The defamation lawsuit against Fox News, by voting equipment supplier Dominion Voting, is all the rage right now, as a point of discussion regarding the spread of disinformation and misinformation about voting. Election Law experts, and journalists who cover these issues, are pointing to this case as landmark. They all say Dominion has an excellent case.
To be clear, the Dominion case is not about online voting. It involves software used by scanning machines, that scan and tally paper ballots. It is the tallying software that the liars claimed was rigged in the 2020 election.
But, as I have long tried to make clear, the defamation of online voting is just an extension of the poisoning of public trust in all forms of electronic voting. So, for a company the size of Dominion to be fighting back -against those who lie and claim their tallying software is rigged – they are also fighting back against claims made against all forms of electronic voting, especially online voting.
They are claims that have been made for decades. But this time, Dominion and Smartmatic are fighting back.
But the people Smartmatic would have had to sue ten years ago would have been different people than those today. Because the people defaming online voting for the last twenty years weren’t from Fox News. They were major election “integrity” groups like “Verified Voting Foundation” (I call them the Vilify Voting Foundation), and “trusted technical experts” such as VVF’s chief antagonist David Jefferson, or the out of touch author of “Broken Ballots” Barbara Simons. All of these people made it their life’s mission to vilify electronic voting as unsafe. Whenever the media wanted to cover the subject of online voting, journalists would inevitably turn to these people as the experts to trust. And every one of them said the public shouldn’t trust ANY form of voting that included the use of “riggable” software. And they have always strongly maintained that ALL computer software is riggable and unsafe to be used in voting.
Now, Lo and Behold, there are those pushing the lie that ballot scanning software has been rigged, and that the 2020 election results can’t be trusted.
Now, the media and election administrators are shocked, shocked that people would believe this lie.
There is no daylight between the lies about rigged scanning software by Dominion and Smartmatic in 2020, and the lies that have been spread about how easily such software CAN be rigged, over the last twenty years.
If they truly want to know who is responsible for this total breakdown of public trust in voting, they need to look at more than Fox News. But they certainly don’t need to look far.
Sadly, I don’t expect this culture to change, despite the desparate situation our democracy finds itself in. Secretaries of State, County Clerks, Poll Workers, Journalists, and even companies like Smartmatic may look for who to blame.
The last place they will likely look is in the mirror.
(Publisher’s Note 6/2021: Periodically, I republish previous posts, which may be currently relevant or requested. As this blog passes the 10th anniversary of it’s first post, the irony of another mostly lost decade is sadly relevant. )
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The irony.
At the very end of the 20th century, the United States was poised to revolutionize voting forever. After centuries of voting only at the polling place and often on insecure and inadequate paper ballot systems, the Internet was about to change all that.
The notion of voting online, and all the benefits that it would bring, was occurring to more than a few election officials and developers of online technology. After all, everything else in our lives was rapidly going digital and paperless. Voting would be no different.
Several states began to trial online voting pilots, particularly for absentee voting. Arizona offered online voting in 1999. That’s right, thirteen years ago online voting already existed.
DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) terminals at the polling place were phasing out antiquated punch card and optical scan systems throughout the country. While electronic voting at the polling place was better than voting on paper, online voting held the most promise.
One online voting system was developed by the Defense Department (DOD) to be used by overseas military voters. Everyone understood that the first place online voting could have an impact was with these voters. Paper absentee ballots are inadequate enough for domestic voters. For military personnel stationed around the world, going through the process of mailing paper ballots is often daunting enough to drive them to not vote.
The first DOD pilot project was called VOI (Vote Over the Internet) and it was launched in 2000. It was so successful that the DOD later launched SERVE (Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment) in 2004. In all technical trials, SERVE performed flawlessly as well.
Yes, at the dawn of the new millenium the future of voting in America was clearly going to be online. It looked like a bright future.
Then came Bush v. Gore and the election of 2000.
We know what happened. Archaic is too kind of a word to describe the punch card ballots with the famous “hanging chads”. The same is true for the butterfly paper ballots used in Palm Beach County, Florida. These ballots caused holocaust survivers to vote for Pat Buchanan for President instead of Al Gore. These confusing pieces of paper handed the election to George Bush.
Suddenly the subject of voting technology, always a very wonkish one which drew no public interest for generations, was all the rage. Congress acted and passed HAVA (Help America Vote Act). Election infrastructure had to be modernized and everyone knew what that meant. Digital voting was in. Paper was out.
Online voting vs. hand sanitizer. Which do you think will keep you safer?
If you believe that social distancing can save lives, and you believe anything that can be done online SHOULD be done online right now, then why should voting be any exception?
Should it be acceptable for people to die from a paper ballot? Or FOR one?
Paper ballot voting crusaders have long behaved as if they would rather die than see digital voting prevail in the United States. It turns out, they would rather see you die too.
Let’s get very real here. The COVID-19 pandemic is shutting down virtually every facet of normal society that isn’t already online. Every day, the list of public gatherings to be cancelled is growing. Colleges are closing in-person classes for the semester and moving to remote learning. Public schools are closing indefinitely and many will also attempt to educate online.
All of the efforts to move activity online are an attempt to “flatten the curve” of this pandemic. While it remains to be seen how much mitigation will be achieved by our ability to do so many things online, it unquestionably is better than if we had none of this remote capability.
The personal computer may have been a groundbreaking technological achievement. But without the subsequent proliferation of broadband, our society would not have transformed the way it has.
If it seems that we can do almost anything online today, it is because we can. So much of our daily activity can be carried out over broadband, that we will undoubtedly achieve a level of social distancing during this crises than we would not otherwise achieve without much greater impact on average daily life.
Perhaps tens of millions of people will not have to choose between physically going to work during a pandemic or not working at all. They will work from home. People, who were told for years that it was not possible for their jobs to be done remotely, will in very short order somehow be doing their jobs remotely.
The social isolation, and all of the psychological damage that goes along with it, will be far less severe due to our online connectivity.
Many activities, from sporting events to Broadway performances, will take place. They will be performed, not in front of live audiences, but streamed online.
Despite the wave of new online activity due to this pandemic, on top of the plethora of things we have already been doing on the internet for decades now, I know that I can safely predict one activity which will not in any way be carried out remotely.
Gee, you guessed it right away – Voting.
There will be no online voting in 2020. Election officials and administrators, elected officials, and of course election “integrity” types will likely universally scoff at any mention of “socially distancing” the vote. They will strongly declare it to be a very bad idea. Because of the hackers, don’t you know.
I probably need not repeat once again the actual FACTS about online voting. I have written often enough on this blog, for almost a decade, about the track record of digital voting in real life vs. fear-mongered public impressions. I have pointed out enough times that online voting is AT LEAST as secure and reliable as the things we most depend upon in our lives – online banking, online tax filing, online stock trading, online, e-commerce, online health care information. The list goes on and on. I interviewed the CEO of one of the nations most successful and reliable online voting providers over eight years ago.
But of course it is hard to get any kind of actual discussion about digital voting beyond the “what about the hackers?” knee-jerk response. Yes, what about the hackers relative to online banking, online tax filing, online stock trading, online e-commerce, online health care information and the rest of the list? Of course there is risk in online activity. Yet despite risk, we DO IT ANYWAY. We forge ahead, digitizing our entire world, except for voting.
Folks, the “Voting is different. Voting is more important” attitude is becoming too ridiculous to abide at this stage. The United States averages some of the lowest turnout percentages for elections in the world. Let’s stop pretending voting is too important to make more convenient. It is a dangerous perspective to take as it pertains to participatory democracy. And now, with COVID-19, it will be a deadly one.
People are going to die this year because we don’t use online voting.
Not like there are any older, high risk voters in Florida or anything.
So, at a time when virtually all nonessential in-person activities and business are being suspended, with as many as possible continuing online, voting will once again be a blindingly glaring exception. Only this time, it won’t just be voter turnout and democratic representation that will be at risk. It is voters lives.
Let us also pause to reflect on the implications of postponed elections with regard to the online voting. The hypocrisy of paper ballot polling place advocates in this respect should not be overlooked.
Much of the fear mongering surrounding digital voting, over the last two decades, has centered on the concept of a digital vote tally being manipulated in such a way that “nobody would know about it until it was too late”. If I heard that expression from a paper crusader once, I’ve heard it a thousand times. “Too late” refers to after an election has already taken place. The premise is that voting is somehow hacked “midstream” between the voter and the tally and changed. Once votes are tallied and it is discovered that some breach has occurred, the cry is that it would be “too late” to do anything about it. Too late to hold another election? Yes, according to them.
They treat a delayed or voided election, requiring another election, to literally be the fall of democracy. At least they view it that way when discussing digital voting. Of course the crusaders ignore the fact that an online election, if it ever did need to be redone, would not face the same cost and logistical barriers as in-person elections. It would be totally feasible to schedule another election online in short order at little additional cost.
Indeed, the notion that a delayed election would be the end of democracy, like so many other things, seems to only apply to digital voting. If it’s a paper ballot primary and you have to delay it, then it magically is no big deal.
Meanwhile in reality, if Ohio, Louisiana and soon many other primaries were scheduled to take place online, they wouldn’t need to be delayed at all. It is only because of dependence on antiquated election technology that these states will need to postpone their primaries at all.
No doubt, delayed primaries are more responsible than holding one in Florida during a pandemic. It isn’t only the voters, who may be on average older, who will be more at risk. It will be those who work the polling places.
The average poll worker is a senior citizen. Holding a primary now means putting every single one of them at risk. They can wear gloves, sanitize, and do every measure possible to protect themselves. But that isn’t good enough. If that were good enough, we wouldn’t be shutting down all the schools, restaurants, and ski resorts.
People are going to die because we don’t vote online.
We don’t vote online because the subject has been fear-mongered for 20 years. It is pretty ironic that the thing we have been told to be so afraid of is the only logical answer to voting in person. And voting in person is something everyone should be afraid to do right now.
We need to close the polls and get the voting online NOW.
Any election integrity “expert” who says you have no choice but vote in person, because we can’t trust online voting, is putting your life at risk.
Elections and paper audit trails – The Big Bait and Switch.
From the perspective of election modernization, the United States has been marching steadily backward since shortly after it was supposed to start marching forward.
After the debacle of the 2000 Presidential election and the case of Bush v. Gore (when notorious issues with paper balloting led the tally in Florida, and the result of the election, to be suspect), The Help America Vote Act and other legislation were enacted to supposedly bring US elections out of the 19th century.
But soon after, by 2005, the election administration culture in the U.S. began to push back on modernization. All forms of electronic voting – from DRE machines at the polling place to online voting – were to be considered suspect, due to the notion that they could never be 100% trusted to be free of tampering. For whatever reason, the long history of election fraud and tampering with paper balloting was to be ignored. Paper ballots were to be considered the only acceptable way to record and tally votes. Hand recounting, the same flawed process revealed to all Americans in 2000, suddenly was the only manner to be trusted.
The new savior of democracy, according to an ever-growing majority of the election administration and election “integrity” community, was to be the VVPAT, or Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail.
The premise, as sold, is that electronic voting can not be trusted unless it includes some kind of paper “receipt” system which can, if needed, be counted by hand later “just in case” there are problems with the electronic voting tallies.
It sounds harmless enough. Electronic voting should have some sort of paper “back up”.
Unfortunately, nobody seems to have ever bothered thinking this concept through to its logical conclusion.
The VVPAT concept then completely infiltrated our election admin culture over the next decade, to the extent that today virtually everyone – from an entire election admin community, to elected officials, to the public itself – universally believes that no voting system without a VVPAT can be trusted.
One might assume that what all this has led to is newer electronic voting machines that include a paper receipt. And perhaps old lever voting machines, used in many large US states for decades and universally trusted during that time, might also be replaced by modern digital machines with receipts.
But that is not what has happened. Electronic machines have been replaced in most cases with optical scanned paper balloting.
Optical scan is NOT electronic voting. The voter fills out a paper ballot with a marker, then feeds the ballot into a scanner. The scanner tabulates the results. But since nobody trusts the electronic counts anymore, hand recounting of the paper ballots has the final word. And all the historic flaws with optical scan – an obsolete technology introduced over 50 years ago – remain.
In 2004, less than 40% of US voters cast their votes on paper ballots. By 2012 it reached 60%.
What we were sold with the concept of the “paper audit trail” was a reliable means to check the results of electronic voting.
What we got was paper ballot voting.
More importantly, what we still have are some of the lowest voter turnout averages in the world. Amid all the hysteria over votes and hackers, will anybody ever bother to care about anemic participation again?
Not as long as they keep insisting we rely on archaic methods with which to record our participation.
I have often written about the imbalance in the United States between concern for vote tallies, which is hyper, and concern for voter turnout, which is an issue that is largely left unaddressed.
As I advocate for election modernization, chiefly through the adoption of online voting, I continually point out the irony of the prevalent belief that paper balloting systems are the best way to ensure a reliable vote tally, given how historically unreliable paper balloting is. Those who are obsessed with tally at the expense of turnout advocate for tabulation systems rife with human error.
However it is the continuing and deepening disregard for how inconvenient voting is that is proving to be so consequential to democracy in America to the extent it is killing democracy itself.
After last years election of the clown currently in the White House, I at first began to doubt my longstanding belief that our electorate is not reflective of our society. In other words, demographic groups who vote more reliably are not as diverse as the population at large.
I felt this is especially true in midterm and off-year elections, while elections for POTUS in 2008 and 2012 showed high enough turnout to elect and re-elect President Obama.
Then 2016 happened. Perhaps our electorate was more representative of our society than I had thought.
But as it turned out, 2016 produced the lowest turnout for POTUS in twenty years. Suppressed turnout in key battleground states was a deciding factor in the outcome of that election.
Now we face the 2018 midterms. Given all of the energy out there to resist Trump and the GOP agenda, one would think 2018 will see record high turnout for a midterm. Perhaps it will. But if it does, it will be despite how ridiculously hard we still make it to vote.
If turnout is typically low in 2018, the rest of the resistance will prove meaningless. 2018 will probably be the most important midterm election in recent memory.
Unfortunately, given my belief that low turnout is CAUSED by archaic inconvenient voting processes, along with the fact that voting suppression will continue next year, I have reason to be greatly concerned.
We jeopardized so much in 2016, enough to threaten the extinction of our democracy. We must now give turnout the highest priority.
Enough is enough.
By all accounts, lower turnout decided what happened last week.
And here we are.
Will naysayers of online voting continue to tell us to be afraid of it?
Even after this.
Will you accept the argument that it might not be “safe” enough to use online voting to increase turnout?
Even though there is no evidence that the best current online voting platforms aren’t at least as safe for voting as other systems we depend on, such as online banking, commerce, or the filing of our taxes?
Even though low voter turnout has brought us this?
If we need to have courage in face of what is to come, it must start with rejection of fear.
Every “expert” who has peddled fear around online voting is as responsible for this as those who peddled fear of everything else. Fear mongering takes all forms.
If you think it might be crucial for voter turnout to be historically high in 2018, you better start demanding online voting – NOW.
Voter turnout increased dramatically when Utah voters voted online.
As voters around the country begin to vote (early voting has begun in some places), and look toward voting this November, it is worth remembering that 2016 saw a major example of better ways to make it possible for greater participation in democracy in America. The article below was originally published March 28, 2016:
Certainly the vote in Utah was not without some issues, mostly related to communication with the public. Some of these issues may have been avoidable. A fair review of the Utah vote should not neglect noting mistakes made.
As Amber Phillips correctly points out, in her recent terrific Washington Post interview with Joe Mohen, Utah wasn’t the first time Americans voted online. There was a time, over a decade ago, when U.S. election systems were on a track to modernize. Had that trend continued, we would probably all be voting online by now.
Unfortunately, due to very successful resistance to election automation, modernization stagnated in the mid 2000s. This was a trend that only worsened since. It has been the period I refer to as “The Lost Decade”.
Utah is therefor extremely historic and important. It hopefully will usher in a new era for all American voters. It deserves a fair review.
In 2010 a testing trial of an online vote in Washington DC, conducted on an amateurish platform, was easily compromised when challenged. As a result the actual online election did not take place. To this day that one poorly run project has been used to negatively define all online voting platforms.
Below is a fair review of the Online election conducted Statewide by the Utah GOP, on March 22nd, 2016:
In the case of an online election, a primary decision made by election administrators is which online voting service provider to use. There are several large companies, and numerous smaller ones. The Utah GOP made the right choice in using one of the larger companies, Smartmatic, to conduct the election in Utah. Given how important it is that such an historic election go smoothly, choosing a small company could have been disastrous for the future of online voting in America.
The GOP could have also chosen another company with a great track record, such as Everyone Counts (located in San Diego), or Scytl (The largest online voting service provider in the world). As long as they worked with a company that had a lot of experience running online elections and serving large numbers of voters, a successful outcome was likely.
Phone Help Lines were set up to assist voters who had problems or questions regarding the online election. It was these phone lines that received a great deal of traffic on election night in Utah. Many people called in claiming they were unable to vote online. In the end, it turned out that 90% of these callers had failed to register. In other words, phone lines were NOT jammed with eligible voters having technical difficulties trying to vote online. In fact, the overwhelming majority of eligible voters had a very positive voting experience.
How about voter turnout? Did participation numbers increase in Utah? They sure did. More people voted just online, than participated in the entire previous Presidential caucus.
What grade does Utah receive with regards to online turnout? A+.
At the same time, from the perspective of security, the election in Utah ran flawlessly. This result was no surprise to anyone familiar with real online elections. Online election results were reliable, exact, and produced very quickly. Things you rarely get from paper ballot, polling place election results.
A week before the election, I predicted the 2016 Utah GOP online caucus to be a “bad day for the naysayers”. It proved to be just that. Opponents of digital voting say it is all about security. They have predicted disaster, should we attempt any elections online, for twenty years.
What security and reliability grade does Utah 2016 Online deserve? A+
The FACTS about the online vote in Utah include the following, based on a survey of those who participated:
•94% of respondents described the online voting experience as good.
•97% would consider voting online in future elections.
•82% wanted to see online voting implemented nationwide.
Perhaps the most common title of an article about online voting is “Why can’t we vote online?”, a seemingly rationale question.
Indeed, it is a very important question. Unfortunately, most of such treatment then goes on to quote opponents of digital voting, who claim that there are technical barriers to secure, reliable online voting for U.S. elections.
Indeed, there have been and will continue to be barriers to widespread adoption of online voting in America. No, NONE of those barriers are technical. None.
My previous post, “Why can’t we vote online?: It’s not political” mentions that, second to claims of technical barriers, a growing misconception about our slow adoption of digital voting is that it is politically motivated.
Second to claims of technical barriers. False claims of security deficiencies by academic naysayers, along with an election administration and integrity culture that supports naysayers, will always be the paramount reason for resistance to modernization.
Luckily, time is not on the side of the naysayers. Gradually, we ARE adopting online voting, a recent example being the online vote in Utah in March of 2016. There are several providers who offer election services that include secure, cutting edge online systems, along with a track record of using them for real elections. These include high profile election systems companies like “Smartmatic“, “Everyone Counts“, and “Scytl“. Numerous municipalities and even countries around the world utilize online voting today. There has never been an online election, conducted by any of these companies, which has been technically compromised.
The question “Why can’t WE vote online?” will soon be a relic of the past. The question “If others can vote online, why can’t I?” will soon be the norm.
Perhaps, very soon, the only question asked will be “Was there really ever a time we all couldn’t vote online?”.
Online Voting can make long lines, and low turnout, obsolete.
Believe it or not, sometimes it’s not political.
While the greatest misconception regarding online voting is that we still don’t use it for elections in the U.S. because of technological barriers (a complete falsehood), another rapidly growing misconception is the suspicion that politics has denied us access to this technology. This is simply not true.
It is quite understandable to assume that pushback against election modernization is politically motivated. After all, we live in a time when voter I.D. is being used to suppress the vote. Several GOP Secretaries of State around the country have cut back on early voting, and closed polling places, in order to suppress turnout. Voter suppression in general is a very real, politically motivated thing today.
Our inability to modernize has been due to a variety of causes, led by an election administration and integrity culture that is resisting automation. Cheered on by this community, a small academic group of naysayers plays on the fears of the public regarding online hackers. American media pays little attention to the issue of modernization. When they do, they usually cater their treatment to the same public fears as the academic naysayers.
The high-tech companies, which provide modern online voting services, rarely enter public discussion, and just as rarely are contacted by reporters so that they can explain their industry. These companies need to form an association, which can become an easily identifiable entity for public relations about their industry.
The Utah vote was historic, and the fact that it was a GOP election helps demonstrate that neither resistance to, or embrace of, modernization need be politically motivated.
Once voters experience online voting on a small scale for local voting or caucuses/primaries, they will demand the same ability for general elections.
Election dysfunction may not be politically caused, but it is very real nonetheless.
We must abandon our outdated election culture. We must end dysfunction.
Double standard is the standard when it comes to media treatment of online voting.
Election night coverage of primary elections and caucuses on March 22nd was a perfect example. Reports of two hour lines to vote in Arizona, and long delays in Utah when polling places ran out of ballots, were portrayed as “good things” by reporters, because they represented enthusiasm.
Reports of any inconvenience whatsoever in Utah’s GOP first ever online voting option were characterized as chaos, a nightmare, and a plague.
Jacob Soboroff (@jacobsoboroff) reported on the online vote on MSNBC, and later tweeted about what he described on TV as a situation “plagued with registration problems” in Utah. He neglected to mention that most of the people calling in to help lines, and complaining that they couldn’t vote online, had failed to register by the March 18th deadline, and then tried to go online and vote anyway.
Here’s a news flash, Jacob: If someone can’t vote because they didn’t register, that isn’t a technical issue. When voters show up at the polling place and can’t vote because they didn’t register, do you report that as a plague of registration problems?
Even worse, Jacob’s report then went on to talk about security “concerns”, by parroting the rhetoric of anti online voting activists, referring to them as “security experts”. He presented their opinions about the security of the system as fact. He offered no quotes from the online voting service provider used. Instead he made only a vague reference to Estonia. He didn’t even know the name of the company.
Jacob, the name of the service provider is Smartmatic, a company that provides secure online voting around the world. They aren’t the only company doing this. Companies like Everyone Counts and Scytl (the largest online voting service provider in the world) manage online elections every day with none of the security nightmares predicted by your “experts”. Next time you choose to cover this subject, you might want to consider actually interviewing them, instead of relying solely on avid opponents for your “facts”.
While Jacob spoke, the ticker on the bottom of the screen kept flashing “Some voters wait in two hour lines in Arizona”. No trouble, chaos, or nightmares for those voters, I suppose.
Meanwhile, despite some real and valid issues with the online vote in Utah, NONE of them were related to security problems. NONE of the scary outcomes predicted by Jacob’s “experts” came to pass regarding the tally of the vote.
In fact, they never do.
Not that you would know any of the real facts about online voting, after watching coverage on March 22nd.
