The covid-19 virus has rotten timing, not just because it’s horrible to be living during a pandemic, but because it’s an election year in the United States. Millions of people want to go to the polls to vote, but because of the virus, it’s dangerous.
Not to mention, training for election officials has been interrupted. Per this article, adversaries could use any number of techniques to interrupt elections, not all of them digital attacks. For example, if rumors are spread about the virus at a given polling station, then people are less likely to go to that station. The threat of the virus is real and people wanting to avoid it is a good thing.
People are moving to voting by mail as it’s considered safer, but what about the rush by some to online voting? We know apps can often be insecure, even the app that was supposed to be reporting Iowa election results had problems
And that was just the app that was supposed to collect results, not let people vote.
Verified by Voting cites a paper that says:
“At the present time, the Internet (or any network connected to the Internet) should not be used for the return of marked ballots. Further, Internet voting should not be used in the future until and unless very robust guarantees of security and verifiability are developed and in place, as no known technology guarantees the secrecy, security, and verifiability of a marked ballot transmitted over the Internet.”
Election security is a real problem this year and every year. There’s no current solutions for this problem. We want to hear your take on it, write an article for the special issue on Election Security for DTRAP.