Friday, June 22, 2012

The Pathetic State of Internet Voting in the USA

Why doesn’t Internet voting have a massive following in the US, like it should?

The anti-Internet voting special interests have created a Moral Panic about it in the US. (I explain how they did it in chapters one and five, Internet Voting Now.) Those of us who see the potential for democratic reform in Internet voting can only try to chip away at the security fears they have engendered. That’s what I’ve been trying to do with this blog and my other writings.

I am not alone. The guys who wrote reviews of my book at amazon.com are strong supporters of Internet voting. Indeed, the book review pages at Amazon.com give an excellent insight into who populates the separate camps. See, for example, my review of the newest anti-Internet voting propaganda tract, Broken Ballots (Don't forget to click yes if you like my review.) Take a look at the other “reviews” and comments. Nearly all the members of the opposition special interest groups are there. In fact, they are so well funded that they can even afford to have Rush Holt represent them in Congress and recommend their book. David Jefferson is their public face. The Verified Voting Foundation is their propaganda machine. They have a paid full time staff.

Advocates of Internet voting have a very modest presence on the web. Besides my blog there are:

Cyber the Vote

The League of Internet Voters on Face Book

And this FB page, too! Internet Voting Now

Welcome to this newer voice, at the iVote Face Book page.  Here you will find the wise statement that, and I paraphrase, Internet voting can make the voting process more simplified, convenient, and accessible to all citizens of the United States. Votes will be cast for our future leaders from, break rooms, coffee shops, libraries, living rooms, anywhere, and everywhere. By its convenience alone, Internet voting will empower every voter more than ever before in US history.

Voting in the United States today is an inconvenient, confusing, and time-consuming process. This process is, and has been, a barrier to many who want to vote. There are over 207 million eligible voters today, of which only 56.8% were able to vote during the last presidential election, and 37.8% during the last non-presidential election. More votes were cast for the last American Idol (97.5M) than were for our last President (69.4M), because it was simpler.

The voices of citizens stationed overseas, traveling abroad, or those unable to take a day off work, cannot be heard under our current voting process. An absentee ballot helps, but is also inconvenient. Technology exists today that can provide our citizens the opportunity to participate in our democracy, and vote online, no mater where they are on the planet.

I endorse this statement 100%! I also endorse, with equal passion, this explanation of how US presidential elections can be organized around Internet voting so that the voters, and not the two-party system elites, have complete election power. Also, see the comments to that article by me and iVote.

Pathetically, except for a limited use in Arizona,* NO states will be using Internet voting for the 2012 election.  Friends of Democracy! Don't be swayed by a Moral Panic ignited by nothing more than scary stories w/o science. Read. Think. And demand Internet voting from your state's Secretary of State.

William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.
Email: Internetvoting@gmail.com
Twitter: wjkno1

Author of Internet Voting Now!
Kindle edition
In paper

*The West Virginia legislature did not allocate the funds needed to renew that state's exemplary 2010 Internet voting program for its overseas military.  According to the AZ SoS, to use Arizona’s secure ballot upload system, the overseas military voter must have received a user ID and password from their local election official.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Americans Elect is a FIRST ATTACK on the Two-Party System!

Friends of Political Reform!

Americans Elect has entered a new phase. First, it has now gained ballot access in 25 states, and the momentum to have it in the rest of the states is unstoppable. They have a sterling legal team hard at work in every state. All the rich investors are in. Their money has been committed to creating the asset. Now the roots are firmly in the ground and growing. Now, AE is a $30M asset waiting to be used. Any organized group can grab it and use it to put one of their own on 50 state ballots.

Secondly, the investors have laid off most of their paid staff. They are intentionally giving the process over to whomever volunteers to take on the responsibility. Any organized group can become volunteers and rule by democratic means. That is what the Ackermans intended from the beginning. Soon a website, built by volunteers, will come online. Candidates will have pages, blogs, and be able to meet with voters and discuss issues. There will be debates between candidates.

As organized and purposeful volunteers, we can make Americans Elect a first attack on the two-party system! If this succeeds, we will be a threat to that system in every state in 2014 and 2016. If we can unite third parties and independents, and agree on one candidate, we can take over this asset.

This is NOT about policy. So what if a former Dem and a former Repub are the first candidates nominated by AE? So what if they are “centrists”?

Policy is not the key issue in this pregnant moment. Remember, in the 1930s Communist Mao Tse-tung joined forces with his arch-enemy and capitalist Chiang Kai-shek to fight the Japanese invaders of China. These two leaders had their priorities straight – first defeat the common enemy, then go back to fighting over how China should be governed.

Lets learn from that historic event. We can beat our common enemy! Our country is crippled by a two-party system that puts its own interests above those of the nation. They battle each other over the leadership of their system and the spoils their puppet masters reap, while the rest of the country goes down the tubes.

It doesn’t matter if AE lacks a candidate with lots of celebrity. Just because we don’t have a Second Coming of Jesus doesn’t mean we have no chance at Salvation.

We don’t have to roll over and let the two-party system walk on us. We don't have to work, like fools, within that system. If we can unify the opposition to the two-party system, and use AE to erect a viable alternative process to the selection and election of office-holders, we can then go back to disputing the best policies for our country.

This is a HUGE opportunity to begin a real revolution in our sick political system.

The sickness is due to the current PROCESS of selecting and electing candidates for office. As we all know, money rules in the two-party system. That system is the cover used by the Ruling Rich so they can govern and claim we live in a “democracy.” Now comes Americans Elect, and all the candidates are self-chosen or drafted by AE members, and they all appear before the voters FOR FREE. Imagine – winning a national primary and having no political debts, except to the voters.

The original American Dream was to have Liberty through self-government. We can realize that dream with this priceless asset now within reach.

Past conceptions of AE conjured up a trap by Wall Street. Some donors remain unidentified, because they fear economic retaliation from the agents of the Establishment. But the donors are not in control of the process. The process can’t be manipulated without detection. Don't let your concepts from yesterday blind you to today's opportunities! It is an open and transparent PROCESS, not a party.

Their online primary is in June. It is open to all - as candidates or as voters. It is a $30M asset that any organized group can use. We only need to back one candidate, and she/he will be on the ballot in all 50 states. Also, because AE will be conducting our country’s FIRST online national primary, there will be many hours of media coverage; again, free to the AE nominee! Not only that, but the AE nominee will be in an excellent position to qualify for the coming series of presidential debates.

Don't let fear cause you to loose this chance for real reform - the rich guys who pay the bills WILL NOT interfere. That would destroy their asset, because AE's success depends upon being truly democratic. The donors are business people. They aren’t going to throw away $30M by acting like dictators.

“Death to the Two-Party System!”


William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.
Political Scientist:
CEO, The Internet Voting Research and Education Fund
Internetvoting@gmail.com
Blog: http://tinyurl.com/IV4All
Twitter: wjkno1

Author: Internet Voting Now!
Kindle edition
In paper

Monday, April 2, 2012

Gail Collins Critique of Americans Elect – Rejoinder Americans Elect Fights Back

A cute little pixy jester who writes for the New York Times recently wrote that what “makes our current politics particularly awful isn’t procedural.” She blames it all on the extremists in the Republican Party. She opines that Americans Elect is not only a mere “fantasy… But it’s too dangerous.” For her, “the whole Americans Elect concept is delusional…” and a cyber temptation for people with a “purity of heart” to waste their votes on “Fred Website.” In her view, the only way to save the nation is to re-elect Barack Obama.

In just a few hours, this opinion drew so many comments (close to 400) for and against that the NYT closed the comments section.

So, here is a comment from AE Delegate, Don Gordon, that didn’t get passed the gate before it was shut. (It’s followed by a few of other comments, as well.)

Well Gail, you should know that I’m a regular subscriber to the NYT and I’m also a Delegate Leader for Americans Elect here in Illinois. From time to time I find your opinions quite lucent and on target. Today is not one of those moments. When I opened the paper this afternoon – yes, I’m one of those dinosaurs who still read the tactile version of the NYT – I was quite dismayed that your opinions on Americans Elect were so off the target. There are so many misconceptions in your short piece that I have to be diligent in not writing a tome in response.

So, let me start by saying that overall you make the same mistake that many others have, though a few get it right. That mistake is to evaluate Americans Elect on what it is attempting to do immediately and to ignore the long term implications. You’re to be forgiven for that because our political system is so banged up that expectations are extremely high for any organization that comes along to make a change to repair that system. Part of the problem lies with Americans Elect as well. [AE spokesperson,] Ms. Malm should have made the point that not only is this about “disruption for the good” but it’s about setting in play “future disruption”. There are lessons to be learned once this is over, and those are going to be valuable lessons that Americans Elect is creating and will inform future initiatives such as this. Now on to some of your quotes…

Gail: “History suggests that this election could be decided by a small number of votes…”
Don: Ok, here we go down the rabbit hole of don’t vote for the other 3rd, 4th, 5th party candidate because they could upset MY candidate from winning – what is becoming known as the “Nader Effect”. Really, Ms. Collins? Well, I’m appalled at that assessment. Your job, my job, everyone else’s job as the electorate is to assess the candidates based on their qualifications – not party labels – and to vote for whom we think is the best qualified not the one who has the best chance of winning. And that last notion may eventually go down in the Republican dialogue as the “Romney Effect”.

Gail: “The whole Americans Elect concept is delusional…we the people are good and pure and if only we were allowed to just pick the best person…”
Don: What is delusional – actually insane by Ben Franklin’s estimation – is that we continue to cough up the same old, same old candidate choices because the Republican-Democratic Party Politburo limits our choices and prevents others from gaining any traction whatsoever regardless of how qualified they may be. To continue to pick from the pre-ordained party hacks in expectation that the system will get better is not only delusional, it is indeed insanity.

Gail: “Buddy Roemer, the former governor of Louisiana whose candidacy was so deeply unsuccessful that he couldn’t even qualify for the debates…”
Don: And should he or anyone else for that matter on the Americans Elect ticket or the Green Party or the Libertarian Party achieve ballot access in most the 50 states, they will still be denied access to the Presidential debates if they don’t achieve a 15% polling as dictated by the Republican-Democratic Party Politburo’s communication arm – The Commission On Presidential Debates.

Finally, and this is my favorite faux pas that I hear so often:
Gail: “There is the opportunity to create a presidential nominee who will promise to bring us all together … Barack Obama.”
Don: Well, you’re either delusional or naïve. I voted for Barack and I certainly didn’t drink the Kool-Aid that he – a Democrat – was going to take his partisan ideologies into Washington and convince all those Republicans that they’re on the wrong side of the aisle. I voted for Barack because he could put two sentences together and would keep the rest of the world from viewing us as some bunch of crazed cowboys. Did you really drink the Kool-Aid, Gail? Because it certainly appears from this article that you did…

Thanks, Don! Somebody needs to start fighting back for AE. RE Gail's claim that our problem is "not procedural," here are a couple of comments that did get included following Gail’s essay:

One “JRHCarmel” commented in the NYT,
“The greatest aspect of the Americans Elect process is enabling voters to match their views against those of the candidates based on a battery of policy questions that the candidates must answer. Most voters would like to tune out all the divisive rhetoric and pandering and determine which candidates most closely reflect their views without pundits, ads, or party elites directing their choices. The more of us who participate in AE, the more quickly it will evolve toward a process that places the needs of voters ahead of parties.”

Another comment in the NYT by “W.A. SpitzerFaywood,” states, in part,
“The major problem is the two party primary system which tends to select fringe candidates. This is amplified by the fact that more than a third of the voters consider themselves to be independents, and in many states are prohibited from voting in the party primaries.” His “solution” is to have a national primary, very much like the one AE is now offering. “This would force the candidates to run more toward the center where the majority of voters are truly represented, and would therefore select more moderate candidates; it would prevent a candidate from winning a general election unless they had at least 50% of the votes; and by having one primary rather than two it would not subsidies party politics, and would be less expensive.”

Finally, another critique of the NYT article comes from Laurence J. Kotlikoff, Candidate for President on the AE website

As to Ms. Collins’s fear that AE might result in votes being drawn away from Obama, Mr. Kotlikoff writes
“Gail, … Fear is no basis for choosing our leaders. Americans Elect may be the country's only hope of staving off indefinite political gridlock and watching the country continue to slide down hill. [You need to educate yourself.] For starters you could look at the policies I lay out, [and] the policy plans of the other declared candidates on Americans Elect. … America's future is no joke.”

Way to go, Laurence! Come on AE supporters, more of us need to start fighting back!

“Death to the Two-Party System!”

William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.
Political Scientist, author, speaker,
CEO for The Internet Voting Research and Education Fund, a CA Nonprofit Foundation
Email: Internetvoting@gmail.com
Blog: http://tinyurl.com/IV4All
Twitter: wjkno1

Author of Internet Voting Now!
Kindle edition: http://tinyurl.com/IntV-Now

In paper: http://tinyurl.com/IVNow2011

Thursday, February 16, 2012

News Hour Internet Voting Story

Have you seen the News Hour Internet voting story?

Internet Voting: Will Democracy or Hackers Win?


They followed the exact storyline set out in my blog posts!
Here they are:
Cyber Bullying in Connecticut: A Lesson in Empathy

West Virginia Secretary of State, Natalie Tennant is the victim!

Also see,
Kelleher’s Account of Cyber Bullying in Connecticut Verified


For more on Tennant:
Internet Voting Profile in Courage: Natalie Tennant


On my continuing debate w/ David Jefferson (leader of the opposition):

My Comments on the News Hour story:

Over all, its a balanced report. But they left out one hugely important FACT - namely, Wagner, Jefferson, Halderman, Rivest et al can't give even one instance of a hacking into an actual Internet vote election. DC was just a very first trial, and it failed. But DC was NOT a real election. All over the world - Norway, Switzerland, Estonia, India, Canada, New South Wales, and other places have had Internet voting election w/o security breeches. Elections Canada, the agency that administers national elections there, has ask the gov to make all national elections online. Tennant's experience shows, along w/ the rest of the world, that Internet voting can be done securely. It will boost turnout, too!

Another thing the News Hour report doesn't tell you is how Internet voting, rightly organized, can neutralize Big Money in all US elections. Yet another is that paper based businesses, like big newspaper corporations, spread false scary stories about supposed Internet voting insecurity. This is the main reason why the USA has almost no Internet voting. If we had it, it could empower the moderate middle class like never before, end elite rule, and stop all partisan bickering in Washington. That is what my book, Internet Voting Now, is all about. But here are a couple of my old blog posts on this:

How Internet Voting Can Support Nonpartisan Politics

and
US Social Forum


William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.
Political Scientist, author, speaker,
CEO for The Internet Voting Research and Education Fund, a CA Nonprofit Foundation
Email: Internetvoting@gmail.com
Blog: http://tinyurl.com/IV4All
Twitter: wjkno1

Author of Internet Voting Now!
Kindle edition
In paper

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Oscar Internet Voting Plan Attacked With Scary Stories, But NO SCIENCE!

Here is my Letter to The Guardian Newspaper, which as far as I know was never printed by them.

On Sat, Feb 4, 2012 at 2:48 PM, William J. Kelleher, Ph.D. wrote:

Dear Editor of The Guardian UK:

Your recent article about the plans to have Oscar voting done online falls far below your usual standard of responsible journalism. The article presents several scary stories about what security breaches “could” happen, but offers no FACTS to back up the fear mongering.

Here is one scary story, for starters: “Computer security experts have warned [of] … cyber attacks that could falsify the outcome but remain undetected.” Well, that is scary! But has it ever really happened?

The answer is a big NO! Internet voting has been conducted in Norway, Switzerland, India, Canada, and here in the US in several places, including West Virginia. In every case, technical and political experts, including officials and the public, were satisfied with the integrity of the vote. There were no undetected Leprechauns that snuck in and changed everyone’s vote. In Estonia one voter challenged an election by Internet voting, but the court rejected the claim after studying the evidence.

Mr. Dill, whom you quote as your authority, states a perennial problem for all large voting systems when he says you can’t know if your vote for A was really counted as a vote for B. But this is not just a problem for Internet voting. Unless you can see the raised hands of all the voters in a room, you can never know how, or if, your vote was counted.

In all representative democracies, the voters must rely on their representatives to do a responsible and professional job. That is what has happened in all Internet voting trials around the world – and it will happen in the votes for Oscar, too. Responsible officials can be trusted to pick professional technicians to set up the Internet voting systems. These technicians understand all the security threats Mr. Dill dredges up. They know how to mitigate each threat, and how to protect the integrity of the election.

Unfortunately, the writer of this article seems to have slipped a bit on his journalistic integrity. He fails completely to list all the successful Internet voting projects that I mentioned. Also, in one paragraph we are told that "30" computer scientists signed a letter warning of the dangers of Internet voting for overseas Democrats. Yet the writer then reveals that he told “the Academy's chief operating officer, Ric Robertson, … of the near-total unanimity of computer experts [that Internet voting was insecure].” Give me a break!

How does any credible writer get from “30” to “near-total unanimity”? There must be thousands of computer scientists in the world, and Dill was only able to recruit 30. For every successful Internet voting event, there were dozens of experts who worked on the project, and who knew it could be done. So, no "unanimity" there. I'll bet that NOT ONE of those 30, including Mr. Dill, has ever actually worked at setting up an Internet voting system. So, what do they know? Just a bunch of theoretical scary stories!

Also, the writer of this article made a statement about the hacking incident in Washington, DC which is, at best, misleading. He tells his trusting readers that “overseas voters were invited to vote by internet in a local election in Washington, DC.” Not exactly! The Internet voting system was opened to the public for its first ever test. This was definitely NOT “a local election,” but mere practice several days before the scheduled election. The practice showed that the system wasn't ready to be used; so, it was not used for the real election.

Your readers expect some balance in the articles they read. But they won’t get that unless they read this letter to the Editor.

Yours,

William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.
Twitter: wjkno1
Email: Internetvoting@gmail.com
Blog: http://internetvotingforall.blogspot.com/
Author of Internet Voting Now!
On Kindle
And in paper http://tinyurl.com/IVNow2011

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Americans Elect Invites Vote Buying & Selling, Rejects Voter Privacy!

AE presents itself as a bold alternative to the two-party system. “Pick a person, not a party,” they say. All you have to do is be a registered voter, and sign up on their website at AmericansElect.org. Then you will be eligible to vote ONLINE for any of the qualified candidates in their primary competition.

Up to this point, the project seems to have some promise as a democratic reform. Any registered voter can participate, no matter what party affiliation, or no party affiliation. Candidates can self-select, or be drafted, and don’t need any campaign contributions to be considered by the voters. Best of all, from my point of view, they are going to use Internet voting.

Unfortunately, the process is far from flawless. As first reported in Rick Hasen’s Election Law blog, the AE vote will NOT BE A SECRET VOTE. According to AE, “Each vote is tied to name. Necessary so we can audit the convention afterwards. This is not a secret vote (like the general election is).”

What are they thinking? Does AE have a public relations Death Wish? Let me try to put this problem in context.

Internet voting is being used all over the world. In Europe, Estonia, Switzerland, and Norway use it. In India, the state of Gujarat uses it (and in a recent election had over 77% turnout). Based on the several successful online votes in Canadian cities, Elections Canada, the agency that runs national elections, has requested that the government make Internet voting its official voting technology. In the USA, Hawaii, Kings County Washington, and West Virginia have used it. Both France and Mexico City are planning to use Internet voting for their overseas voters.

Each of these systems was set up by teams of professional technicians who knew what they were doing, and did it well. No security breaches or hackers changed any votes, or violated the privacy of any voters. These systems were set up to allow voters to log on, have their eligibility verified, and then vote on the secure servers which held the voting website. Separate modules verify the voter’s registration, and keep the record of the vote. Thus, no voter’s privacy is compromised. Also, since there are no records kept of a voter’s name and how he or she voted, no one can prove to a potential vote buyer how he or she voted.

AE declines to use this well tested Internet voting technology. Instead, they use a process that dredges up some of the worst election practices ever used. They reject the principle of voter privacy, and they will keep both an electronic and a paper copy of the voter’s name and vote together. Indeed, these records will be shared with the auditing company they have hired. Untold numbers of people will read these names and votes.

Worse still, I have been told that AE will mail out paper copies of name and vote together to each voter, so that he or she can see how his or her vote was recorded. If so, what a handy receipt this will be for a vote seller to show a vote buyer!

Haven’t the Ackermans ever heard of the “Australian Ballot”? This was once a major reform of election practices in the US. Now AE is going to ignore this reform and thereby invite a resurrection of the very corrupt practices the reform was meant to stop.

AE has a lot of promise as a democratic reform. But once people, who are eager for more democracy, see what they are getting into, who will want to support such stupidity?

There is still time to correct this misguided slipping into the worst of America’s past, when voters had no privacy and votes were bought and sold. True Internet voting is being done around the world. Even the vote for the Oscars in 2013 will be true Internet voting! Hey, AE – lets get with it!

William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.
Political Scientist, author, speaker,
CEO for The Internet Voting Research and Education Fund, a CA Nonprofit Foundation
Email: Internetvoting@gmail.com
Blog: http://tinyurl.com/IV4All
Twitter: wjkno1

Author of Internet Voting Now!
On Kindle and in paper

For my discussion with Joshua Levine about AE potential PR problems, see this

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Cyber Bullying in Connecticut: A Lesson in Empathy

Cyber bullying is the mean and unfair treatment of a person on the Internet. They had a feeding frenzy of it recently in Connecticut.[1] Before I report what happened there, please keep this set of questions in mind. That is, suppose a woman is the only one wearing a red dress at a party. During the event, the guy with the loudest mouth blurts out “of all the styles of dresses, the red dress is the bottom of the barrel!” How would the lone red dress wearer feel? Happy? Complimented? Attacked? Angry? Embarrassed? How would you feel? Here's what happened.

An anti-Internet voting political science department in a Connecticut university, and their allies, organized a lop-sided panel to “discuss” the pros and cons of the Northern state taking up Internet voting for their overseas military personnel. Three avidly anti-Internet voting computer science professors, and a rich lady who owns an anti-Internet voting website, were on one side of the panel. Completely alone on the other side was Natalie Tennant, Secretary of State for West Virginia.[2]

This wasn’t an actual “discussion;” instead, it was an online propaganda festival of anti-Internet voting negativity interspersed with just a few positive statements from Secretary Tennant. Ron Rivest, one of the biased computer scientists, provided some telling examples of the lack of scientific sophistication his side displayed. Early in the proceeding Professor Rivest wittily declared that the term “Internet voting” is an oxymoron, like “safe cigarettes.” Cute, but where’s the science? At no point in the day did he, or any of the opposition, present any facts about actual breaches of security in an Internet voting trial (except, of course, the DC hack, which was not an actual election [3]).

When the moderator suggested that there are several different types of voting technology, Prof Rivest blurted out that Internet voting is “the bottom of the barrel!”

Despite those comments, Secretary Tennant encouraged Connecticut to use Internet voting for its overseas military voters. She stated that the West Virginia legislature had long been concerned that members of the overseas military were unable to vote because the method of voting by mail was too inconvenient and prone to errors. After the 2009 MOVE Act required the states to set up systems for electronically sending ballots to overseas military, the state legislature began considering legislation to allow her office to set up a system of Internet voting. The resulting legislation passed unanimously.

The new law required an initial trial involving just a few counties. The first test was the primary vote in 2010. It went so well that Secretary Tennant asked the legislature to expand the number of counties involved for the general election vote, which they promptly did.

Professor Halderman interrupted Ms. Tennant and demanded to know how her office vetted the companies that provided the Internet voting service. She replied that the vendors had to agree to several conditions. One of these was that third party experts had to be allowed to inspect the equipment and operating codes the vendors used. She said the companies not only agreed to these conditions, but offered to do the whole job for free, as a demonstration project. Given that situation, the Secretary’s office decided not to exercise its right to bring in a third party inspector. She said she trusted the companies.

At one point, Prof Rivest, who had never had any personal interaction with the company representatives, declared that the vendors could be corrupt and she wouldn’t know it. Isn’t that possible, he demanded.

She said that besides trusting the vendor you have to trust every kind of vote counting machine, not just Internet voting servers. CT, for example, uses optical scanning machines to count its votes. The voter fills in a bubble with a pencil on a paper card. But suppose one of the employees feeding the cards to the scanning machine in the election office is an unscrupulous partisan. He can hide a piece of pencil lead under his finger nail, and put an extra mark on cards with votes he doesn’t like. Then the machine would reject the card as a double vote, and nobody would know that a vote had been sabotaged.

Her point, of course, is that every complex vote counting system requires some degree of trust. Election officials have to exercise their professional judgment as to when such trust is reasonable. In reply to a question from the moderator, Ms. Tennant stated that she trusted the workers in her department because it was like a small community. She trusted the system because it used military grade encryption, had an intrusion detection function, and other security checks. She also pointed out that it was a serious felony to tamper with elections, and this law is a part of the security system.

Professor Halderman pressed the matter by demanding to know if West Virginia would allow hackers a chance to try to hack into the system, like the officials did in Washington DC. She said that the system actually belonged to the companies, and that the state lacked the authority to invite hackers to freely test the system.

He: What’s so secret that venders won’t open it up?
She: I can’t answer for them, professor.
He: Why didn’t you require a public test?
She: (With a smile,) we did do some testing, and caught an inverted number.
He: In the future would you run a public trial, like DC?
She: I can’t say right now.

The website owner, Ms. Dzieduszycka-Suinat, suggested that West Virginia was using its overseas military voters as “guinea pigs.” Later Prof Rivest blurted out, with all the science he could muster, that Internet voting is “like skating on thin ice.”

Undaunted, Ms. Tennant stated in her concluding remarks that she still feels that she made the right judgment by trusting the companies. She felt that she was doing the right thing for West Virginia’s military voters. Her husband is stationed in Afghanistan, and he saw first hand how difficult voting is for many of the service members there. She has recieved letters of gratitude from military personnel. The lone defender of Internet voting on this panel, she said that if she must, for the sake of her military voters, (and I quote) “I’ll continue to sit up here and take the attacks, take the arrows ... and things like that!”

As the panelists rose from their seats to leave the stage, Ron Rivest was heard to exclaim, “Internet voting is like drunk driving,” and he burst into triumphant laughter.



[1] See video at http://www.ctvoterscount.org/secretary-of-the-states-online-voting-symposium/[2] See Natalie Tennant: Internet Voting Profile in Courage http://t.co/aRd9W3o
[3] RE: DC see http://tinyurl.com/DCin2010

Email Denise Merrill Connecticut Secretary of State and ask that she follow West Virginia’s lead to serve CT’s military voters:
denise.merrill@ct.gov
William J. Kelleher, Ph.D.
Blog: http://tinyurl.com/IV4All
Twitter: wjkno1
Email: Internetvoting@gmail.com
Author of Internet Voting Now!
Kindle edition: http://tinyurl.com/IntV-Now
In paper: http://tinyurl.com/IVNow2011

PS
Cyberulling, of course, is not limited to supporters of Internet voting. See this informative article --  Cyberbullying: How Bullies Have Moved From the Playground to the Web


NEW!
For more on Alex Halderman see, in this blog,

Alex Halderman Debates Internet Voting Security w/ Me