Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

VeriSign and Secure Internet Voting

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the oh-this-will-work-out-great dept.

Bucky Katt writes "VeriSign announced Monday that it will provide key components of a system designed to let Americans abroad cast absentee votes over the Internet."

2 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. Outsourcing Security and Voting by globalar · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is purely bad principle. This is outsourcing voting. Elections should be handled as much as possible by regular people. Companies should provide paper, pencils, and maybe some refreshments.

    Now I RTFA and I understand this is for military absentee ballots. But this will set precedence. Who will get the job next year? Don't you think the standards applied here will eventually be used for absentee ballots for State Department personnel? And then eventually the general public?

    If the government is not capable on its own of running a fully electronic election, then they should not be doing it. Period. Forget the cost of alternative systems or even the impossibility. If the DOD cannot handle this internally (they should, they handle billions of dollars of secrets) then I think it is a step to far to outsource it.

    "The sanctity of the vote can't be compromised nor can the integrity of the system be compromised"

    Doesn't that line make you feel worried. At least they could say,"we have the best security and experience." But no, "the integrity of the system [can't] be compromised."

  2. I'm voting by mail by Pedrito · · Score: 4, Informative

    I live abroad and frankly, I'm just not quite prepared to trust my vote to the internet. I'll be sending my vote by mail and would encourage other expats to do the same.

    I certainly don't trust Verisign. I think the first few elections using this technology should be limited to say, a few thousand votes so as not to have a significant impact on the results (of course, given what happened in Florida, a few thousand votes might have a significant impact). Maybe it would be even better to run the electronic voting at the same time, requiring mail-in ballots and compare the results and not count the electronic voting until it's proven itself. Mail-in ballots aren't anonymous votes, so it should be easy enough to compare.

    Even then, I don't know that that would work. I'd eventually like to see secure internet voting, but I'm just not sure the implementations are there yet.