Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Sabotaging democracy: The perils of online voting

Opinion

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.

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.

Read More

Could Trump’s campaign against the media come back to bite conservatives?

US President Donald Trump reacts next to Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk, after speaking at the public memorial service for right-wing activist Charlie Kirk at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, on September 21, 2025.

(Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Could Trump’s campaign against the media come back to bite conservatives?

In the wake of Jimmy Kimmel’sapparently temporary— suspension from late-night TV, a (tragically small) number of prominent conservatives and Republicans have taken exception to the Trump administration’s comfort with “jawboning” critics into submission.

Sen. Ted Cruz condemned the administration’s “mafioso behavior.” He warned that “going down this road, there will come a time when a Democrat wins again — wins the White House … they will silence us.” Cruz added during his Friday podcast. “They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly. And that is dangerous.”

Keep ReadingShow less
A stethoscope lying on top of credit cards.

Enhanced health care tax credits expire at the end of 2025 unless Congress acts. Learn who benefits, what’s at risk, and how premiums could rise without them.

Getty Images, yavdat

Just the Facts: What Happens If Enhanced Health Care Tax Credits End in 2025

The Fulcrum strives to approach news stories with an open mind and skepticism, striving to present our readers with a broad spectrum of viewpoints through diligent research and critical thinking. As best we can, we remove personal bias from our reporting and seek a variety of perspectives in both our news gathering and selection of opinion pieces. However, before our readers can analyze varying viewpoints, they must have the facts.

There’s been a lot in the news lately about healthcare costs going up on Dec. 31 unless congress acts. What are the details?

The enhanced health care premium tax credits (ePTCs) are set to expire at the end of 2025 unless Congress acts to extend them.

Keep ReadingShow less
Congress Bill Spotlight: No Social Media at School Act

Rep. Angie Craig’s No Social Media at School Act would ban TikTok, Instagram & Snapchat during K-12 school hours. See what’s in the bill.

Getty Images, Daniel de la Hoz

Congress Bill Spotlight: No Social Media at School Act

Gen Z’s worst nightmare: TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat couldn’t be used during school hours.

What the bill does

Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN2) introduced the No Social Media at School Act, which would require social media companies to use “geofencing” to block access to their products on K-12 school grounds during school hours.

Keep ReadingShow less
A portrait of John Adams.

John Adams warned that without virtue, republics collapse. Today, billionaire spending and unchecked wealth test whether America can place the common good above private gain.

John Adams Warned Us: A Republic Without Virtue Cannot Survive

John Adams understood a truth that feels even sharper today: a republic cannot endure without virtue. Writing to Mercy Otis Warren in April 1776, he warned that public Virtue cannot exist in a Nation without [private virtue], and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics.” For Adams, liberty would not be preserved by clever constitutions alone. It depended on citizens who could restrain their selfish impulses for the sake of the common good.

That insight has lost none of its force. Some people do restrain themselves. They accumulate enough to live well and then turn to service, family, or community. Others never stop. Given the chance, they gather wealth and power without limit. Left unchecked, selfishness concentrates material and social resources in the hands of a few, leaving many behind and eroding the sense of shared citizenship on which democracy depends.

Keep ReadingShow less