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  > Internet vs. Online Voting
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  > The Internet Voting Technology Alliance

Internet vs. online voting
First, let's get one thing straight: all Internet elections are online, but all online elections are not on the Internet. Ballots can be cast electronically over a closed network without a connection to the Internet and still be called an "electronic" or "online" election. Yet those who speak of "online" elections usually are referring to "Internet" elections, whereby votes are cast over the Internet, whether from a public polling place or from a personal computer. To prevent confusion, when we talk about Internet elections here we call them that, and "online" elections refer to those votes cast on a closed network or an election that uses the Internet just to upload results from a polling place or post them to a Web site.

The Status of Internet voting
In Brazil, voters have been casting electronic ballots for a decade and in November 2000 the country will host the world's first national election over the Internet, using technology from Safevote. Brazil is so far ahead of the rest of the world that Microsoft has even written a case study about the country's success. Argentina and Costa Rica have also adopted electronic systems to count their ballots and are moving toward Internet voting.

In the United States, real Internet voting is likely years away. For now only limited and, in many cases, non-binding elections are being held. Alaska hosted a non-binding Republican primary over the Internet conducted by VoteHere in January 2000 and 35 votes were cast. Arizona hosted the binding Democratic primary in March 2000, conducted by Election.com. Committees and groups throughout the world are studying the ramifications of voting over the Internet. As of yet, no general consensus has emerged. In the United States, the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and the California Secretary of State's Internet Voting Task Force are looking at Internet voting far into the future.

Why such disparity between countries? The reasons are cultural and technical. Cultural debates in the U.S. involve questions of access and the digital divide, voter participation and the option of voting from home rather than trekking to a polling place or voting by mail-in ballot. The technical discussion is about making sure an Internet voting process remains anonymous, safe from hackers attempting to disrupt elections or change ballots, with verifiable results.

Technology and Cultural Issues
While the discussion of Internet voting technology and cultural issues is best conducted separately, two things are certain: One can seldom have a discussion about Internet voting technology without having a cultural issue raise its head, and the fact is the latter often depends on the former. In other words, cultural issues such as trusting a voting system rely, in the end, on the integrity of the system.

Concerns about a boss's ability to look over the shoulder of an employee voting from work have more to do with the jurisdiction that would allow voting from work. Fears that a copy of a voter's ballot will remain on the server is also a cultural concern, because Internet voting technology can ensure that such a copy is not retained. Many of these issues boil down to confidence in the technology. Not long ago this nation's movie-going public watched newsreels of the Wright brothers and their colleagues take off and crash their crude airplanes. The majority of viewers surely thought, "I would never get on one of those things." Yet now, only a century after Kitty Hawk, U.S. airlines carry more than 700 million passengers a year, and the airline industry is a major component of our economy. Words like "overhead compartment" and "wing flaps" are part of our lexicon.

In a broad sense, Internet voting is at its own "Kitty Hawk." Getting the issue off the ground requires proponents and skeptics alike to separate the cultural issues from the technical discourse. Cultural issues often fall into three categories: Access, participation and privacy.

Access: The access debate often revolves around what's come to be known as the "digital divide." This argument supposes that voters with more education and familiarity with computers are going to be more comfortable casting votes over the Internet. Questions to ponder include access to computers as well as access to the polls. Access can also depend on the type of election system used. For example, Brazil's election system is centralized, making it easier for that country to uniformly adopt one system. In the U.S., where the system is decentralized and fragmented by state and by county, the decision to pursue Internet voting is much more complex and access could vary from one jurisdiction to the next.

Participation: Internet voting advocates — some of whom hope to make a great deal of money — also say the Internet will increase voter participation in the election process. In Texas, voting kiosks have been installed in shopping centers to entice people to vote. Throughout the country, voter registration deadlines have been moved back, absentee vote-by-mail programs have been expanded, poll hours have been extended and still participation has declined. Will Internet voting increase participation? No one knows for sure. It seems safe to predict that Internet voting could increase participation in special and "off-year" elections when few issues are on the ballot because voter turnout in these special elections is most often a tiny fraction of the registered population. People just don't find time to go to a polling place to cast a single vote for a contest that has not captured the public's attention.

Privacy: In an age when Web sites can use "cookies" to send out "spiders" to find a Web surfer's e-mail address and take that address and other information without his or her knowledge, voters naturally will have concerns for their privacy. While the privacy discussion regarding Internet voting involves technology, the cultural issue raises its head when the trust of that technology is considered. So privacy remains a cultural issue: We fear that Big Brother might be watching. We want our right to an anonymous ballot maintained.

It all boils down to trust -- trust in the government, in the technology and in those involved in the process. If you listen to proponents of voting on the Internet, some will argue the following: If we can shop on the Internet and bank on the Internet, why can't we vote on the Internet? The reason is this: Banking and shopping are simple transactions, where two parties know that the transaction took place. If a shopper doesn't get his or her merchandise, he or she will hold the cyber store accountable. Or if funds unexpectedly disappear from a bank account, the holder of the account will demand an explanation from the bank.

Voting presents an entirely new set of challenges in order to take place on the Internet. It cannot be a two-party system (shopper and shop) because the vote must be kept secret. This essential fact injects the concepts of truth and trust into the dynamic. Anonymity can only be maintained if more than two parties are involved, and then only if each of the involved parties has some -- but not all -- of the information about the transaction. How would a government, or a private company hired by a government, assure voters that an Internet voting system is safe? How is that trust established?

Getting back to our airplane analogy, most people who board a commercial airline have a reasonable expectation that the plane will land safely at its destination. Yet an airplane is an extremely complicated piece of machinery. A laser gyroscope aboard any airplane helps keep the instruments aligned. If something happened to the gyroscope, the passengers would be in peril. The pilot would be of no help in fixing the gyroscope, because that is not his or her area of expertise. If the pilot keeled over, other crew members could step in and fly the plane. A series of checks and balances, starting with the airplane's inventors, manufacturers, mechanics and crew, have all cooperated to give passengers a level of trust that their trip will be safe.

What does this have to do with privacy in Internet voting? Only this: An examination by encryption and mathematics experts (the mechanics) can assure us that an Internet voting system safeguards voter anonymity. An examination by independent elections administrators (the crew) can assure us of the integrity of the system. Only by accruing confidence in the system can we, as voters, feel that our vote remains safe and private.

The Internet Voting Technology Alliance
To this end, e-Elections supports the efforts of the Internet Voting Technology Alliance, which includes companies and experts calling for peer review and open public discussion on the technologies and protocols used for Internet voting because e-commerce models do not work for anonymous, secure votes. The IVTA held its first public forum in Washington, D.C. in February 2000, and remains open to all through its Web site.