PCWorld.com – Online Voting Plan Draws Concern by Joris Evers, IDG News Service

SERVE [Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment] is part of the U.S. Federal Voting Assistance Program. All mail-in absentee election functions have been placed on the Internet. This enables about 6 million U.S. citizens overseas, including uniformed services members, to cast their ballots online. The FVAP falls under the U.S. Department of Defense.

“We’re very concerned that a system we feel is insecure is going to be deployed,” says Barbara Simons, a computer scientist and technology policy consultant. “SERVE is called an experiment, but it is in fact not an experiment. There are not paper ballots, there is no way to verify after the fact to see if votes were correctly received and tabulated.”

Teenage hackers, terrorists, political parties–essentially anyone with an agenda and enough technical know-how–could subvert an election if the online system is put into use, according to Simons. The Internet is not secure enough for something as serious as electing a government official, the experts agree in their statement.

“What gives me nightmares is that SERVE might go forward and appear to work correctly … then Internet voting might come widespread for the whole country, perhaps in the 2008 election, and that could be a serious threat to our democracy,” Simons says.

Regardless of the experts’ opinions, the Department of Defense is moving ahead with SERVE. The system could be used for a primary election as early as February, and will certainly be up and running for the November presidential election, says Glenn Flood, a Defense Department spokesperson.

“We’re not stopping the SERVE program,” he says. “We’re aware of the concerns and we’re calling it a minority report because it is only four out of the ten review group members who felt they had to express themselves.”

Note this is not just a plan but a real program that will be ready for November this year. This may make Florida in 2000 look straight-forward. mjh