Three ballot initiatives have been proposed in California to require the state to allow online voting, but security experts and some voting officials say the technology is nowhere near secure enough for something so crucial as the democratic process.
“When people stop me in the supermarket and ask, ‘When am I going to be able to vote on my cell phone?’ I say ‘Pretty soon — in about 20 years,’” said Dana DeBeauvoir, the county clerk for Travis County, Texas.
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| Dana DeBeauvoir, the county clerk for Travis County, TX. (Photo: Elizabeth Weise) |
She was one of three speakers Wednesday in a session on online voting and security issues at Enigma 2016, a computer security conference held in San Francisco.
So much of daily life now happens online, including shopping, banking, communication, that voters naturally wonder why voting can’t too, said J. Alex Halderman, a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich. who researches voting and security.
However, the ongoing litany of breaches, hacks and crashes in those realms are an object lesson in why voting shouldn’t happen there. It's just too important, he said.
"Imagine the incentives of a rival country to come in and change the outcome of a vote for national leadership. Elections require correct outcomes and true ballot secrecy," Halderman said.
Thus far, that doesn't exist. The panelists said while there have been multiple attempts to build verifiable and secure online voting systems over the past 20 years, so far all have proved wanting.Read the rest of the story HERE.
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