Internet Voting: What’s Safe, What’s Not?

With the advent of the Internet, the U.S. and several other countries began looking at the possibility of online voting, according to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). During the 2000s, the U.S. Congress began considering legislation to facilitate online voting by U.S. citizens living overseas, particularly military personnel. Toward that end, Congress passed the (1) National Defense Authorization Act of 2005 directing the EAC to create electronic absentee voting guidelines and (2) National Defense Authorization Act of 2009 requiring the agency to submit a report with a timeline for the establishing these guidelines.

As part of these requirements, the EAC researched Internet voting projects at home and abroad, looking at 31 projects in 13 countries. On September 14, the agency released a technical paper, focusing on three questions:

1. Given that no system can be 100% secure, what level of risk can be accepted for such a fundamental democratic process as voting?

2. How can a sponsor considering Internet voting measure the level of risk associated with various methods and technologies?

3. How can a sponsor create and implement standards for this technology and reliably test to those standards?

The paper does not make recommendations (instead it includes observations), but it may nonetheless be of particular interest in Connecticut because PA 11-173 (§59) requires the secretary of the state to recommend an online voting method for military personnel stationed out of state. The secretary must (1) look at what other states have done to reduce potential fraud and (2) determine whether any such system may be appropriate for Connecticut. By January 1, 2012, the act requires the secretary to report to the Government Administration and Elections Committee on her progress in recommending the online system.