Is online voting the answer during a pandemic? Cybersecurity experts say no

The coronavirus pandemic has created a need for a new way to hold elections, and while many states are considering vote-by-mail, some states are experimenting with “internet voting.”

But some experts and officials from both parties worry that could put the security of the country’s elections at risk, according to NPR.

Two states will allow some to vote online, both using technology from the Seattle-based company Democracy Live, NPR reported. Delaware became the latest state to allow voters with disabilities, voters overseas and military voters to use the cloud-based system, according to NPR.

West Virginia passed a bill earlier this year allowing voters with disabilities to use the technology, following its decision to allow overseas and military voters to use an app to vote in the 2018 midterms, NPR reported. New Jersey is reportedly considering allowing it under the same circumstances, according to NPR.

Eugene Spafford, Purdue University’s director emeritus of the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance Security, released a statement expressing his concern about the growing list of municipalities choosing to use online voting software, according to a release from the university.

Spafford joined fellow cybersecurity experts in signing two letters addressed to state officials warning against internet voting, the release says.

“Avoiding the threat of physical virus contamination is laudable, but creating an opportunity for foreign powers and hackers to subvert our elections is not the solution,” Spafford said.

Sixty computer science and cybersecurity experts from a number of universities and institutions wrote a letter warning election officials around the country that the U.S.’s cyber infrastructure cannot maintain the security of elections and it won’t be able to for many years to come, the Daily Herald reported.

“We urge you to refrain from allowing the use of any internet voting system and consider expanding access to voting by mail and early voting to better maintain the security, accuracy, and voter protections essential for American elections in the face of an unprecedented public health crisis,” the letter reads.

Hans von Spakovsky, manager of Election Law Reform Initiative and senior legal fellow at the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, believes online voting is not an acceptable solution to the problem of voting during social distancing because of the potential for votes to be manipulated or changed by hackers, he wrote in an article published by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank. Von Spakovsky was appointed by President Trump to the federal elections commission in 2017, according to The Washington Post.

“No method of casting ballots over the internet is safe, secure or trustworthy,” von Spakovsky wrote. “Votes can be manipulated or changed, recorded or spied on, deleted or cast fraudulently through hacking, viruses, Trojan horses, and other types of malware. The even bigger danger is that these sorts of attacks could succeed and go completely undetected, imperiling the integrity of the election process.”

Von Spakovsky’s view is shared by some Democrats - Oregon Senator Ron Wyden wrote a letter to Oregon’s Republican Secretary of State, Bev Clarno, stating concerns about Russian intelligence agents exploiting vulnerabilities in online voting, The Hill reported.

“Russia’s 2016 campaign to meddle in our elections demonstrated the urgency of states doing everything in their power to secure Americans’ votes from hacking,” Wyden wrote. “Continuing to permit the use of internet voting — against the advice of cybersecurity experts — is simply asking for trouble.”

Back in February, MIT researchers discovered that an online voting app called Voatz, used by states in the 2018 midterm elections, had multiple vulnerabilities that allowed hackers to change or prevent a user’s vote, The Hill reported. The researchers also found the app’s third-party services jeopardized the user’s privacy, according to The Hill.

Mobile and blockchain voting, two primary methods for voting online, can be compromised “by anyone from anywhere” and determining whether a system has been hacked can take months, Barabara Simons told the Daily Herald. Simons is an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) fellow, and board chair of Verified Voting, according to the Herald.