Someone sent me this interesting thread about the Department of Defense's SERVE program. I'm still digesting this myself, but it seemed worthy of passing on to you.

When you recall that military absentee ballots were a critical factor in the Florida election of 2000, the scrutiny the SERVE project should attract a great deal of attention. But it has been running well below the radar since it was announced on June 2nd and and, as Slashdot pointed out, it will be a Microsoft Windows-only election.

In addition to military stationed overseas, citizens of Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah and Washington will be able to vote using SERVE. All the voters need to do is submit a form and they'll be registered.

The troubling aspect of the SERVE program is that it appears to have no security features that will allow voters to check their votes were correctly recorded. The privacy statement on the SERVE site suggests that changing information is illegal and that connections will be monitored, but the ability for citizens to have oversight on the process is entirely absent. Say what you will, but hanging chads were important because they constituted a physical record. A vote intercepted and changed on the Internet or changed later by corrupt officials, which the 2000 election demonstrated is a potential factor in presidential elections.

Here is the full text of the post I am referring to:

http://www.correspondences.org/archives/000174.html

Voting By Wire in 2004

The Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE), an online voting project of the Federal Voting Assitance Program, is coming to the 2004 election. It will be available for voters in a number of states, but here's the rub: It's a project of the Department of Defense.

When you recall that military absentee ballots were a critical factor in the Florida election of 2000, the scrutiny the SERVE project should attract a great deal of attention. But it has been running well below the radar since it was announced on June 2nd and and, as Slashdot pointed out, it will be a Microsoft Windows-only election.

In addition to military stationed overseas, citizens of Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah and Washington will be able to vote using SERVE. All the voters need to do is submit a form and they'll be registered.

The troubling aspect of the SERVE program is that it appears to have no security features that will allow voters to check their votes were correctly recorded. The privacy statement on the SERVE site suggests that changing information is illegal and that connections will be monitored, but the ability for citizens to have oversight on the process is entirely absent. Say what you will, but hanging chads were important because they constituted a physical record. A vote intercepted and changed on the Internet or changed later by corrupt officials, which the 2000 election demonstrated is a potential factor in presidential elections.

Britt Blaser has written about the idea of "See My Vote", the time for which has come. In an environment where data can be recorded surreptiously, people need to be able to check their votes for accuracy and that they are preserved intact rather than changed to ensure a candidate's victory. Additionally, any online system should be able to provide real-time tabulations based on time-stamping of votes to see that the number of votes aren't changing due to manipulation. In other words, we may not want to vote in secret anymore. But using pseudonymous identities (just one per voter), confidentiality on the ballot may be maintained.

Many questions need to be answered before online voting is put in place. New technology always creates opportunities for abuse and the fact that the Department of Defense, the most politicized department in the executive branch under George W. Bush, should raise the volume of the questions. Will we be able to check our votes? Why is the system not built on open source software that anyone could check for backdoors and bugs that might corrupt the election? Nothing against Microsoft, in particular, but Windows hasn't got a great track record on the security front.

Before SERVE is put to use many questions need to be asked. Enthusiastic acceptance of this system just because it is Net-based or niftier than paper ballots would be a grave mistake.