It has been well understood for more than 15 years that computerized voting machines can be hacked to make them cheat (or might be misconfigured by accident), and therefore it is essential to have random audits of the ballots. That is: Human inspection of paper ballots that the voters marked, of a random sample of […]
Voting by mail in NJ 2020
September 12, 2020 by
For hundreds of years, New Jersey voters have voted in their local precinct polling places (800 registered voters per precinct), with only a tiny percentage voting absentee. This year, for reasons of public health in the pandemic, all voters will receive a mail-in ballot; a few polling places will be open on November 3rd for […]
Safely opening PDFs received by e-mail (or fax?!)
June 24, 2020 by
Many election administrators in U.S. states and counties need to receive and open PDF files from voters. Some of these administrators receive these PDFs as e-mail attachments. These may be filled-out voter registration forms, or even voted ballots from UOCAVA (overseas and military) voters. We all know that malware can lurk in e-mail attachments; how […]
NJ agrees No Internet voting in July, vague about November
June 20, 2020 by
A formal settlement agreement has been submitted to the NJ Superior Court regarding online ballot access in the 2020 elections. On May 4, 2020, New Jersey’s Division of Elections was caught trying to adopt vote-by-Internet on the stealth, even though the law forbids it. That is, not only is Internet voting inherently insecurable, there’s a […]
Democracy Live internet voting: unsurprisingly insecure, and surprisingly insecure
June 8, 2020 by
The OmniBallot internet voting system from Democracy Live finds surprising new ways to be insecure, in addition to the usual (severe, fatal) insecurities common to all internet voting systems. There’s a very clear scientific consensus that “the Internet should not be used for the return of marked ballots” because “no known technology guarantees the secrecy, security, and […]
