Jay Evensen
  • Front Page
  • Opinions
  • Second Thoughts
  • Portfolio
  • Awards
  • About

Utah GOP's online voting experiment will continue

4/5/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
Two weeks have passed since Utah Republicans got to vote online for the first time.
Was it a success?

Computer experts would say it’s impossible to know. The key to hacking an election is making sure no one knows what you’ve done. Utah GOP Chairman James Evans, however, says yes.

“I think we had tremendous success,” he told me Tuesday by phone. About 27,000 people cast ballots that way. People, mostly LDS missionaries, voted from 45 countries.
He is planning to recommend to the Republican Central Committee that online voting happen again in 2020, if there is a presidential caucus.

This does not, however, mean we’re any closer to voting on our smart phones in a primary or general election. As Evans is quick to note, the Republican Party is a private entity, not a government.

You may have noticed that parties put their own stamp on the presidential nomination process, from the Democratic “super delegates” to the different ways each state decides how to divvy up delegates to the way many Republicans hope to broker a convention outcome that makes all previous voting more or less irrelevant.

Democracy is a fungible concept where parties are concerned.

Not too long ago, party bosses were making all the big decisions. We’re conditioned to see old-fashioned democracy as the gold standard for all political considerations, but good reasons exist for the ways parties act. This year has shown that too much democracy can cause a party to lose control of its platform and principles.

But that doesn’t mean you can afford to let people think your selection process is vulnerable to fraud.

Perhaps I should rephrase that. Every political process in which votes are required is subject to fraud, whether it’s done with paper and pencil at a polling place, by mail-in ballots or with electronic machines on a dedicated system.

The hope is that online voting won’t be any more vulnerable than these. Evans thinks that can be so; others disagree.

The great Utah Republican online experiment wasn’t the first time an election was held online. That doesn’t make anyone feel better.

None of the previous attempts has been shown to be completely secure. That includes often-cited Estonian elections, which are conducted using the same private company, Smartmatic, that handled Utah’s Republican caucus.

A study by the University of Michigan, with help from several international experts, found “… the procedures Estonia has in place to guard against attack and ensure transparency offer insufficient protection.”

The study found many ways an attacker could manipulate the outcome or, just as bad, cast doubt on it.

In 2010, Washington D.C. held an internet voting pilot project and invited people to try to compromise it. Less than two days later, University of Michigan researchers gained control of the election server. It took another two business days for anyone in Washington to notice.

A report last month on wired.com said Utah’s online voting was giving security experts “heart attacks.” The publication quoted experts who said the system could be vulnerable to people who attack personal computers or devices and send them to hoax sites, or that they could initiate a “denial of service attack” against a geographic area where people are more likely to vote for one candidate over another.

Evans believes the Smartmatic system guards against problems by letting people use unique pin numbers to verify a vote was cast for the intended candidate.
His concerns are more for the 13,000 or so people who tried, but failed, to register online. Most, he said, were people who made mistakes, such as recording their own birthdays wrong.

Next time, he wants to send everyone who registers a confirmation letter, to which they must respond.

But next time is hard to predict. Utah may not see another presidential caucus as important for a while. In 2020, the nomination could be wrapped up by the time the circus is scheduled to come to town.
​
Four years is forever in the computer age. But, while I admire Evans for his confidence and for his desires to help people participate, I’m guessing Internet voting will be just as controversial, and vulnerable, then as now.
 
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    RSS Feed

    Search this site


    Like what you read here?

      Please subscribe below, and we'll let you know when there is a new opinion.

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    Picture

    The author

    Jay Evensen is the Senior Editorial Columnist of the Deseret News. He has nearly 40 years experience as a reporter, editor and editorial writer in Oklahoma, New York City, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. He also has been an adjunct journalism professor at Brigham Young and Weber State universities.

    Archives

    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012

    Categories

    All
    Campaign 2012
    Congress
    Crime
    Culture
    Iran
    Oil And Gas
    Poverty
    Steroids
    Taxes
    Utah
    Washington
    World Events
    World Events

    Links

    Deseret News
    Newslink
    Marianne Evensen's blog

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.