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The Department of Defense has decided, at least for now, to drop its efforts to give overseas U.S. military personnel voting access over the Internet, because of concerns about the security of the system.
In a Jan. 30 memo to David Chu, the undersecretary of Defense for personnel and readiness, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz wrote that "in view of the inability to ensure legitimacy of votes that would be cast in the SERVE Internet voting project, thereby bringing into doubt the integrity of the election, I hereby direct you to take immediate steps to ensure that no voters use the system to register or vote via the Internet."
The memo was released Thursday by a Pentagon spokesman who was asked about the status of the controversial voting program known as the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, or SERVE.
Not Dead Yet
Wolfowitz wrote in the memo that "efforts will continue to demonstrate the technical ability to cast ballots over the Internet." He added that he might reconsider his decision "if it can be shown that the integrity of the election results can be assured."
The Wolfowitz memo came nine days after four technology experts criticized SERVE in a 34-page report to the Defense Department's Federal Voting Assistance Program .
One of the writers of the report, Barbara Simons, a former president of the Association for Computing Machinery, said she's pleased with the decision. "We're moving ahead too quickly," she said. "It's possible in the foreseeable future that it will be safe to vote on the Internet, but it may never be."
One problem is that, unlike with paper ballots and voting machines, there's no audit trail for online votes, so there's no way to be certain whether votes are counted, Simons said.
"Our great fear is that there will be a major move to Internet voting, which I personally feel is a threat to our democracy. The bottom line is we could have our president selected by [hackers in] Iran," Simons said. "We basically feel they are trying to solve an impossible problem."
Polli Brunelli, director of the Federal Voting Assistance Program, wasn't available for comment.
While the military looks for a solution to the security problem, online voting is set to take place this week for the first time in the Michigan Democratic caucuses, according to Simons. That's worrisome, she said, because "this is a much, much harder problem than trying to do commerce over the Internet."
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