Internet transmission of ballots insecure

Don’t try to fix a system that isn’t broken by permitting the fax and e-mail of voted ballots [“Tweaking law makes overseas voting easier,” Opinion, Jan. 26].

The state Legislature’s bills — House Bill 2483 and Senate Bill 6238 — are supposedly being pursued to comply with a new federal law before the 2010 election cycle. States must establish procedures for military and overseas voters to electronically receive blank absentee ballots. The law does not require or condone the electronic transmittal of voted ballots — A 2004 report to the Pentagon and subsequent reports by top computer scientists say this can’t be done securely.

Current Washington law allows service personnel and citizens overseas to receive ballots by e-mail, so long as the original ballot is returned by mail. The bill under consideration does not provide this safeguard.

To say that voters ultimately measure the risk to their privacy themselves fails to take into account the fundamental insecurity of the Internet. The integrity of the vote and election are undermined if we ignore this fact. In a state that recently experienced a close election, we need to remember there is no reliable way to recount electronically submitted ballots.

Washington state should not implement a system that the Pentagon rejected as fundamentally insecure. Doing so threatens the integrity of the system and dishonors the military personnel whose votes we should be doing everything we can to assure are counted.

Washington state has one of the strongest voting systems in the country for military and overseas voters. Let’s keep it that way.

— Holly Jacobson, executive director VoterAction.org, Seattle