KindleThe Secretary of State announced a program in conjunction with the Department of Defense whereby Missouri military voters will be sending in their absentee ballots via email.LinkIncreasing voter turnout is always a good idea, but this is a dangerous way to go about it. E-mail is not secure. E-mail is not reliably from the person named on the "from" line. E-mail is subject to all kinds of tampering. Every week we learn about new ways to hack into computers, and spammers know all sorts of tricks for forging e-mail headers. A common Internet worm trick is to send emails from hacked computers, or to pretend to send emails from other computers.
An e-voting system like this is an invitation for fraud, and sure to be a point of contention when the votes are counted. With this election so close and Missouri one of the major swing states, Missouri is setting itself up to be this election's Florida: the laughing stock of the nation.
If you remember, the SERVE Internet voting project was suspended because of security issues.
Someone snuck this one through. I am involved with two different groups of security experts who are dealing with voting machine and e-voting issues, and no one heard about this. There have been no public hearings on the issue. There has been no public selection process of vendors. There are no security or reliability constraints on the vendor. We don't even know who the vendor is!
I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.