[IP] : a disturbing times editorial
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Dave Farber +1 412 726 9889
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From: Martha Baer <m.baer@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 10:58:39 -0700
Subj: a disturbing times editorial
The Pentagon's Troubling Role
Published: August 31, 2004
Barely two months before the presidential vote, Missouri's secretary of
state has suddenly announced that he will allow military voters from his
state - one of the most pivotal in the election - to e-mail ballots from
combat zones to the Defense Department. E-mail is far too insecure to be
used for voting. Missouri and North Dakota, which announced a similar rule
yesterday, should rescind these orders right away. Missouri's action also
sheds light on the Defense Department's role in administering federal
elections, a troubling situation that needs far more scrutiny.
The Missouri secretary of state, Matt Blunt, decided last week that
military voters in combat zones will be able to e-mail their ballots to the
Pentagon, which will then send them to local Missouri elections offices to
be counted. This system, which has not been used before, is rife with
security problems, including the possibility of hacking the e-mailed
ballots, which will not be encrypted. Earlier this year the Defense
Department scrapped a pilot program to allow the military to vote over the
Internet, after concluding that it could not "assure the legitimacy of
votes" cast online.
There is more cause for concern after the ballots arrive at the Pentagon.
E-mail voters will be required to sign a release acknowledging that their
votes may not be kept secret. When the people handling ballots know who
they are cast for, it is not hard to imagine that ballots for disfavored
candidates could accidentally be "lost." And because the e-mailed ballots
arrive as computer documents, it is possible to cut off the voter's
digitized signature, attach it to a ballot supporting another candidate,
and send that ballot on to the state to be counted.
It is unclear how good the protections are to guard against tampering. The
e-mailed ballots will be handled by a contractor, Omega Technologies, hired
for this purpose, at the company's offices and without the election
observers who are present at normal polling places.
E-mail voting by military personnel also opens the door to coercion. Many
soldiers may have to vote on computers in places where their commanding
officers may be present. They may also be reluctant to vote their
conscience if they know that the Defense Department could be reading their
ballots.
The Missouri and North Dakota announcements call attention to the larger
issue of why the Pentagon is directly handling so many presidential
ballots. The Federal Voting Assistance Program, a unit of the Defense
Department, is charged with helping not only military voters, but all
eligible voters overseas, a total of about six million people. But it is a
fundamental aspect of the American election system that handling and
counting of votes is supposed to occur at the local level. The Defense
Department should stop handling actual ballots, and instead help military
and other overseas voters send them directly to local elections officials.
In the 1960 election, there was widespread skepticism when Mayor Richard
Daley waited until hours after the polls closed to release the Chicago
vote, and it turned out to be almost precisely what was needed to put
Illinois in the Democratic column. It invites cynicism about our democracy
to operate a system in which employees who answer to the secretary of
defense could control the margin of victory in a close presidential
election.
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