Questions to ask about Internet Voting

Presented to Elections Canada, June 2, 2016

NOTE: For clickable links you will have to download the PDF.

1. Questions to ask about Internet Voting Richard Akerman June 2016
2. The County Election, 1846 2 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_County_Election,_Bingham,_1846.jpg Public domain
3. Voting • Has been designed • Design can be examined in terms of risk • Design can be examined in terms of entire system 3
4. Does the design limit voter coercion? 4
5. Low Medium High Zero 5
6. Coercion Risk Analysis • Voting takes place in a public area (with observers) • Marking the ballot takes place in private, alone • Once the ballot is in the ballot box, it is “detached” from the identity of the voter – no one including the voter can prove how they voted 6
7. 7 Can the voting process be understood and examined?
8. Public Understanding • “all essential steps of an election are subject to the possibility of public scrutiny unless other constitutional interests justify an exception” • The Constitutionality of Electronic Voting in Germany 8 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ibm_pc_5150.jpg by Ruben de Rijcke CC BY-SA
9. Some numbers • 1995 - 50.58% to 49.42% • 2016 - 50.3% to 49.7% • List of close election results 9
10. 10 Is the entire system secure?
11. 11 Copyright © 2014 Richard Akerman https://www.flickr.com/photos/rakerman/14551345714/ Licensed in the Creative Commons CC-BY
12. 12 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Walls_of_Constantinople.JPG CC BY-SA
13. 13 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dardanelles_Gun_Turkish_Bronze_15c.png Public domain
14. In the digital world • Copyable expertise • Scale • Distance – which means you may be facing other nations • Detectability 14 Computers can lie
15. PhotoShop 15 Copyright © 2014 Richard Akerman https://www.flickr.com/photos/rakerman/6346831291/ Licensed in the Creative Commons CC-BY
16. Volkswagen 16 In a world where more and more objects are run by software, we need to have better ways to catch such cheaters. As the Volkswagen case demonstrates, a smart object can lie and cheat. It can tell when it’s being tested, and it can beat the test. New York Times – Volkswagen and the Era of Cheating Software by Zaynep Tufekci, September 23, 2015 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VW_Golf_TDI_Clean_Diesel_WAS_2010_8983.JPG by Mariordo Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz CC BY-SA
17. High risk • “We believe that online voting, especially online voting in large scale, introduces great risk into the election system by threatening voters’ expectations of confidentiality, accountability and security of their votes and provides an avenue for malicious actors to manipulate the voting results.” – Washington Post, May 2016 • Neil Jenkins, Senior Advisor for Cybersecurity Capabilities and Strategy at the US Department of Homeland Security 17
18. Recommendations from computer scientists 18 • To protect the accuracy and impartiality of the electoral process, US ACM makes the following recommendations: – All voting systems -- particularly computer-based electronic voting systems -- embody careful engineering, strong safeguards, and rigorous testing in both their design and operation; and, – Voting systems should also enable each voter to inspect a physical (e.g., paper) record to verify that his or her vote has been accurately cast and to serve as an independent check on the result produced and stored by the system. Making those records permanent (i.e., not based solely in computer memory) provides a means by which an accurate recount may be conducted.
19. Impossible? Or just infeasible? • “Given that sufficiently secure Internet voting systems do not yet exist, they would need to be built. Of course, some systems, like a stone bridge to the moon, are impossible to build. Others, like a stone bridge to Hawaii, are ... exorbitantly expensive.” – Aug. 2015 • Utah - iVote Advisory Committee, Final Report 19
20. Questions • Does the design limit voter coercion? • Can the voting process be understood and examined? • Is the entire system secure? 20
21. Richard Akerman papervotecanada@gmail.com @papervote http://blog.papervotecanada.ca/ Disclaimer: Personal opinions only. Copyright © 2016 Richard Akerman, licensed in the Creative Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 Canada
22. Annex Videos • Tom Scott (8 minutes) • Andrew Appel (21 minutes) Reports • BC Independent Panel on Internet Voting • Assessment of Electronic Voting Options – Australian Parliament • Independent Report on E-voting in Estonia 22