• Home
  • Independent Voter News
  • Quizzes
  • Election Dissection
  • Sections
  • Events
  • Directory
  • About Us
  • Glossary
  • Opinion
  • Campaign Finance
  • Redistricting
  • Civic Ed
  • Voting
  • Fact Check
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. online voting>

Sabotaging democracy: The perils of online voting

Mark Ritchie
Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat
January 27, 2022
hacking online voting
d3sign/Getty Images

Ritchie is a former Minnesota secretary of state and serves on the board of the U.S. Vote Foundation. Dzieduszycka-Suinat is the foundation’s president and CEO.

A handful of companies are pushing hard to overturn long-standing, and much needed, prohibitions against online voting. While most voters have no access to online voting, some 25 states currently allow military and overseas voters to vote online. This very limited – and still problematic – access accorded to relatively few voters is being used by online voting advocates as a wedge to pry open access for the broader voting population.

This is a dangerous idea that must be stopped. Despite an onslaught of misinformation that pretends online voting is totally safe, the opposite is true: Internet-based voting is fraught with danger for our already threatened democracy. Green-lighting online voting is a grave threat that needs to be contained before we hand the enemies of democracy another powerful tool with which to accomplish their goals.


The threat is real and ongoing: Online voting proponents have been working hard, and spending hard, on pursuing their vision despite ample evidence that it is fundamentally unsafe. Proponents have even resorted to clandestine tactics: In the run-up to the 2020 election, the U.S. Postal Service secretly pursued an online-voting experiment, without the oversight of Federal agencies that have direct knowledge about how elections work. The project was abandoned after a test of the system showed it to be exceptionally vulnerable to hacking.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

While a growing chorus of election experts oppose the expansion of online voting, efforts continue by a number of well-funded online voting proponents to promote this dangerous concept. Recently, these proponents have convinced San Francisco’s Elections Commission to consider conducting an online voting pilot. Despite ample evidence that online voting makes hacking an election easy and risk-free, the newly signed https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/4350/text contains provisions for yet another study of online voting.

The consensus against online voting is broad and authoritative, and the risks have been well-documented since our organization published a seminal study in 2013. More recently, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology advised that voting online was “high-risk even with [risk-management] controls in place.” Online voting, the multi-agency report concluded, “creates significant security risks to the confidentiality of ballot and voter data (e.g., voter privacy and ballot secrecy), integrity of the voted ballot, and availability of the system.”

Voices in Congress have also risen up against online voting. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden or Oregon, debating the safety of mobile voting last year, called online voting “about the worst thing you can do in terms of election security in America, short of putting American ballot boxes on a Moscow street.”

Endemic low voter turnout is the most commonly used excuse for promoting online voting, and as former and current elections administrators and services providers, we agree that the problem of low turnout needs to be addressed. But rather than focus on a solution that increases the vulnerability of our democracy, we should start by applying reforms and practices that we know can work to enhance turnout for voters here and those serving in the military or living overseas.

Automatic voter registration – for all citizens, including uniformed services members — would have a huge impact on turnout. Automatically mailing ballots to all registered voters, and making it free to return them once a vote has been cast, would also improve turnout. Ballot tracking services and extended deadlines for the return of military and overseas citizens’ ballots, for example, would further help ensure that ballots arrive on time. These practices, moreover, have proved to be cost-effective and relatively simple to implement.

As it stands, our elections systems require a $53 billion infusion to update equipment, registration practices and cybersecurity. Funding these well-known requirements should be our priority, rather than funding yet another vanity pilot project that will showcase an approach that has proved to be dangerously ineffective many times over. Sometimes the simplest solution is the best one. Let’s start there — and avoid opening a Pandora's box before the next election. There’s simply too much on the line to risk threatening our democracy any further.

From Your Site Articles
  • All voting has problems, so just vote with your phone - The Fulcrum ›
  • Some pros and cons of e-voting, including risks of ID theft - The ... ›
  • Cyber, election experts to study concept of online voting - The Fulcrum ›
  • Election security experts warn against online voting systems - The ... ›
  • So much unjustified hype and hope about online voting - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Voting Equipment ›
  • Voting Online, Simplified with ElectionBuddy - ElectionBuddy ›
  • Some states have embraced online voting. It's a huge risk.- POLITICO ›
online voting

Join an Upcoming Event

Weekly Work Jam

Ranked Choice Voting Montana
May 25, 2022 at 6:00 pm
Read More

Democracy in Danger

May 25, 2022 at 7:00 pm EDT
Read More

Braver Politics

Braver Angels
May 26, 2022 at 12:00 am
Read More

Sign the Safe and Fair Election Pledge

May 26, 2022 at 12:00 am CDT
Read More

National Strategy Call: Protect our Free and Secure Elections

RepresentUs
May 26, 2022 at 8:00 pm EDT
Read More

Join, Design & Build the EMPATHY MOVEMENT

Center for Building a Culture of Empathy
May 28, 2022 at 10:00 am
Read More
View All Events
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Are large donor networks still needed to win in a fairer election system?

Paige Chan

Independent voters want to be heard. Is anybody listening?

David Thornburgh
John Opdycke

The U.S. has been seeking the center since the days of Teddy Roosevelt

Dave Anderson

Imperfection and perseverance

Jeff Clements

We’ve expanded the Supreme Court before. It’s time to do so again.

Anushka Sarkar

The ‘great replacement theory’ is nonsense

Debilyn Molineaux
latest News

Americans want action on gun control, but the Senate can’t move forward

David Meyers
14h

Podcast: Why conspiracy theories thrive in both democracies and autocracies

Our Staff
19h

Nearly 20 states have restricted private funding of elections

David Meyers
24 May

Video: Will Trump run in 2024?

Our Staff
24 May

The state of voting: May 23, 2022

Our Staff
23 May

Trump looms large over Tuesday’s primaries

Richard Perrins
23 May
Videos

Video: Helping loved ones divided by politics

Our Staff

Video: What happened in Virginia?

Our Staff

Video: Infrastructure past, present, and future

Our Staff

Video: Beyond the headlines SCOTUS 2021 - 2022

Our Staff

Video: Should we even have a debt limit

Our Staff

Video: #ListenFirstFriday Yap Politics

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Did economists move the Democrats to the right?

Our Staff
02 May

Podcast: The future of depolarization

Our Staff
11 February

Podcast: Sore losers are bad for democracy

Our Staff
20 January

Deconstructed Podcast from IVN

Our Staff
08 November 2021
Recommended
Shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas

Americans want action on gun control, but the Senate can’t move forward

Congress
Podcast: Why conspiracy theories thrive in both democracies and autocracies

Podcast: Why conspiracy theories thrive in both democracies and autocracies

Big Picture
First-ever majority-female New York city council

Are large donor networks still needed to win in a fairer election system?

Campaign Finance
Independent voters want to be heard. Is anybody listening?

Independent voters want to be heard. Is anybody listening?

Voting
Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg

Nearly 20 states have restricted private funding of elections

State
Video: Will Trump run in 2024?

Video: Will Trump run in 2024?

Elections