The Independent View: The Promises and Perils of Internet Voting

On 12/18/2013, the New York City Council's Committee on Governmental Operations chaired by Gale A. Brewer, the next Manhattan Borough President, and the Committee on Technology chaired by Fernando Cabrera held an Oversight Hearing on "The Promises and Perils of Internet Voting". It lasted 2 1/2 hours.

They heard from:

Michael J. Ryan, Executive Director of New York City Board of Elections
Brian Kavanagh, Rep. 74th Assembly District
Eric Fredman, New York City Campaign Finance Board
Douglas A. Kellner, Co-Chair and Commissioner, New York State Board of Elections
Susan Lerner, Executive Director of Common Cause/NY
Kate Duran, Board Member of League of Woman Voters
Susan Greenhall, Verified Voting Foundation

All the witnesses agreed that internet voting was not ready for prime time for the following reasons:

1. Security of electronic transmissions and the opportunity to corrupt the website software were not ready for this type of transactions.

2. The inability to keep the privacy of the vote.

3. The inability to provide campaigns' monitoring of the vote.

4. Current cultural rituals and the possible disenfranchisement of certain voters.

5. The failure of the D.C.'s internet voting for military and overseas voters pilot. It was hacked in 36 hours.

6. The HAVA requirement of a paper trail. The voter would not be able to see the marked paper ballot before it disappeared into the cloud.

The discussion then moved to the main reason for this type of voting, reducing the lines at the voting poll site. These were some of the suggestions:

1. No Excuse Absentee Ballots.

2. Early Voting

3. Electronic Poll Books (laptop, tablets). This would reduce the time it takes before you actually get to vote. Some of the benefits and problems with this system:

A. WiFi Accessibility at current polling sites, the cost to upgrade the sites.

B. Allow the poll worker to determine you are in the right poll site.

C. Direct you to the correct poll site.

D. Record you voted, not manually entered later. This would prevent someone voting more then once.

E. Allow the poll worker to compare your stored signature and in the future compare your stored photo.

F. On-Demand Ballot Printing - Using your stored information, a blank ballot could be printed for you Election District, in your preferred language.

This was discussion on the new Online Voter Registration and Update system now being used through the Department of Motor Vehicle. Everyone liked the concept of the new system and asked when it could be used by all the government agencies. The one negative is it currently only allows voters who are drivers to use it.