Why Internet Voting is a Threat to Our Democracy by Barbara Simons, Verified Voting Board Chair Imagine what would happen if, six months after an internet-based election, we learned that the election had been hacked and the wrong people declared the winners? Or, if a group claimed to have hacked the election and we can’t…
The breakdown of the Iowa caucus’s mobile reporting app on February 3 highlights the risks of implementing new voting technologies that rely on the internet. Verified Voting advocates for the responsible use of technology in elections, and as President Marian K. Schneider noted, “The good news is that {Iowa) didn’t use (a mobile app) for…
This statement is intended to clarify Verified Voting’s position regarding the use of ballot-marking devices (BMDs) in elections, and the use of risk-limiting audits (RLAs). It is approved by the President, Board of Directors, and Staff of Verified Voting. Ballot-marking devices Verified Voting believes that voters should vote on paper ballots, but we recognize an…
Author: Andrew Appel Because voting machines contain computers that can be hacked to make them cheat, “Elections should be conducted with human-readable paper ballots. These may be marked by hand or by machine (using a ballot-marking device); they may be counted by hand or by machine (using an optical scanner). Recounts and audits should be…
Author: Andrew Appel This article was originally posted at Freedom to Tinker on October 22, 2018. In my last three articles I described the ES&S ExpressVote, the Dominion ImageCast Evolution, and the Dominion ImageCast X (in its DRE+VVPAT configuration). There’s something they all have in common: they all violate a certain principle of voter verifiability.…
Author: Andrew Appel This article was originally posted at Freedom to Tinker on October 16, 2018. The Dominion ImageCast Evolution looks like a pretty good voting machine, but it has a serious design flaw: after you mark your ballot, after you review your ballot, the voting machine can print more votes on it!. Fortunately, this…
Author: David Jefferson Click here to download a PDF version of this blog In the last couple of years several startup companies have begun to promote Internet voting systems, this time with a new twist – using a blockchain as the container for voted ballots transmitted from voters’ private devices. Blockchains are a relatively new…
Author: Douglas W. Jones This article was originally posted at phys.org. As voters prepare to cast their ballots in the November midterm elections, it’s clear that U.S. voting is under electronic attack. Russian government hackers probed some states’ computer systems in the runup to the 2016 presidential election and are likely to do so again…
Author: Bruce Schneier This article was published by The Guardian on April 18, 2018. Bruce Schneier is a fellow and lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School and a member of the advisory board of Verified Voting. Elections serve two purposes. The first, and obvious, purpose is to accurately choose the winner. But the second is equally important:…
Author: Alex Halderman This testimony was delivered at a hearing on June 21, 2017. (Download PDF) Chairman Burr, Vice Chairman Warner, and members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to speak today about the security of U.S. elections. I’m here to tell you not just what I think, but about concerns shared by…