
Actually, while 4 of 10 overall opposed the SERVE program, they were the only 4 that experienced the whole, in-depth technical presentation. It also is telling that the other 6 did not contradict the report; some of them did not comment either way, two said they agreed, and one expressed some points of disagreement with the report. This isn't a political issue, but a technical and scientific one.
There are several things you have to do with online voting that are really hard to do when you open it to the public Internet. One is to know who your voters are, and that they are eligible -- this is actually the easy part. It's not too dissimilar to what e-commerce does now.
People expect voting to be like buying or banking on line, but it isn't; we tolerate e-commerce being a lot less reliable and secure than we expect voting to be. e-commerce developers resign themselves to a degree of pilferage and other problems. If your credit card number gets hacked and somebody else orders stuff, the credit card company can make you good financially. What if your vote gets ripped off? No mulligans on voting.
Then, if we have some way of telling that the voter is really Suzy Jones of Pleasant Street in Pleasantville, how do we know that her vote is uncoerced? Maybe she is under the compulsion of her new husband Abdul Al-Qaeda, who is ordering her to vote the straight Dem ticket. In a polling station there is a definite certainty to this: Suzy goes into the booth alone and she can vote away from Abdul's beady eyes.
We've seen what Democratic operatives have done with nursing homes in 2000, where hundreds of drooling, incontent seniles who don't even know their own names voted for Mr Gore. Do we want that simplified so that the Dem-op can just bring his laptop to Geezers Rest?
Do what I did and read the whole report. http://www.servesecurityreport.org/ it's a bit of an eye-opener. The SERVE USA home page is the official site (which doesn't know it's dead yet).
For technical issues, the mainstream press is pathetic. I find The Register [UK] and Slashdot provide good information. Each has its own culture and pet peeves, but both give stuff like SERVE more scrutiny than the Pentagon did.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
No. Military members won't be denied the right to vote, they'll just have to use one of the more traditional methods to do it. If you DO find that the military has taken away the right of servicemen to vote you had might as well pack your bags and join Johnny Depp at his French retreat, because our experiment in republican self-government will be over.
Ain't gonna happen.
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