An Open Plea To Google: Build The Foundation For Internet Voting In California
A Blueprint For How Google Could Make California The First State To Offer Internet Voting
By David Grace (DavidGraceAuthor.com)
As I pointed out in an earlier post, less than 11% Of Eligible Voters Elect 80% Of all Congressmen.
Less than 20% of eligible citizens vote in primary elections. That means that in safe Congressional districts (at least 80% of all districts) the winner of the “safe” party’s primary will win the general election. If Ted Bundy won the Democratic primary in a safe Democratic district, Ted Bundy would be elected to Congress in the general election.
One of the important steps to eliminating America’s current minority-rule government is to make it easier for eligible voters to cast their ballots in primary elections.
Absentee Ballots
The closest analogy to Internet voting is mail-in voting. In California you can vote by absentee ballot at any time up to almost a month before the election. No lines. No taking time from work. No last-minute emergencies that might prevent you from voting. If you take the time and trouble to request an absentee ballot in advance then, once you receive it, you can just fill it out and drop it in the mail.
In California in 1962 only about 2.6% of general election votes were cast by mail-in ballots. By 2010 that percentage had risen to approximately 48.4%.
California voters have figured out the benefits of a simpler more practical way to vote.
But, absentee ballots must be requested in advance, are costly to print, mail, and count, and are not very secure. None of those problems exist for Internet voting.
Increased Security For Internet Voting Compared To Mail-In Ballots
Mail-in ballots are not all that secure. One arrives at your home and later is mailed back. The government doesn’t know who actually filled it out. Was it you or your child, your roommate, a mail thief or a burglar who grabbed it on his way out?
Also paper ballots can get lost, destroyed, miscounted or voided for accidental errors.
Internet Voting is not only vastly cheaper than mail-in paper ballots, but it can be far more secure and accurate than mail-in voting.
This increased security is especially important when you recall that today almost half of all votes are cast via mail-in ballots.
Biometric Verification
To qualify for Internet voting you would register or re-register just the way you do now but with one addition — you would press one finger on a reader at the registration location. The reader would use an algorithm to generate a unique number derived from your fingerprint. That number would be encrypted and added to your voter registration file together with the last four digits of your social security number.
Not A Fingerprint
What do I mean when I say “generate a unique number”?
Imagine a 10 mm by 10 mm portion of your thumb being divided into an 8 X 8 grid consisting of 64 squares.
The algorithm could have any number of rules for assigning either a zero or a one to each of the squares. For example, if more than 50% of the surface area of the first square is ridges instead of valleys it’s a 1 and if not it’s a 0. If the second square contains two or more ridges or valleys that are diagonal from the lower left to the upper right it’s a 1. If not, a 0. If the third square contains at least one arc of more than 100 degrees it’s a 1. If not, a 0.
You could make up dozens of these sorts of rules and assign any of them to any square.
Applying these rules to the grid would produce a 64-bit binary number that would bear no relationship whatsoever to what your fingerprint actually looks like, but would be unique to your print.
Because these fingerprint scanners will not be repeatedly and extremely accurate the software would specify how many bits were needed to signify a match. A 10% tolerance would mean than a match on any 58 or more of the 64 bits would be accepted. A 20% tolerance would mean that a match on 51 or more of the 64 bits would be accepted.
The chance that someone whose fingerprint number is an 80% match to yours would attempt to log in with your name and the last four digits of your social security number in order to steal your vote is vastly smaller than the risk that such a person would appear at your polling place with a fake driver’s license in order to vote in your name.
The Finger Print Reader
The Internet Voting would be accomplished via a county-clerk-sponsored website that could be accessed from a phone, a tablet, a laptop or a desktop. Anyone whose smart phone included a fingerprint reader would be able to vote directly from their phone.
Google is perfectly positioned to modify Android to support the smart-phone fingerprint-verification voting app.
If manufactured in quantities of a million or more I suspect that the cost of a USB fingerprint reader for desktops, laptops and tablets would be in the range of about ten to fifteen dollars.
Google could advance the cost to have one-million units built and possibly team-up with Amazon to offer them for sale through Amazon at close to cost. It’s also possible that CVS and Walgreens might agree to partner with Google to sell these USB fingerprint readers at a price of only a dollar or two over cost.
Google could publish the reader’s data output format so that other organizations could also use the same reader as a verification tool.
For example, VISA could use its own algorithms to create a unique number which it would associate with your VISA card number so that the same reader could use your finger to verify your on-line purchases.
In fact, VISA, Master Card and Discover might be willing to subsidize part or all of the cost of buying a large order of USB fingerprint readers because the device would greatly reduce on-line credit-card fraud.
The Voting Software
Google would need to create a voter-registration tool and a voting-website tool for the county clerks.
Voter Registration Tool
Each county would pick from a menu what algorithm rules it wanted to apply to which grid squares in order to general the unique number for each voter registered in that particular county.
Google would supply the counties, at cost, with fingerprint readers with those selected algorithm rules burned into an internal ROM.
The fingerprint readers would connect to the county’s voter-registration database via a secure login at the existing locations where the county currently allows voter registration.
For an already registered voter, the citizen would give the clerk his/her ID. The clerk would bring up the voter’s existing registration file, then have the voter put his/her finger on the reader.
The reader would create the unique number according to the rules selected by the county, send that number to the county’s voter database where it would be added to the fingerprint field in the voter’s registration record.
For new voters, the appropriate ID would be shown, the voter’s information would be taken and then added to the registration database and the new voter’s finger scanned and its unique number added to the new voter’s registration record.
The voter’s record would then be encrypted and saved.
Creating A Voting Website
For each election the county’s staff could log into the Google tool site, enter the names of the candidates, the offices, the propositions, etc., upload the candidates bios, campaign statements, pro and con proposition arguments, etc.
Google’s underlying software would then build the voting website code and export those files (.HTM, .CSS, .XML, .JPG, etc.) back to the county where the clerk’s staff could tweak them then load them on the county’s own servers.
Essentially, Google would create a turn-key voting-website creation tool which the county clerks could use to build the next election’s voting site, which web pages they would host on their own systems.
Or, for a discounted price, Google could provide scalable, cloud hosting for the counties’ voting web sites so that they would not be overwhelmed by high-volume demand on or near election day.
In the alternative, Google could provide a website-creation program that could run on the counties’ own equipment that would allow the counties’ own staff build their own web voting pages for each election.
Key to each of these alternatives would be secure software from Google for the counties that would accept the fingerprint reader’s data stream, apply the algorithm chosen by the county, then export the resulting number for comparison to the number stored in the individual voter’s registration file.
The Legal Framework
Legislation would need to be drafted and passed that would allow for and define the operation of Internet Voting. This is not a trivial task. I suspect that Google would be able to hire attorneys to create a draft set of regulations. It would then need to ask its lobbyists to work with State Senators and Assemblymen from Silicon Valley to sponsor the legislation.
Again, not a trivial task but one that Google is well able to handle.
How Would Internet Voting Work?
At any time up to thirty days before an election you would go on-line to the County Clerk’s web site (whether hosted in Google’s cloud or on the county’s own servers) and enter your name and the last four digits of your social security number. Next you would be prompted to press your finger on a USB or cell phone fingerprint reader.
The software would apply the county’s particular version of the algorithm to the data stream from the reader and if the resulting number matched the number stored in your registration file to the required degree of accuracy you would be taken to the voting page.
It’s important to stress that the county would never have a copy of your finger print. It would only have a number that its unique algorithm derived from your finger print.
A Superior Voting Experience
On the county’s Internet Voting site you would see a list of candidates for each office. Each candidate would have a “Biography” link and a “Campaign Statement” link which the voter could click on for more information. There could be an optional “My Stand On The Issues” link where each candidate could elect to state their positions on particular topics in that election.
Ballot propositions could have links to pro and con arguments, summaries of the measure and the exact text of the proposition.
Once you had made all your choices you would see a summary screen which would give you a chance to edit your choices.
If you were happy with your choices then you would click a “Cast My Vote Now” button.
You would again be prompted to put your finger on the scanner for a second match. Once it was read and verified your votes would be added to the totals for the candidates you selected and your voter-registration file would note that you had voted so that you could not vote a second time.
How you voted would not be saved, only the fact that you did vote.
Advantages Of Internet Voting
Internet Voting would save the counties a huge amount of money by drastically reducing the printing, mailing and counting of paper ballots and the reduction in the number of poll workers. If properly implemented it would be far more secure and immune to voter fraud than paper ballots.
And, of course, it would provide far faster results.
On top of that it would increase voter participation which would go a long way to reducing our current minority-rule government and the consequent election of extreme candidates by the die-hard true-believers who are the only ones who today bother to show up and vote in primary elections.
It would additionally
- provide superior information on the candidates and the measures at the time of voting, and
- be more secure and more accurate than paper mail-in ballots.
Can Someone Call Google For Me?
Though I have lived my entire adult life in Palo Alto, I don’t know any of the executives at Google. If you have a friend in the executive ranks at Google, do me a favor and send them a link to this post.
Maybe it will start them thinking about doing something like this.
–David Grace
DavidGraceAuthor.com
