AP Online
09-28-2004
Dateline: GENEVA
Swiss authorities hailed as a success a test of Internet voting in a national referendum, even as computer security experts remain skeptical that any online balloting could ever be secure using current technologies.
Some 2,723 people in four Geneva suburbs visited a special Web site to vote on such issues as maternity leave and postal reform. They represent 22 percent of those who cast their ballots in the four suburbs; the rest voted by mail or in person.
Swiss authorities decided to permit voting over the Internet on Sunday following a string of successful local online polls in Geneva and other cities. Senior officials said those local elections had proven their systems robust and secure.
But Avi Rubin, an electronic voting expert at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said fundamental security flaws with computers and Internet systems currently in use make such guarantees impossible.
"Just because nobody attacked a referendum that involved 2,723 people does not mean that it was secure," Rubin said Monday. "When these trials are viewed as successful and justify more in-depth electronic voting, eventually there will come a point where it will be worth someone's while to attack the election."
Rubin co-wrote a U.S. Defense Department report that contributed to its decision to pull a program for as many as 100,000 military and overseas citizens to vote online in November.
Security experts say hackers could disrupt elections and viruses could be specifically written to change votes. They also say viruses and keystroke recorders that can infect public terminals, such as at cybercafes, could compromise ballot security.
The Pentagon, however, has since allowed some states to experiment with voting by e-mail, a system Rubin deemed even more problematic and "the most insane idea I've ever heard."
In Switzerland, officials say they are satisfied with their security safeguards, insisting that Internet voting is no worse than mail balloting.
All 22,000 citizens of the four suburbs received a card with a 16-character personal ID code and a four-character security code that voters scratch to reveal. To vote online, voters needed the codes along with their date and place of birth. A single voters' register ensured individuals could vote only once, whether online, by mail or in person.
Michel Chevallier, spokesman for the e-voting project, acknowledged the risk of hacking but said authorities had hired outside security companies to try to break in.
"They found our server was extremely resistant," he said.
He said the government cannot safeguard individual computers from viruses, but he said voters receive a confirmation screen so they could tell whether a vote had been changed in transit. To preserve ballot secrecy, he said, the confirmation is embedded in an image that requires special software not publicly available.
More Internet voting in municipal and national referendums is planned in October and November. Referendums are a cornerstone of Switzerland's direct democracy, with citizens called to the polls several times a year. Many citizens grow weary of exercising their rights, and authorities see Internet voting as a way to boost turnout, which has rarely exceeded half of eligible voters in recent years.
Online polling has been conducted before in U.S. primary elections, British local tax votes and Swiss local referendums. In the 2000 U.S. general election, 84 military and overseas citizens submitted online ballots to four states.
Geneva's e-voting system uses software that local authorities developed with the Swiss office of Hewlett-Packard Co. and the Geneva-based online security firm Wisekey.
Copyright 2004, AP News All Rights Reserved
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