: a disturbing times editorial

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

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Dave Farber  +1 412 726 9889



...... Forwarded Message .......
From: Martha Baer <m.baer () comcast net>
To: dave () farber net
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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