Internet Voting

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Internet Voting

• Digital Government Research Conference
• May 21, 2001

David Cheney - Internet Policy Institute David
Jefferson - Compaq Systems Research Center Paul
Herrnson - University of Maryland Jane Fountain -
Kennedy School, Harvard David Elliott - Division
of Elections, Washington State
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Goals of Panel

• Present findings and recommendations of project
• Refine the research agenda
• Discuss and get feedback
• Stimulate research ideas

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About the Project

• President Clinton (12/99) asked NSF to study the
  feasibility of online voting
• NSF (7/00) awarded grant to IPI conduct workshop
• Workshop held with computer security experts,
  election officials, social scientists (10/00)
• (11/2000 election)
• Report released 3/01
• www.internetpolicy.org or www.netvoting.org

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Executive Committee

• C.D. Mote, Jr., University of Maryland (Chair)
• Erich Bloch, Washington Advisory Group
• Lorrie Faith Cranor, ATT Research Labs
• Jane Fountain, Harvard University
• Paul Herrnson, University of Maryland
• David Jefferson, Compaq Systems Research Center
• Thomas Mann, The Brookings Institution
• Raymond Miller, University of Maryland
• Adam C. Powell, III, The Freedom Forum
• Frederic Solop, Northern Arizona University

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Panelists

• Michael Alvarez, Caltech
• Penelope Bonsall, FEC
• David Brady, Stanford
• Polli Brunelli, U.S. Federal Voter Assistance
  Project
• Paul Craft, Florida Division of Elections
• Craig Donsanto, Dept. of Justice
• David Elliot, Washington State Elections
  Division,
• Michael Fischer, Yale
• Dan Geer, _at_Stake, Inc.
• Lance Hoffman, George Washington University

• Patricia Hollarn, Okaloosa County, Florida
• Carl Landwehr, Mitretek
• Richard Niemi, Univ. Rochester
• Ronald Rivest, MIT Technology
• Aviel Rubin, ATT Research
• Roy Saltman, Consultant
• Barbara Simons, Association for Computing
  Machinery
• Sandra Steinbach, Iowa Elections Division
• Mike Traugott, Univ. of Michigan
• Raymond Wolfinger, UC Berkeley

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Why Internet Voting?

• If one can shop, pay taxes over Internet, why not
  vote?
• Increase voter participation rate, especially
  among young, disabled, travelers
• Make voting more convenient
• More participatory democracy
• Vendor push
• Fast and accurate counting, better user
  interfaces

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Internet voting experiments

• Arizona Democratic primary
• Federal voting assistance project
• Other demos (California, Arizona)
• Experiments going on in Europe
• Cybervote project -- Sweden, France, Poland
• Geneva
• Estonia
• Europe-wide student union vote

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Criteria for Election Systems

• Eligibility and Authenticationonly authorized
  voters should be able to vote
• Uniquenessno voter should be able to vote more
  than once
• Accuracysystem should record the votes
  correctly
• Integrityvotes should not be able to be
  modified, forged, or deleted without detection
• Verifiability and Auditabilityverify that all
  votes have been correctly accounted for reliable
  and authentic election records

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Criteria for Elections Systems, cont

• Reliabilitywork without loss of any votes, in
  the face of many possible failures
• Secrecy and Non-Coercibilityno one should be
  able to determine how any individual voted
  voters should not be able to prove how they
  voted
• Flexibilityallow a variety of ballot formats
  (e.g., write-in candidates, multiple languages)
  be accessible to people with disabilities
• Conveniencerequire minimal voter equipment or
  skill
• Certifiabilitytestable so that election
  officials have confidence that they meet the
  necessary criteria
• Transparencyvoters should be able to possess a
  general understanding of the voting process and
• Cost-effectiveness

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Other Considerations

• Participation and access by demographic groups
• Election logistics, administration, and costs
• Effects on deliberative and representative
  democracy
• Effect on the sense of community and character of
  America elections
• Federal, state, and local government roles and
• Election laws.

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Findings Remote Voting

• Remote Internet voting systems pose significant
  risk to the integrity of the voting process, and
  should not be fielded for use in public elections
  until substantial technical and social science
  issues are addressed.
• Numerous and pervasive security issues
• viruses
• Trojan horses
• denial of service attacks
• creation of spoof websites

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Findings Remote Voting II

• Privacy/secrecy
• Platform compatibility/certification issues
• Many social science issues
• digital divide differences in access to
  Internet among demographic groups
• effect on campaigns and electioneering laws
• effect on civic participation
• effect on direct versus representative democracy
• Need to educate public officials about
  risks/challenges

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Findings Poll Site Internet Voting

• Poll site Internet voting systems offer some
  benefits and could be responsibly fielded within
  the next several election cycles.
• voting clients, environment are under control of
  election officials
• votes can be stored at the voting machine
• can use existing registration and authentication
• Key issues software errors, reliability, audit
  trail, transparency, cost
• Experimentation appropriate
• Expandable to allow voting from many places.

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Findings Kiosk Voting

• If poll site successful, next step is voting
  terminals in libraries, schools, malls, etc.
• Key issues ( all poll site issues)
• standards for electronically authenticating
  voters, e.g. digital signatures
• monitoring kiosks

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Findings Voter Registration

• Internet-based voter registration poses
  significant risk to the integrity of the voting
  process, and should not be implemented until an
  adequate authentication infrastructure is
  available and adopted.
• high risk for automated fraud (i.e., registration
  of large numbers of fraudulent voters)
• voter registration is already weak link in
  electoral process
• need unique biometric (e.g., fingerprint or
  retinal scan) data and an existing database with
  which to verify the data
• May use Internet to update info (e.g., addresses)

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Research Recommendations

• Large, critical research agenda
• public officials need better knowledge to make
  informed decisions on new election systems
• likely public and political pressures to adopt
  remote Internet voting in the near future 
• Needed research
• mix of short-term and long-term research
• technical, social science, and election systems
  topics.
• interdisciplinary involve election officials

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Next Steps

• Advance Research Agenda
• Prioritize
• Add
• Refine
• Modify
• Link to e-commerce, e-government research
• What is NSFs role?

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Key Questions

• Which research is most critical and in what time
  frame?
• Who (firms, universities, FEC, states, NSF)
  should do what?

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Critical Research Areas I

• Approaches to security, secrecy scalability
• secure voting platforms
• secure network architectures
• methods to reduce the risk of insider fraud
• Reliable poll site and kiosk Internet voting
  systems  
• Testing and certification procedures
• Effects of open architecture and open source code
  on innovation, profitability, and public
  confidence
• Authentication for kiosk and remote voting

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Critical Research Areas II

• Human interfaces and electronic ballots, access
  for disabled  
• Protocols for preventing vote selling and
  reducing coercion
• Economics of voting systems
• Effects of Internet voting on
• voter participation, by demographic group
• the public confidence in the electoral process
• deliberative and representative democracy
• political campaigns

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Critical Research Areas III

• Federal/state/local roles in elections
• Legal issues
• vote fraud
• liability for system failures
• international law enforcement
• electioneering laws

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Conclusion

• Voting at the heart of democracy
• Internet voting promises significant benefits,
  but poses great technical and social challenges
• Rich research agenda with relevance to other
  e-govt, e-commerce

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