Researchers say online voting tech used in 5 states is fatally flawed
OmniBallot is election software that is used by dozens of jurisdictions in the United States. In addition to delivering ballots and helping voters mark them, it includes an option for online voting. At least three states—West Virginia, Delaware, and New Jersey—have used the technology or are planning to do so in an upcoming election. Four local jurisdictions in Oregon and Washington state use the online voting feature as well. But new research from a pair of computer scientists, MIT's Michael Specter and the University of Michigan's Alex Halderman, finds that the software has inadequate security protections, creating a serious risk to election integrity.
Democracy Live, the company behind OmniBallot, defended its software in an email response to Ars Technica. "The report did not find any technical vulnerabilities in OmniBallot," wrote Democracy Live CEO Bryan Finney.
This is true in a sense—the researchers didn't find any major bugs in the OmniBallot code. But it also misses the point of their analysis. The security of software not only depends on the software itself but also on the security of the environment on which the system runs. For example, it's impossible to keep voting software secure if it runs on a computer infected with malware. And millions of PCs in the United States are infected with malware.
