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1. Internet VotingFeasibility and Research Agenda Digital Government Consortium
March 15, 2001
David Cheney
Internet Policy Institute
2. 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 at Freedom Forum (10/00)
(11/2000 election)
Report released 3/01
3. Executive Committee C.D. Mote, Jr., University of Maryland (Chairman)
Erich Bloch, Washington Advisory Group
Lorrie Faith Cranor, AT&T 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
4. Panelists Michael Alvarez, Caltech
Penelope Bonsall, FEC
David Brady, Stanford
Polli Brunelli, U.S. Federal Voter Assistance Project
Paul Craft, State of Florida
Craig Donsanto, U.S. DoJ
David Elliot, State of Washington
Michael Fischer, Yale
Dan Geer, @Stake, Inc.
Lance Hoffman, GWU
Patricia Hollarn, Okaloosa County, Florida
Carl Landwehr, Mitretek Systems
Richard Niemi, U of Rochester
Ronald Rivest, MIT
Aviel Rubin, AT&T Research
Roy Saltman, Consultant
Barbara Simons, ACM
Sandra Steinbach, State of Iowa
Mike Traugott, U of Michigan
Raymond Wolfinger, UC Berkeley
5. Internet Voting System
6. 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.
7. 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
8. 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
9. Findings Remote Voting II 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
10. 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)
11. Research Recommendations I 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 (FEC, states, vendors, NIST?) and long-term (NSF) research
technical, social science, and election systems topics.
interdisciplinary; involve election officials
12. 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
13. 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
14. Critical Research Areas III Federal/state/local roles in elections
Legal issues:
vote fraud
liability for system failures
international law enforcement
electioneering laws
15. Research Modes Experimentation, modeling, and simulation of election systems
Survey research
Social Science SWAT teams to study election experiments
16. 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