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Absentee Ballots by Email?
tordia writes "Bruce Schneier has come out against a plan proposed by the Missouri Secretary of State, Matt Blunt. Blunt's proposal would allow "soldiers at remote duty stations or in combat areas cast their ballots with the help of e-mail." The plan arose when Jim Avery, a Missouri State Representative and National Guard soldier currently on active duty in Iraq, told Blunt that the fax machines required by the current Missouri absentee ballot law are rare, but most soldiers have access to computers.
A spokesman for the Secretary of State's office downplays the privacy and security considerations by saying, "If the soldier is uncomfortable with this process, he or she should not consider this option".
I agree with Bruce when he says "This is troubling"." Like many things, this is a wonderful idea in theory; it's just that darn implementation that things get...messy.
It's not as bad as it might sound. The only "internet-type" involvement in the process is actually data being moved over MILNET. Very little of MILNET is publicly accessible. When the ballots get to the DoD, they are faxed to the appropriate election officials in Jefferson City, MO.
Not ideal, but it's not as insecure as I would have imagined.
"There is no night so forlorn, no mood so bleak, that it cannot be infused with pleasure by tender meat..." - R.W. Apple
Voting by email could work, but probably not with the scheme being proposed.
Every military member has a CAC card which serves as a military ID but it is also a smartcard. Every person in the DoD is issued a digital certificate by the DoD when the card is issued. It should just be an academic exercise to create a voting station where the user inserts his CAC, votes and receives a confirmation that is encrypted with the user's public key and signed with the appropriate private key as an audit trail. I think this scheme fulfills the requirements for a "trusted" voting system. Voters are securely authenticated, votes are audited and cryptographically secured. Of course, the flaw usually lies in the implementation...
Not only that, but there are a few other details that make this a little different.
.mil domains. The military owns the entire domain. Implement a verification procedure, such as a reply-to-sender that "I received your vote. Please reply to this email to let me know that you actually sent it."
.mil enclave, but I'm on base right now and can't check.) Every member of the military should have three certificates that are issued by one of the military's private PKI servers. The three certs are intended for identification (such as logging into computers and web sites), email signing and email encryption.
.mil domain, and that is signed and encrypted by two different PKI certs issued by private and extremely well protected PKI servers isn't the gaping security hole that "Just send your vote by email" makes it sound like.
First, all of the email will be coming from
Second, the military ID card (the CAC, or Common Access Card) is a Smartcard. (Hopefully, the link works. I'm not positive that it's accesible from a machine outside the
This doesn't make the scheme foolproof or provide airtight security. But an email that is verfied as coming from a
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Soldiers in combat are rarely cut off from the rest of America's physical presence for very long. Ammunition, food, and other materiel are supplied by American supply lines, even far forward at the front. Those lines also deliver mail, as part of the US Postal Service extended to military requirements. These ballots can be sent securely through those supply lines, as they always have been. Most soldiers can send their ballots in advance of deployment to the front, which is almost always planned long before. Their disadvantage in access to "late breaking news", after their vote but before Election Day, is consistent with the other liberties soldiers voluntarily suspend when accepting military command. Corruption of their right to secrecy, and corruption, through selective demographic ballot under/service, of the people's right to equal access to all voters, is not consistent with military service defending the Constitution.
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make install -not war
Forget Diebold, everyone seems to be forgetting the Letter to the Editor scandal, where the same letter was passed around for troops to sign and then passed off as a letter to the editor in the troops home town. Some of the soldiers whos letters were publish claim they never even signed the things in the first place.
Who's to say that the emails coming from soldiers would even be from the soldiers at all?
C'mon people... standardized paper ballot, a pencil X and a little bit of saliva on the envelope, and a walk to the outgoing mail bag. It shouldn't be that hard!
I'm an economist by degree, and I'm in no more position to judge than anybody else.
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