Bloomberg Businessweek March 30, 2020 pp34-36 Politics “Is This The Future of U.S. Elections?” “The pandemic has added momentum-and urgency-to efforts to expand voting by mail” “Or Is This? “Companies push digital voting systems, while cybersecurity experts warn against them”.
“…mail-in voting…has been slowly building over the last two decades”. “The stimulus bill passed on March 25 includes $400 million for states to allow vote by mail, expand early voting and online registration, and hire more workers, but it doesn’t include a mandate”. In 2016, 33 million votes were cast by mail constituting nearly 25% of all votes. After much discussion and planning, this November, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington voting will be entirely by mail. Parts of North Dakota and Nebraska will be all-mail-in as well. California will allow counties to choose all-mail-in if supplemented with some centralized voting. It may be too late in this election cycle for other locales to add mail-in voting.
Companies are pushing for mobile voting with “at least 15 states…planning to use mobile balloting in a limited” way notably for overseas voters and for “those with disabilities”. “A mobile voting app call Voatz has already been used in federal, local and partywide lections in Denver, Oregon, Utah and West Virginia”. “West Virginia now plans to use…’Democracy Live’, to handle digital voting in its primary”. Voatz is all-digital but Democracy Live uses digital and ballots. Ballots from the digital input are “printed and counted by local election officials”.
Senator Wyden, who along with Senator Kobuchar, have authored a bill allowing for more mail-in voting during the pandemic and natural disasters, is quoted as saying “Security experts have shown over and over again that online voting isn’t safe, isn’t reliable and is dangerously vulnerable to foreign hackers”. According to University of Michigan Professor J. Alex Halderman, “We’re at least a decade away, if at all [for digital voting]”.