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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.
"If the soldier is uncomfortable with this process, he or she should not consider this option"
:(
.mil or gc.forces.ca email addys to people handing out Gmail invites, to prevent personal info being circulated that could lead down a dangerous path if the enemy decided to look them up. This has been largely difficult to reign in, but for the most part it's a fairly anonymous exchange. No worse than name, rank, serial number. And that's the idea. But if you have to fill out an absentee ballot in this email scheme, it would require much more personal info or it could be easily abused.
That's the worst excuse for bad security I have ever heard, and I think that if it was applied on all other systems, it would be a huge disaster. Look at the ATM for example. What if instead of a bank card, we shifted to an email scheme for withdrawing and depositing money? Email cheques are fairly secure but they have a password scheme and they don't rely soely on email. There's also no private information being transferred with an email cheque, just a link that requires a password over a secure connection. But what if we just made up email money and passed it around? Huge security flaw there. Take it one step further, why not add salt to the wound, by suggesting that if you don't like the insecure system, don't use it! Duh.
If soldiers send their private info over email, this also produces a security risk if the enemy gathers intel on soldiers to use against their families. Bad bad bad idea.
I'm one of the admins of Gmailforthetroops.com and we've had to let everyone know that we only want soldiers to privately provide their
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
This will help cement Bush/Cheney in for '04!
Oh crap, did I just say that out loud?
I'm sure many people will say this, but how secure can this be? Using email to vote? Heh, what if the enemy intercepts the emails and finds out that the soldiers want a new leader, how would this make them look?
Boxing Equipment Reviews
I run a few mailservers :). Every day the spammers and viruswriters come up with a new way to defeat whatever anti-spam and anti-virus measures I implement. It's a case of running as fast as we can to stay in the same place!
So maybe the spammers will decide who gets to be president this time, instead of the Supreme Court.
I'm going to call this election early:
John Kerry: 80,000 out of 150,000 votes
George Bush: 160,000 out of 150,000 votes
Seriously, after all the controversy over the heavily developed Diebold e-voting system, who comes out and says, "let's do it by email!".
If this refers to the SMTP/IMAP/POP3 email system then one wonders why such an insecure system would be considered.
With today's encryption technologies, it shouldn't be that big of a deal to do it securely, but suggesting to do this over standard email after all of the Diebold e-voting fear is rather bold.
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.
give soldiers ability to send regular postal mail?
a week before Nov 2, simply gather up everyone's ballots (sealed in envelopes), then mail them back home. IIRC, this is what was done in 2000, and many other elections pre-fax machines.
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.
Why is it that politicians seem to do everything in their power to undermine public
confidence in the election process? What's wrong with having miltary poll stations
in Iraq and then simply flying the ballot boxes back? Sure, it's more expensive
that e-mail but if the US government can spend billions to put a democracy in the middle east
surely a few million dollars could be set aside to insure integrity of the US vote.
Simon
Oh, I see. If you're worried about security, don't use the system. Right. So, what's to prevent someone from using this system for me in my name? Who decides which ballot is valid in the case of multiple submissions? I certainly hope someone rethinks this idea before it gets implemented. There is simply WAAAAAY too much potential for abuse.
-- Gargonia
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.
Bush: 1,356
Kerry: 1,498
Nader: 1
L337 D00d Linus Torvalds: 82,239,123
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.
If I understand it correctly its not just a plain email. It is a scanned signed PDF file that will be electronically transfered after being approved. Those can be forged but if they keep count on both ends of the number of approved votes then there really shouldn't be a problem. If there is a number difference.. however.. then would they have to throw all the email votes out?
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
There already is a mechanism in place for soldiers and the like stationed overseas to vote. It's essentially an absentee ballot (not sure if it's the correct name).
These ballots have already been sent on their way to the folks in the field. There have been a few issues, I've heard, where the blank ballots have not gotten to their destination but that can be rectified by simply sending more blanks.
If the people in the field aren't capable of filling in a blank paper ballot what makes you think they can correctly send in an electronic ballot?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Let's say I am an employer, and I say "you'll get fired if you don't vote for candidate X". If the only methods of voting are by secret ballot, the voter is protected. Otherwise the voter might be forced or coerced into using the "optional" un-secret method. (And yes this has happened before!)
On top of that concern, we're using e-mail? I don't trust the e-mail system for anything important at all. Last semester we had to turn in our homework via e-mail in one of my classes, which I had qualms about. Lo and behold, at the end of the semester, two of my assignments didn't get counted by the professor. He insisted that the e-mail system was perfect. This idea, very bad.
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".
So I wonder what they'll say afterwards...
Spokesman: See, this plan worked perfectly - we got 100% turnout.
Soldier: 100%? How? I didn't use the email voting system.
Spokesman: Sure you did, we have your vote right here. You voted for Kevin Mitnick, and used the reply-to address "haX0r-v0t3r@133t.ru."
Soldier: What?
Spokesman: There you have it folks, as we said beforehand, if they didn't trust it, they wouldn't use it. 100% used it, so clearly 100% trust it. And if 100% of our fighting men and women trust a system they know nothing about, who are you to question it? It's a simple question really: Do you support our soldiers, or are you a terrorist? The terrorists don't want our soldiers to vote.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
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
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.
Here come 400,000 votes for "C0wb0y N3al!!!1"
I agree, there is a serious problem with the attitude of "if you think it's insecure, just don't use it". I've run into this same attitude with regards to touchscreen electronic voting machines. I have been told that if I don't trust the ES&S systems, I should just vote by absentee ballot. It doesn't matter if I use a known secure voting apparatus if the other people who are voting do not. It doesn't help that my vote gets counted accuratly if someone can add an arbitrary number of votes for the candidate of their choice.
Hypothetical Example:
1000 people eligible to vote.
600 actually vote:
200 use secure method. They vote 150 for candidate A, 50 for candidate B.
400 use insecure method. They vote 220 for candidate A, 180 for candidate B.
Total legitimate votes: 370 for A, 230 for B.
Now Mr. Vote-Hack adds 200 phantom votes for B, through the insecure method.
Did anyone's vote count, aside from Mr. Vote-Hack?
In some systems, unless the entire system is secure, securing parts of it doesn't really matter.
You know, only the US (of developed Western democracies at least) makes such a big fricken' mess out of the whole voting process. Pieces of paper and ballot boxes actually work. They may be slower, they may be more expensive, but they WORK and they are transparent. They are scaleable and the hardware is cheap. Recounts are easy and verifiable.
Prediction: the US will be convulsed over the reliability and fairness of its elections procedures every four years for the forseeable future.
Countries using ballot papers and boxes will get their results a bit slower, but will not be convulsed.
As for the argument that e-voting makes it easier for people to vote, thus increasing democratic participation, all I can say is, if you care so little about your vote that you can't be bothered to leave the house to cast it (I"m assuming those who are housebound are catered for) you don't deserve to vote.
Sheesh. I have used up my 'fricken' quotient for today but it was worth it.
Some old technology is very good. Like the bicycle. When I worked in TV we used to bike tapes around rather than using the internet, because as our tech director used to say, "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a man on a motorbike".
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
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
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...
World.People[linus torvalds].nationality!= "American" ...
sorry to ruin your fun
Each voter is issued a crypto-token, the private part of a public-private key pair. Of course, this cant be tied to a name to preserve anonymity. They vote electronically and all the votes are emailed at once in a big tarball. A hardcopy is printed of each vote (encrypted) in case you want to recount.
They can then verify the individual votes authenticity with the corresponding public keys.
It could be done.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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.
--
make install -not war
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...
Dis counts on Vo tes SAV E up to 80% on Popular Vo tes! ***HOT SPECIALS*** We run a Canadian Votery that will save you thousands of dollars each year on the exact vot es you buy in the United States - Ge orge W. B ush, Joh n KerRy , Va lium, and Cialis and more - No doctor visits or hassles - Quick delivery to your front door
If they could use PGP I'd have less a problem with it. You could scan the ballot and then encrypt the file to the state's public key and send it off. But you can still track the file to the sender so short of using anonymous remailers this still isn't private.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Here's an idea?
Just spend the money to setup private voting booths over there. Travel from company to company and allow our guys to vote.
The most dangerous thing you can do in Iraq right now is travel from company to company. I am all for making voting easy for the soldiers, but I would prefer a method that doesn't incur huge risks (if at all posible).
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Absentee ballots cast statewide by Republican voters following the illegal solicitation of absentee ballots by the Florida Republican Party: 50,000?
Absentee ballots that could not be read by voting machines, but were illegally "duplicated" by county election officials: 10,000 (60% Bush?)
Overseas military ballots that were not legal, but were counted because of massive pressure from the Bush campaign: 680 (71% Bush)
http://democrats.com/display.cfm?id=181
Absentee ballot law (FL GOP)
The Florida Republican Party sent a letter with Jeb's signature and the Florida state seal urging Florida Republicans to vote by absentee ballots. But Florida law (which was made even stricter in 1998) is not a "vote-by-mail" system - voters must have a valid reason for voting by mail. The Republican Party was thus encouraging Republican voters to break the law.
Florida's absentee ballot laws were tightened because of the 1997 Miami absentee ballot scandal that resulted in the voiding of ALL absentees and the overturn of the election. The man who engineered that massive fraud - Mayoral candidate Xavier Suarez - played a key role in the GOP absentee effort in 2000.
Absentee Ballot Law, Voting Rights Act (FL GOP, Seminole County, Martin County)
With the active assistance of GOP Election Supervisors, FL GOP officials sent GOP operatives to illegally alter over 2,500 defective Republican absentee ballot applications, while at least 550 Democratic applications were ignored.
FL Absentee Ballot Law
Pressured canvassing boards in Republican counties to violate Florida's election laws and count clearly illegal overseas Republican absentee ballots, while fighting to prevent Democratic counties from counting similar absentee ballots
14th Amendment, Voting Rights Act
Forced hand counting of heavily Republican absentee ballots that the machines couldn't read - while delaying and blocking hand counting of poll-cast ballots in heavily Democratic counties that the machines couldn't read, thus treating ballots differently and discriminating against black voters
http://democrats.com/display.cfm?id=239
But it is in the "low-tech area" of absentee ballots, as Miami Herald columnist Jim DeFede puts it, "that things get really funky." Most critically, Hood and Gov. Bush have championed a new state law that abolishes Florida's longtime requirement that absentee ballots be witnessed. While some other states, like California, do not require witnesses, no state has Florida's history of institutional vote fraud.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2105524/
So now please tell me if there isn't a reason to be concerned.
After all, nobody's ever stolen a ballot box, stuffed a ballot box, altered a paper ballot, discarded a paper ballot, or anything at all like that.
If the US government can't manage to let the servicemen vote properly and get the votes back to America in time, maybe they shouldn't go to war. Period. Because other countries manage to do so.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Why can't they ever just say "We need a way for soldiers to easily cast an absentee ballot" and then let people who know what they are doing come up with the proper system?
This is a problem where I work as well.
Its a decently reliable service that isn't too expensive. If anything, they should give the service to them for free and get some good PR!!
Have Americans forgotten this?
Of course, we Canadians take election ballots very seriously. For example, it is illegal to eat your ballot. This upsets some people. (No, ballot eating has nothing to do with the topic at hand, I just wanted an excuse to post that.)
Uh - the people who think that at least Kerry has _some_ experience in the military, and who might therefore be a better Commander in Chief (as in - understanding when & where it is effective to use military force, and when & where it is appropriate to listen to your military commanders)?
Given the pattern of retaliation by this administration, such people are likely to keep their mouths shut, but I'm sure there's a few of them in there.
The instances you provided are certainly heroic, but they don't happen all the time. Riding around in a hummer on security detail or fixing fighter jets is not heroic. Dangerous, yes. Worthy of respect, yes.
The point is, a blanket statement that all men & women in the service are heroes is false. Heroic status is assigned on a case by case basis. Saying everyone in the armed forces is a hero waters down the meaning.
1.) The application has to get to the voter somehow. This is not as much of a problem as it once was, because one can email the town clerk and ask for it to be mailed, one's relatives can send it to you, or you can print it out from the Secretary of the State's web site.
2.) Once the application is filled out, it must be mailed back to the Town Clerk. Currently, the law allows one to fax the application to ensure the ballot goes out in a timely manner, but it must be mailed at the same time it is faxed. If the application is not received in the mail be the close of polls on election day, the ballot is rejected.
3.) When the Town Clerk receives the application, he prepares a ballot and mails it.
4.) Then I get to vote. And mail back the ballot. And hope that it's received in time.
That's a cycle of three or four mail trips across the world. Anybody overseas who wants to vote absentee needs to get going right now to make sure their votes are counted! Incidentally, look at the audit trail absentee balloting leaves in its wake: the completed application, an outer envelope for mailing, an inner envelope to ensure ballot secrecy, and the ballot itself. With the potential for mischief that absentee balloting presents, I am glad all this paperwork exists. However, in the interest of timeliness and of not disenfranchising remote voters, I think the application process, but not the voting itself, can be shortened by using email without sacrificing security. Imagine this process:
1.) The voter emails the town clerk with the required information and a digital signature.
2.) The clerk mails the ballot.
3.) The voter mails back the ballot.
That's two mail trips. That's still a wait, but the process is simpler, there's still an audit trail, the identity of the voter is still verifiable, and the ballot is on good old paper. Why can't states adopt a sensible, middle-ground process like this one? And why doesn't Missouri's chief elections official understand the importance of an auditable vote?
The problem with email voting is not that someone might sniff and read your email on the way, or even falsify votes. Those are pretty easy to fix. The problems are those of:
* 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?
* 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.
* 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?
* 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.
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. If we can't pull them off the front lines long enough to vote...what is it, exactly, that they're fighting for?
May we never see th
If you vote for a third party candidate, you're telling both of the existing two-party candidates that you do not trust them, and you signal why - maybe you don't think they're strong enough on civil liberties, or economic liberties (various libertarians), or perhaps you feel they're not environmentalist enough (Green), or that they do not provide enough protection for consumers (Nader), or perhaps that they're not religious enough (Constitutionalist), etc.
By voting third party candidate when you feel that neither party is remotely close to what you want, you at least indicate to them the direction they should be going in.
It doesn't always work, especially if the "third party campaign" is more of a vindictive wrecking campaign (as an example, Gore was very clearly an environmentalist, but thanks to Nader's "Green Party" campaign, Gore was kicked out and the Democrats lurched away, with no viable environmentalist candidates.) But if you seriously believe neither Republicans nor Democrats can be trusted enough on any serious issues, that they're both equally likely to undermine the principles you strongly believe in, a third party vote is exactly what you should be considering.
Of course, never write off the directly opposing party too. There have been times in the last thirty-forty years where one was better on civil liberties, and times the other has. I can't imagine Ashcroft or anyone else Bush is likely to appoint supporting the Miranda decision, but that target of right-wing hate Janet Reno did exactly that, in front of the Supreme Court. But there have been times when the shoe has been on the other foot.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Have you seen the President's motorcade? Whether Kerry "owns" the SUVs or not, he can only personally drive one at a time, and if he's president he won't be driving any of them. Putting him in office will take those gas hogs off the street.
Hey, that's a good reason to vote for John Kerry! Save the environment, keep JK's SUVs in the garage! Vote him into office and he won't drive for four years!
Hmmm...I'm not sure that's really a good reason. Then again, it beats anything else I've come up with. (Except, of course, keeping the current nimrod from spending every last cent going after the "!@#$%# ragheads," as my Father-in-law calls them.)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Hmm.. What's this vote for John Bush?
bananas like monkeys.
The Dutch Government sponsored the development of an Open Source, GPL-ed solution that is probably more appropriate and less costly in manpower than the proposed matter (not to mention the human chain of trust that has to be established). Allow me to refer you to the paper and an article in The Register, although the paper is in Dutch.
You can also have a look at the code . The Dutch text surrounding the link to the ZIP file is mainly explaining the ZIP file and showing an MD5 checksum for the archive.
In conclusion, there is verified code out there for expat/remote voting, open and accessible. I would start asking questions if anything less was used. Consider the amount of people you need to trust to make this system democratically sound, and the privacy you need to give up. Conspiracy theorists would at this point strongly suspect alterior motives, and in this case I'd actually agree with them..
Insert