Despite the serious threats it poses to election integrity, Internet voting is being used in several countries and U.S. states, and there is increasing public pressure to adopt it elsewhere. We examine some of these threats, in the hope of encouraging the technical community to oppose Internet voting unless and until the threats are eliminated.

IllustratIon by alICIa kubIsta/andrIJ borys assoCIates

D.C. pilot test Internet voting has
generally been deployed without be-
ing subjected to public testing prior
to use. To the best of our knowledge,
the only exception was a “digital vote
by mail” pilot project in Washington,
D.C. in 2010. In June of that year, the
Open Source Digital Voting Founda-
tion announced that it had been se-
lected by the District of Columbia
Board of Elections and Ethics (BOEE)
to support a project to allow Internet
voting for military and overseas voters,
starting with the upcoming September
primary. The BOEE had optimistically
planned a “public review period” in ad-
vance of the primary in which everyone
was invited to try to attack the system
in a mock election. While the system
was not ready for the primary, a public
test was eventually scheduled to run
from September 28 to October 6, with
midterm election voting scheduled to
begin October 11 or 12.