INTERNET VOTING: THE CHALLENGES
February 7, 2004

Although Internet voting efforts have been championed as a way to increase political participation in an era of low voter turnout, making the system secure and accessible to all has proved a challenge.

 

Online Special Reports: Media Watch Vote 2004: Media Analysis & Ad Watch Voting Technology The Debate Over Electronic Voting Jan. 12, 2004: Update: More Americans Log On For Campaign News, Study Finds Browse the NewsHour's coverage of the media   News for Students and Teacher Resources: Media Studies     Michigan Democratic Party AFSCME of Michigan SEIU Detroit Free Press	Technological limitations, security threats, issues of the digital divide and accessibility for the handicapped have all threatened to derail the use of the Web to cast ballots.
	Technology and security
	Many computer technological experts fault Internet voting in general as unsafe. Avi Rubin, technical director of Hopkins Information Security Institute, said personal computers are susceptible to viruses and hacking, which undercuts the security of any Internet voting process. "The MyDoom worm is an example of a program that infects PCs and opens a backdoor to hackers. It is a Trojan horse with a payload of a worm," Rubin said. "MyDoom virus demonstrates that if someone gets in, denial of service occurs -- look at how successfully the [SCO Group] Web site was brought down, that could have been the election server." Yet according to former Arizona Democratic Party Chairman Mark Fleisher, his state's voting system had actually repelled external hacking attempts. "Many people were trying to hack into the election system, even The New York Times and the National Journal hired experts, but no one got through the system," Fleisher said. This year's Michigan effort had also appeared to weather any attempted to meddle in the voting, with the party chairman saying he was not aware of any security issues involving viruses or hacking attempts. But Rubin points out that the Arizona and Michigan Internet election systems do not have to submit to any independent evaluation, since these systems were used by a political party in its primary, not a general election. At the Pentagon, the Department of Defense did have to take into consideration the overall stability and security of its system when it created its Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, a system designed to enable U.S. military personnel and civilians oversees to vote via the Internet. Defense officials contracted with independent experts to examine the system and whether it should be used to enable overseas voting in primaries and general elections. The independent panel, which included Rubin and three other experts, released their report on Jan. 21, urging the Pentagon to abandon the program because "there really is no good way to build such a voting system without a radical change in overall architecture of the Internet and the PC." The Pentagon announced Feb. 5 that they would heed the report and abandon the SERVE project.
	Digital divide
	Aside from technical and security issues, some have questioned whether the new voting technique will further exacerbate the so-called "digital divide" between those with Internet and computer access and those without. Many civil rights activists have criticized the system. Democratic presidential candidate, the Rev. Al Sharpton, called it "a high-tech poll tax." According to the census, Internet access continues to be spread unequally among different ethnic groups. In 2001, 46.1 percent of white households could access the Web from home, as opposed to 23.5 percent of African Americans and 23.6 percent of Hispanic households. Michigan Democratic Party Executive Chairman Mark Brewer downplayed concerns that the digital divide has played a negative role in Internet voting in his state where a little more than half of the households had Internet access in 2001. "The gap in Internet use between whites and non-whites is only 12 percent," Brewer said. "You can use Internet from home, office or cafe or church." He also said the party provided over 1,500 free Internet access points, concentrating primarily in urban areas. In Arizona, Fleisher said a big concern was expanding Internet access within minority communities, prompting him to obtain assistance from the Gates Foundation to provide computers and Internet service to the Navajo nation. This technological assistance contributed to a 127 percent increase in voter turnout in the presidential primary in 1992, Fleisher stated.
	Looking ahead
	The nagging issues surrounding the use of the Internet have prompted some to question the investment of time and resources in trying to build a new way to vote. "What possible advantage is there to have Internet voting? Why incur risk to privacy and security to conduct Internet voting?" asked Michael Cornfield, research director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. Cornfield said Internet voting cuts at the very core of the election process. "Traditional voting begins very public but ends in a private act. But Internet voting strips away the core privacy associated with the voting process," Cornfield said. Before Internet voting can be considered a viable voting practice, Cornfield also said Internet voting technology and software should be open to public scrutiny, not controlled by a few, private e-voting companies. "Put the election software code out in public where it can be tested and debugged," Cornfield said, citing Australia's process that allowed the public to inspect and critique the system before it was implemented. But many political activist and party leaders say regardless of the process and problems presented by the idea of Internet voting, this new technology ought to be developed to increase political participation. "I do believe Internet voting is successful, not just a novelty. It brought a lot of people into the process, brought democracy into the home," Fleisher stated. -- By Parisa Jade Baharian, Online NewsHour

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