Arizona, California Pilot Voting Over the Internet

Computerworld - As a supervisor for Maricopa County in 1993, Betsey Bayless spent $6 million on then-state-of-the-art voter punch-card scanning machines.
But Maricopa was one of only five counties in Arizona with cash for the newest technology; the other 10 counties still used much older tabulating machines.
Seven years later, Bayless is the secretary of state in Arizona, and she's exploring the possibility of electronic balloting using a computer. A pilot project there and one in California received promising results this fall.
No Overvoting
"You cannot overvote like we're seeing in Florida," said Bayless. "If you vote twice for one office, it will refuse to accept your ballot."
But while electronic voting could help election officials avoid snafus such as those marring this year's presidential election - double voting on a butterfly ballot, poorly punched cards and painfully slow hand recounts - the costs associated with switching to the new systems may prevent the ballot box from going electronic anytime soon.
Positive Reaction
The head of the California Internet Voting Task Force, Alfie Charles, said mouse-driven, point-and-click voting systems drew positive reactions from both voters and elections officials, but he noted that replacing all 100,000 voting machines in California would prove cost-prohibitive.
Bayless said she will meet with election officials in her state this week to discuss the costs of moving forward with electronic balloting.
Arizona and California used computer-based systems designed by VoteHere.net Inc. in Bellevue, Wash., and laptop computers from Compaq Computer Corp. In both trials, voters had to verify their identity with election officials, then cast an electronic ballot on the computer.
VoteHere.net uses a shared public-key security scheme, which encrypts each electronic ballot. The key for decrypting the ballots is shared among election officials, so that no one party can view the actual ballot. "It's like firing a nuclear missile," said Christopher Baum, an analyst at Gartner Group Inc. in Stamford, Conn. "At least two people have to agree that it's a good idea."
Web-based balloting, where consumers cast their vote via a browser from home or other remote locations, faces more security and legal hurdles.
Rick Valelly, a political science professor at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pa., said he would laud a shift to computer-based voting but thinks it should still be done at a polling place.
Valelly contended that absentee voting and remote online voting diminish the civic importance of casting one's vote in person and in the presence of one's neighbors. But in places where problems such as election fraud and location make it difficult