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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.
Can't they just use an email -> fax gateway of some sort?
And, if they plan to use email, this seems like the perfect chance to try out digital signatures. The military could organize it.
I know cryptology is complex but christ, there are a few tenants that even I have picked up reading his most excellent newsletters. Am I the only one who reads these? I can see it now: the US government winds up in Schneider's 'dog house' along with the rest of the shady dealers.
And me having to vote from Vienna
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
with technologies such as GPG being used in email to authenticate messages, it's not too far-fetched to think there could be some stations set up to send absentee votes securely, probably more securely than a Fax message ever could be.
You actually bring up a good point. Soldiers used to vote republican. It's just how it was. This year, it's changed alot. There is alot of debate amongst soldiers on who they'll vote for, and we seem to be split as much as the polls on who is going to be voting for who. This is a big push to get us to vote. (You can look at my e-mail address to see why I said we). Soldiers could really play a big part in this election in alot of the swing states. I think that soldiers certainly deserve to be given every possible means of easy and secure voting possible. The president is the commander in chief and that effects soldiers more than any body else. Voting is difficult in the military, but it's something that we've earned. The system does have to be secure and safe though. I pray for the day when E-Voting is a possiblity. Well, as an agnostic I don't really pray.... but you get what I mean.
Are you for real?
Do you think fax lines are secure? Any enemey stophisticated enough to break into military computer systems probably isn't going to bother taking revenge on individual soldure's families.
And for a lot of these guys, the choice is between this and not voting at all given the unavailability of faxes and regular mail.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
This is a great idea!!! Now where can I dig up a list of overseas soldiers??? Ahhh yes...I knew there was a reason why I bookmarked this story...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Why are you using a established standerd, that tends to be insecure. why can you just write software for voting and distribute it via cd-rom or the web. or install it on computers designated as "voting machines" over a secure connection of course
Okay, emailing a vote is not exactly secure, but how secure is faxing a vote?
Oh sure, they can "see" a signature but how many people in the voting office are going to check the signature against the one on file? (IE, how many dead people vote in elections?)
Until someone created this rule...
'Apply this rule after the message arrives
with republican or bush in the subject
permanently delete it'
I think we should just let them try to count chads again. There is already enough room for counting errors (regardless of which candidate you support you should aggree) with the limited methods of voting. No need to introduce more error. Let's get the ones we have now working before we pile on more.
Unfortunately (or fortuantely, depending on your point of view), the federal government doesn't run the vote. The states do. So, for the Armed Forces to run a voting system themselves, they'd have to abide by 50 different sets of laws about how the vote should be run...basically making setting it up impossible.
Honestly, the simplest system (absentee balloting) seems to be the best in this case, and has worked fine for years. Why we're trying to replace something that isn't broken is beyond me.
More than digital signatures are needed. There has to be feedback to the soldier that his vote was cast and counted at the central polling place. There is a technology that can do this from the company "vote here" which allows the voter to call in later and check that their vote was recieved unchanged without actually telling them the vote (basically it tells them an encrypted checksum that cant be reversed to reveal the vote even by brute force). This does not prevent the client computer casting the ballot from making a mistake or being corrupted malicously or otherwise. But it does solve the transmisson and feedback problem. I oppose this tehcnology for general public use (favoring paper trails due to their ability ot be recounted) but for soldiers overseas prompt ballot collection may take priority over recountability since the risk is greater that your ballot wont be counted at all than it will be miscounted.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Outlook. All military computers have it, just use the voting feature built in. Spam a message out to the troops, and watch the votes roll back in.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."-THG
Why not for all U.S. expatriates, if you're going to do something like this at all?
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Use the existing method of trust and communication. You don't need to send people out, the soldiers should be able to do this themselves. Assign an on-site soldier-representative for each party (chosen by the party.. I mean there MUST be a mildy trustworthy party-faithful for either party in every camp.) The most senior person runs the election, the witnesses ensure that neither party is unfairly tallied and anonymity is preserved.
The normal procedures for secure communciation are used for the officer and trusted party representative soldiers to communicate the totals. The totals are then communciated back to the camp so that they'll know they were counted fairly. After the feedback and no riots, the ballots can be destroyed.
You've given these guys guns and dropped them on foreign soil, they should be at least minimally trustworthy.
* Loss of anonymity. This is an important characteristic that prevents vote-buying or reprisals against people who vote "incorrectly" (since there's no way for a political party to find out who voted which way). If you're sending via an email system, and the system is secure, it's a pretty damn good bet that you're exposing your identity (via signed, encrypted email or whatnot).
* Loss of the local privacy guarantee. Voting booths are secured. Who might be looking over your shoulder when you vote?
Again, I see these as privacy issues. They should be corrected before and long term solution is approved. I also believe that our troops should not be denied the right to vote if they (like myself) were not really concern over who saw the ballot. I'm not selling my vote and I don't fear retibution. Soldiers who share these feels could be denied the right to vote inspite of it.
* Loss of the non-coercion guarantee. If I can just fire off an email, someone can have a *gun* to my head forcing me to vote a particular way.
And someone could have had a gun to my head when I was filling out my absentee ballot in '96. So based on this reasoning, we really can't do any absentee ballots. All citizens in remote locatations are automatically disenfranchized.
* Loss of a controlled voting environment. How many Outlook worms does it take to convince people that email clients and desktop systems just aren't all that locked down?
You've got me there. I do hope the troops in the field are able to avoid use of Outlook though.
* Loss of voter verifiability. With a paper ballot, I can verify that the card contains the hole that I punched in it. Short of physically substituting cards (something that's a hard to do and much easier to guard against), someone can't attack your vote data. With e-voting, there are a huge number of places to allow a different vote to be submitted than what you wanted -- in the client OS, in the client email system, in the vote-counting system, etc, etc, etc. There are a *lot* of programmers that can be bought off or act in a partisian manner -- and any one can compromise the entire system.
Florida says your wrong. I'll forgo the debate about whether people do verify the hole or care enough to read the directions about how to use ballots. I can verify the card at least has the hole I intended, but that doesn't stop someone from later invalidating my vote by creating more holes. That wouldn't create a vote, it would simply takes my vote away.
I do think that the men and women dying for our country should have the right to vote. But they also deserve the same guarantees on their voting process that they and the rest of us have enjoyed for a long, long time.
When we can provide all the guarantees, we should provide them. If we can, unlike some, I lean towards letting them decide if they are concerned with the guarantees that cannot be provided, rather than just saying "Sorry, no vote for you. Back to the front with you."
If we can't pull them off the front lines long enough to vote...what is it, exactly, that they're fighting for?
Well, I'll assume your earily comments don't imply the we need to being each soldier back home to cast a ballot. "Stop the world! I want to vote!" You know something. The battle field doesn't really work on a schedule that corresponds to the election or much of anything else. So if the war heats up near November, the troops might be to busy to set up voting stations. The mail system probably won't be moving too well then either (Come rain nor snow now pounding mortar...) so the usual absentee ballot might not be all that reasonable either. But nowadays, they might have a secure satilite uplink.