Download PDF

March 18, 2025

Committee on State Government & Tribal Relations

Washington House of Representatives

416 Sid Snyder SW

Olympia, WA 98504

via email

Dear Chair Mena and Committee Members,

On behalf of Verified Voting, I write in opposition to the online portal for electronic ballot return provisions included in Senate Bill 5017. Since our founding in 2004 by a group of computer scientists, we have advocated for policies that promote the responsible use of technology in elections. Electronic ballot return fails to meet the standard of responsible use. 

Four federal government agencies have concluded in a risk assessment that electronic ballot return is “High” risk, even with security safeguards and cyber precautions in place. The agencies warn that electronic ballot return “faces significant security risks to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of voted ballots,” and that these risks can “ultimately affect the tabulation and results and can occur at scale,” and explicitly recommend paper ballots. The risk assessment was issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) and the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). 

In its 2018 consensus report, Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine stated bluntly: “At the present time, the Internet (or any network connected to the Internet) should not be used for the return of marked ballots. Further, Internet voting should not be used in the future until and unless very robust guarantees of security and verifiability are developed and in place, as no known technology guarantees the secrecy, security, and verifiability of a marked ballot transmitted over the Internet.”

NIST, the federal agency responsible for issuing cybersecurity standards, conducted research on ways to enhance accessibility for voters with disabilities. In its 2022 report, Promoting Access to Voting, NIST did not recommend electronic ballot return, instead concluding, “there remain significant security, privacy, and ballot secrecy challenges.”

In late 2022, a blue ribbon panel convened by the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Security in Politics concluded that creating standards for online ballot return, so that it can be done securely and privately, was not feasible. “When internet ballot return is employed,” the Working Group wrote, “it may be possible for a single attacker to alter thousands or even millions of votes. And this lone individual could perpetrate an attack from a different continent from the one where the election is being held—perhaps even while under the protection of a rogue nation where there is no concern of repercussions.”

Over the past 25+ years, electronic ballot return has been studied by computer scientists, security experts, cybersecurity experts, and even the Department of Defense. Study after study comes back with the same conclusion: electronic ballot return is risky, dangerous, and insecure. Understanding that the state of Washington already allows some electronic ballot return, the creation of an online portal for this purpose is not more secure, contrary to popular belief.

At a time when election security and public confidence are under relentless attack, Washington should not rely on insecure technology for voters that produces unprovable election results. We urge you to remove the online portal for electronic ballot return provisions from Senate Bill 5017 and reject any other proposal that includes electronic return of voted ballots.

Respectfully submitted,

C.Jay Coles

Deputy Director of Legislative Affairs

1.  1 | U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Institute of Standards and Technology & U.S. Election Assistance Commission, Risk Management for Electronic Ballot Delivery, Marking, and Return 1 (2020, reissued 2024), https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/resources/risk-management-electronic-ballot-delivery-marking-and-return. 
2. 2 | National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy 9, 106 (2018), https://verifiedvoting.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/National-Academy-Report-_Securing-the-Vote-Protecting-American-Democracy_.pdf.  
3. 3 | National Institute of Standards and Technology, Promoting Access to Voting: Recommendations for Addressing Barriers to Private and Independent Voting for People with Disabilities 48 (2022), https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.1273.pdf. 
4. 4 | R. Michael Alvarez et al., University of California, Berkeley Center for Security in Politics, Working Group Statement on Developing Standards for Internet Ballot Return 10 (2022), https://csp.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Working-Group-Statement-on-Internet-Ballot-Return.pdf. The working group was funded by Tusk Philanthropies, which campaigns for every American to be able to vote on their mobile phone.