The Case for Mobile App Voting: Can We Know the Risks to the Whole Election?
This is final part of a 4-part mini-series of comments by our co-founder & CTO, John Sebes
Credit: Carmen Murillo
In a recent InformationWeek Dark Reading article, Kelly Jackson Higgins asks whether Internet voting by mobile app is better than other forms of Internet voting, based on better security.
Rewinding to the beginning of this series: my response is, “No, App based mobile voting isn’t preferable to other forms based on security.” However, it might be preferable to other methods based on voter convenience, but there are many other factors including, but not limited to, available budget, and the level of technology and cybersecurity sophistication of an elections office in considering such an initiative.
The hardest part – recalling my analogy of flying blind in a snowstorm (Part 1) is in common with any Internet voting scheme: always remembering that it is like flying blind, and ensuring that it’s only done when absolutely necessary.
Before getting to the very last question, let’s revisit the risk to an entire election of even a small amount of Internet voting. The risk starts with the fact that digitally returned ballots cannot be verified as having been what the voter sent. As a result, what happens when there is a very close election, and the number of Internet ballots exceeds the margin of victory? The election is fundamentally tainted. There’s no way to be sure that the stated winner is the actual winner, when there is no way to convincingly prove that every single one of the Internet ballots was legitimate.
That leads to the last question:
“How do we know that Internet voting is only used for that sliver of the population that is overseas and for whom the Internet-download with 45-day return time frame really, really, really will not work?”
How do we know that, collectively, we are taking on this risk to the entire election – a really close one that’s decided by unverifiable Internet ballots – only in the absolutely required cases?
I wish I had an answer to that question! I don’t, and I don’t believe anyone does.