emvn2-5551212

Etopia Media Voting News #2:

Congress may revive SERVE, the Pentagon's proposed remote Internet voting system

The Capitol, Washington, D.C.
June 4, 2004

By Marc Strassman
Reporter
Etopia Media Voting News
Etopia Media Political News Networks
Etopia Media News Networks

The rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building

Yesterday

Yesterday, Etopia Media Voting News carried a story about a press conference at the Pentagon called to announce its renewed and redoubled commitment to making sure that its troops receive their absentee paper ballots in a timely way and are able to reliably return them to their voting precincts in time for them to be properly counted in the November, 2004, elections.

At that news conference, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Charles Abell made reference to conflicting instructions he said were being sent by the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate regarding the future of the Pentagon's program to provide remote Internet voting capability to its troops.

What he said exactly was: "…we will wait to see what our congressional direction is. As you're probably aware, the House bill and the Senate bill give us different approaches to the future on that, and so we'll wait to see what their guidance is as to how we continue."

Reported here now, possibly for the first time anywhere, are the details of these "different approaches" to the future of remote Internet voting for military (and overseas) voters., if not of all American Internet voting.

The SERVE demonstration project was originally authorized by Section 1604 Public Law 107-107 at the end of 2001, as shown in this document.

The U.S. House of Representative has already passed H.R.4200, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005. This House bill would repeal the provisions of Public Law 107-107 that authorized the creation of SERVE. You can read the text of the House repeal of SERVE by clicking here.

The United States Senate has not yet voted to approve a 2005 defense appropriations bill. In its pending version, SERVE is delayed, but not eliminated. The Senate bill calls for delaying until 2006 (or possibly 2008) the remote Internet voting demonstration project first scheduled for 2002, and then 2004.

For the text of the Senate's proposal to continue, but delay, the implementation of SERVE, click here.

The Senate may vote on the Defense appropriations bill sometime this week or next. If the current Senate language calling for a delayed continuation of SERVE survives that vote, Senate and House conferees will need to agree on a compromise between terminating SERVE (House version) and reviving it for use in the 2006 elections, or, if the Secretary of Defense were to determine that the effort to meet that target date would "adversely affect the national security of the United States," in 2008 (Senate version).

SERVE ran under the radar until a few days before it was cancelled, when a scathing report from Pentagon consultants saying that it was insecure and could not be made secure within the context of the existing Internet was issued. Its possible revival based on the simple expedient of delaying it for two years has not been widely reported, if it's been reported at all, before this.

The last iteration of SERVE ran out of money ($22 million) nine months before it was supposed to be used, and before it was finished. Will the same general contractor, Accenture, responsible for the uncompleted SERVE I automatically get an extension to its contract, to build SERVE II? Or will the project go out to bid again?

What about a consideration of the supposedly insurmountable security problems that sank SERVE I? Is the Internet, overall, more secure now than it was in January? Will it be "secure enough" by 2006? By 2008?

Will the Election Assistance Commission, deprived of the money it needs to do so, be able to develop appropriate standards and regulations governing remote Internet voting systems such as SERVE in time to certify SERVE for the 2006 (or 2008) elections, or, failing that, will the Pentagon attempt to use SERVE without certifying it, as it showed every intention of doing in 2004, before withdrawing it in January from use in November?

These and other, related, questions, need to be answered before SERVE II is authorized by the Congress.

Representatives and Senators need to consider these issues. The media needs to cover them. And, above all, the legislative process needs to take into account the views and preferences of the voters, military and civilian, who may, sooner or later, be allowed or forced to vote using SERVE or some other remote Internet voting system.

To participate in a poll about what Congress ought to do about SERVE, click here.