North Dakota became the second state in as many weeks to announce that its registered
voters living abroad could use an e-mail service provided by the DoD’s
Federal Voting Assistance Plan (FVAP) to cast their ballots.
Like many states, North Dakota law allows for the faxing of ballots, but
prohibits e-mail voting. Under the new initiative, registered voters living
abroad may request a ballot from local North Dakota election officials who
will, in turn, fax the absentee ballot to FVAP. From there, FVAP will
convert the ballot into a .PDF attachment in an e-mail.
The voter will print out the material, complete the ballot and required
forms and then return the ballot either by mail or through a reverse of the
earlier process if they have all the necessary technology at their disposal.
North Dakota Secretary of State Al Jaeger told internetnews.com the
state was focused on the fact that in many of the world’s hotspots, mail is
slow and, for security purposes, fax machines are few.
“North Dakota has quite a few of our national guard in the Middle East,
where the military does not have a lot of fax machines on site,” Jaeger said.
“We were concerned about the ability of our people to vote.”
Jaeger said it was his understanding the system would be secure and “no one
will see the ballot in route.”
Last week,
Missouri outlined a similar plan. Terri Durdaller, spokeswoman for
Matt Blunt, Missouri secretary
of state, said it came to the state’s attention that getting ballots to and
from places like Afghanistan might be a problem. Much like North Dakota,
Missourians stationed or living overseas will be able to complete their
ballots and scan and e-mail the results to FVAP, she said.
“The information is going to be transferred over secure lines and faxed
directly to the appropriate Missouri local election jurisdiction,” Durdaller
said. “It is merely an option and not mandated by law.”
Neither the Pentagon nor the FVAP were immediately available for comment.
Many security experts during the last few
years have raised security concerns about online voting, saying the Internet
is fundamentally flawed and open to hacks and Denial of Service attacks.
FVAP made the news earlier this year when it
discontinued
the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment
(SERVE), an Accenture program that aimed to provide Internet voting for overseas military
personnel. After security reviews of the $22 million SERVE program, the
Pentagon decided it was unable to ensure the legitimacy of online votes.