A Way To Get The Benefits Of Internet Voting Without The Risks
For those who think Internet Voting can’t be reliable, there is another way to get its benefits while still using paper ballots.
By David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
The responses to my recent column suggesting a mechanism for implementing Internet voting (Avoiding Election Fraud With Reliable Internet Voting) fell into two distinct camps:
- Good Idea Because Fingerprints Will Reduce Voter Fraud, and
- Bad Idea Because Remote Voting Can Never Be Safe From Interference
This column is a continuation of the discussion on Internet or Remote Voting and is in two parts:
- How Convincing Is The: “Internet Voting Can Never Work” Argument?
- There Is Another Way To Get The Benefits Of Remote Voting Without The Risks
Part 1: How Convincing Is The: “It Can Never Work” Argument?
I have several problems with the “Remote Voting can never be safe from hackers so don’t even think about ever doing it” argument.
“It Can’t Be Done” Is Always A Loser Argument
First, telling people, “Don’t even think about it because it’s impossible” is an argument that is destined to fail with human beings.
Most of us have grown up laughing at people who claim: “It can’t be done.”
“Men can’t fly. Men can’t go to the moon. We can’t do this. We can’t do that.” We’ve heard it all before, and those naysayers have always, eventually, been proven wrong.
So, most American’s instinctive reaction to someone who says, “Don’t even think about it because it’s impossible” is to become even more determined to do it just to prove them wrong.
The “Trust me, it can’t be done” argument is inherently, fundamentally, a loser.
Without proof, the opponents of remote voting are absolutely going to lose the “it’s impossible” argument.
“It Shouldn’t Be Done” Seems Based On A Requirement For Perfect Security Instead of Just “Safe Enough”
Second, many of the arguments against remote voting seem to be in the form of, “This could happen. That might happen. This other thing might happen. Therefore, it shouldn’t be done.”
Suppose that in 1916 an entrepreneur proposed starting a commercial airline and experts criticized the idea saying, “That’s a terrible idea. Planes might fly into storms and be torn apart. They could be hit by flocks of birds and crash. They might fly into mountains. They could run out of gas and crash. The engines could break down. Pilots could get sick and the plane would crash. Runways could be icy or flooded and the planes would crash. This could go wrong. That could go wrong. This other thing could go wrong. No, we can’t allow you take groups of people across the country in airplanes.”
The problem with an argument like that is that it’s based on the idea that something has to be guaranteed to be 100% safe or it should not be done at all.
In the real world, the question is never, “Is this absolutely sure to be 100% safe?” but rather, “Do the benefits of doing this outweigh the costs?”
We absolutely know planes will crash, but the benefits of air travel outweigh the detriments, so we accept the certainty of crashes as a cost of doing business because even with inevitable crashes, air travel is safer than the alternatives.
So, the real question about a particular remote voting system is not and cannot be, “Can we be absolutely sure that it will never be compromised?”
No, the real questions have to be:
- “Is its vulnerability within acceptable limits?” and
- “Does it provide sufficient benefits over the current voting systems to be worth the costs and the risks?”
Maybe the answers are “yes” and maybe they’re “no.” The thing is, maybe isn’t good enough. We need real data.
The “It Can’t Be Done” People Need Data To Prove Their Case
Even if the “It can’t be done” people are right, they still need to prove that they’re right.
Naked predictions of doom won’t stop remote voting.
If they want to stop Remote Voting, opponents need to form a group of really smart people who will create the most secure remote-voting system they can think of, publish the details, hold test elections, and offer rewards to people who succeed in compromising the system.
If the “It can’t be done” people are right, these tests will all fail and they’ll be able to say, “We did this and that and this other thing and every single time the hackers found a way to compromise the results. This proves that it can’t be done.”
Anyone who thinks that they can just tell people, “It can’t be done” and expect them to say, “Well, OK, if you say so. I’ll forget about the whole thing” knows nothing about how human beings operate.
Are There Other Ways To Get The Benefits Of Remote Voting Without The Risks?
The fundamental questions are:
Why would we want people to be able to vote via the Internet in the first place? What benefits do we think we’ll gain from implementing remote voting?
There are at least four benefits from Remote Voting:
- Saving people from losing between hours of work and an entire day of work as the price of voting, a price many are unwilling to pay
- Increasing voluntary voter participation by making voting easier with fewer penalties
- Thwarting voter suppression schemes
- Making it easier for voters to understand the positions of the candidates they are asked to vote for
Internet Voting is not important in and of itself. It’s merely a means to an end. If we could accomplish these four goals with other practical methods, we wouldn’t need Internet Voting.
What About Just Voting By Mail?
Voting by mail is materially inferior to a reliable Remote Voting system.
A vote-by-mail paper ballot is
- Difficult for many voters to complete
- Very expensive to implement,
- Slow and costly to tally
- Subject to ballots being lost or stolen both from the county to the voter and also from the voter back to the county
- Without a reliable way to determine if the ballot being returned was actually completed by the voter
- Open to fraud via forged or stolen ballots
- Timed such that votes are often cast weeks in advance of the end of the election campaign before the voter can evaluate new issues raised late in the campaign.
On the other hand, a remote voting period can be set to a specific number of days before election day.
For example, voting could take place during the seven days before election day, close enough to election day that the voters will have been exposed to almost all of the campaign issues, but a long enough period that everyone who actually wants to vote will have ample opportunity to do so.
Ameliorating The “Lost Work” Problem By Voting On The Weekend
Moving elections from Tuesday, a work day, to Saturday or Sunday would solve much but not all of the “missed work” problem under the current voting system. But then, many people don’t want to give up their Saturday or Sunday to stand in line to vote.
This is only a partial solution, at best.
Moving elections from Tuesday to BOTH Saturday AND Sunday would solve a bit more of the “missed work” problem and it would help reduce problem #2, low voter participation, and problem #3, thwarting voter suppression schemes which often depend on closing voting locations so that the ensuing long lines at the still-open polling places will discourage voting in the districts populated by people who are going to vote against your candidate.
But at best it’s only a partial fix and also it would be very expensive and thus unlikely to be widely implemented.
Informing Voters With Info Linked To Candidates On A Sample Ballot App
Distributing sample ballots as an app with links from each candidate’s name to his/her bio, campaign statement, policy bullet points, and the like would make it easier for voters to make their choices. For example, tapping on John Smith’s name on the sample ballot app might bring up a list like this:
- Biography
- Stand On Major Issues
- Political Philosophy
- Goals If Elected
- 500 Word Campaign Summary
A tap would take the voter to that material which they could check out, then go back to the sample ballot choices.
The individual could fill out the App’s sample ballot and then either print it to a Wi-Fi-connected printer or email it as an attachment which could be printed later. They could then take this printed sample ballot with them to their polling place.
That’s all fine, but it doesn’t solve the other three problems with the current system.
None Of These Alternatives Solve All The Problems
None of these alternatives completely solve the drawbacks of voting on a Tuesday and none of them make the current system as secure as obtaining a fingerprint at the time of registration and then comparing it to the voter’s fingerprint at the time his/her ballot is cast.
Part 2: Another Way To Get The Benefits Of Remote Voting But Without The Risks
Taking The Sample Ballot App One Step Further
There is another way to achieve the four benefits of remote voting
(1) not having to miss work in order to vote;
(2) increasing voter participation;
(3) thwarting voter suppression schemes;
(4) giving voters more and easier access to candidate information
without actually voting over the Internet.
Merging The Benefits Of An App With The Security Of A Paper Ballot
Consider this:
- The county makes available a free Sample Ballot App that runs on Android devices, Apple devices, Windows desktops, and Mac desktops.
- The app would present the list of candidates for each office with links from each candidate’s name to his/her bio, campaign statement, etc.
- For simplicity, the app would present one screen per office — governor, senator, congressperson, etc.
- The voter would select a radio button next to the candidate he/she wishes to vote for, then tap “Next” to be taken to the screen for the next office.
- When the voter had completed voting on the sample ballot app, he/she would either print the ballot directly or email it to themselves for later printing.
- The county would set up automated Voting Kiosks at hundreds of locations. The kiosks would be active 24 hours a day for the entire seven day period before election day.
- Each kiosk would have a fingerprint reader. When a fingerprint was recognized a door would open giving access to a keyboard and a slot that accepts the filled-in, printed ballots created by the app.
- Those ballots would have an encrypted bar code which would identify them as having been generated by the app, but they would not be able to identify the voter.
- The kiosk would not be connected to the Internet.
- At any time during the seven days before the election a voter could insert his/her printed sample ballot into the machine which would recognize it as valid because of the encrypted bar code.
- The voter would then type his/her name and address and his identity would be verified by his fingerprint.
- If the fingerprint was not recognized the voter would be told that he/she will have to vote in person and present a proper ID.
- If the voter’s identity is recognized then the ballot would be stamped with the date and time, a sequential ballot number and the kiosk’s ID code (but not with the voter’s ID) and stored. On some schedule, an election official would unlock the kiosk and collect the ballots.
- When the election closes, these paper ballots would be run through an optical reader and tallied in the same way that hand-created ballots cast in person at a polling place would be scanned and tallied.
This system would be more secure than the current paper ballot system because it would require a fingerprint verification which current systems lack.
It would rely on paper ballots which would be stored for verification.
Each ballot could be authenticated to the originating kiosk through code numbers printed on the ballots in sequential order at the time they were accepted by the kiosk. This would prevent ballots being slipped into the stack or added at the end of the stack.
No part of the kiosk or counting process would be on-line and voters would have a paper ballot that they could check for errors before they delivered it to the kiosk.
This system would be immune to voter suppression schemes, the lost work problem, voter inconvenience problems, no part of the voting chain would be exposed to hackers, and fingerprints would verify the identity of the voter.
Why Change Is Needed
I don’t care about Internet voting for the sake of Internet voting. I do care about making fundamental improvements to the current voting system to remedy as much as possible the four stated problems with the current system.
Sitting back and saying, “Trust us. Do nothing,” is not a viable position.
–David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
