Election Integrity

“There are two concerns with email voting," in which ballots and voter identification information are typically attached as a PDF or JPEG. "One—the ballots can be intercepted and undetectably altered or deleted. This hack was performed at DEF CON in August. And it’s something academics have long known," Susannah Goodman of Common Cause an one of the authors of the report, told Newsweek. "Second—emailed ballots can be easily spoofed in a spear phishing attack designed to put malware on a county election official’s computer.”

"Over a hundred thousand ballots were returned via the internet in the 2016 election," said Susannah Goodman, director of Common Cause's election security program. "For years, we have known that ballots sent over the internet can be intercepted and changed or deleted, and that is a major concern."

Today, leading experts in the field of election security released a report outlining the serious and unaddressed threat to the integrity of the nation’s elections and democracy posed by the continued use of online voting in 32 states. The report highlights that at the very least nearly 100,000 ballots were reported to have been cast online in the 2016 general election. The report, “Email and Internet Voting: The Overlooked Threat to Election Security,” examines the threats faced by various forms of online voting including blockchain internet voting which is being used in West Virginia this election cycle. Due to the extensive vulnerabilities, the report emphasizes that online voting must be discontinued completely by 2020, and recommends short-term best practices for voters and elections officials in the 2018 election.