The
Virtual Voting Book Volume 2:
1999
by
Marc Strassman
Founder and Executive
Director
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Copyright 1999 by
Transmedia Communications
All Rights Reserved
Table
of Contents
Chapter
1
Campaign for Digital Democracy Mailing List Messages 24-60
Chapter
2
Additional Essay
Chapter 1
Campaign
for Digital Democracy Mailing List Messages 24-50
Message
Number 24 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Mailing
List
Date:
Jan 07 1999 18:11:16 EST
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
Saving Time & Money in the Los Angeles Secession Effort
To the Members of the Campaign for Digital Democracy mailing list,
Efforts are underway here in Los Angeles to separate the San Fernando
Valley from the City of Los Angeles through a convoluted secession
process. This process requires proponents to collect 135,000 signatures,
or 25% of the number of registered voters in "the Valley", on petitions
calling for a study of secession. Of course, every part of the process
has to be done by hand.
Today (January 7, 1999) saw an announcement from the Los Angeles County
Registrar of Voters that it was going to take until at least late March to
count all the signatures collected by the group working for secession. As
usual in
cases such as this, I drafted a
faster and easier it would be to collect and count the signatures online
and sent it to the Letters to the Editor departments of the Los Angeles
Times and the Daily News, the city's two major newspapers.
I'm also sending each of you a copy, in a version that adds my usual list
of e-voting hotlinks for the uninitiated to the text of what I sent to the
newspapers.
If you live in or around LA, watch for the letter. If you live elsewhere,
you might start looking around to see if your own city has similar
problems with counting petition signatures or if election officials there
are starting to worry about the high costs and low turnouts of recent
municipal elections and might be ready to start thinking about making the
"cyber-switch" to a faster, cheaper, and easier way of collecting citizen
input during elections.
If they are, please ask them to sign up for the Campaign for Digital
Democracy mailing list at:
http://digitaldemocracy.listbot.com
or to drop a note expressing interest and asking for more information to:
transmedia@pacificnet.net
Here's the letter:
To the Editor,
As Executive Director of Campaign for Digital Democracy, a lobbying and
advocacy
group that's been working since 1996 to
voting to the citizens of California, I would like to point out that if
the system for electronic registration, initiative signing and voting that
we've been trying to implement were already in place, then the delay,
confusion, complication, and $270,000 expense presently associated with
VOTE's effort to remove the Valley from the City could have been avoided.
Instead of taking until March at the earliest to get an honest count of
the signatures, a machine could authenticate and count the valid
signatures in minutes and the politicians involved could move on to the
next step, or not, of the process.
Florida, Washington State, and California itself are moving ahead now in
various degrees to explore or implement versions of Internet-based voting.
In the face the evidence made apparent by the secession effort, perhaps it
would make sense for us here in the City of Los Angeles to start thinking
now about applying the power and cost-effectiveness of the networked
computer systems that do so much for us already to helping us run our
governmental, political, and civic affairs, whether we end up in one, two
or several separate cities, and whether we have a city council of 15, 20,
or 25 members, with or without neighborhood councils, elected or
appointed, with or without meaningful power to do anything significant.
Anyone able to and interested in seeing and hearing me answer
commonly-raised objections to electronic voting in a streaming video clip
can do so on the Web at:
http://www.polemic.net/marcs1.ram
If you
need the video
http://www.real.com/products/player/index.html?src=q4_1201_1gold
If you want to visit the New Zealand Electronic Electoral Trial site and
see some of what Campaign for Digital Democracy is doing through its
co-sponsorship of the world's first nationwide test of electronic voting,
click here:
http://www.polemic.net/nzeet.html
Finally, if you'd like to join the Campaign for Digital Democracy mailing
list and be kept up-to-date on electronic voting developments, go to:
http://digitaldemocracy.listbot.com
Sincerely,
Marc Strassman
Executive Director
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Sherman Oaks, CA
Message
Number 25 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Mailing
List
Date:
Jan 14 1999 21:22:39 EST
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
Time Now for Electronic Initiatives
To the Members of the Campaign for Digital Democracy Mailing List,
Attached to this introduction is an unpublished op-ed column tying a
recent U.S. Supreme Court decision about initiatives to the issue of
electronic voting systems. I hope you find it interesting and useful.
One of the functions of this mailing list is to serve as a lens capable of
projecting a large virtual image of the ideas expressed in it over the
political landscape.
As long as you include every part of the essay text below, including the
title, author's name, and copyright statement, all of you are welcome to
submit this piece to any local or organizational publications you think
might appropriately run it. Just let me know if you do, by e-mail, at
transmedia@pacificnet.net.
With so much that is simultaneously sordid and ridiculous emanating from
our nation's capital, I continue to hope that we can change the subject to
a discussion of how we want to govern ourselves in the 21st century. This
essay is another effort to precipitate that change of subject.
Time Now for Electronic Initiatives
by Marc Strassman
copyright 1999 by Transmedia Communications
all rights reserved
On January 12, 1999, the United States Supreme Court ruled, in Buckley vs.
American Constitutional Law Foundation (97-930), that the process of
qualifying initiatives for the ballot involves "core political speech" and
is therefore strongly protected by the Constitution from unwarranted
interference by the state whose laws these initiatives seek to change.
This decision was hailed as great news by individuals and groups with
either a commercial or political interest in making the initiative process
easier. It was denounced by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who
wrote, in dissent, that it have too much power to "out-of-state persons
and political dropouts" and by California Secretary of State Bill Jones,
who attacked it because it "will further commercialize" the initiative
process.
I would like to suggest that by instituting Electronic Initiatives, part
of the Electronic Voting System I've been advocating since 1995, it would
be possible to simultaneously make it far easier to collect the signatures
required to put an initiative on the ballot, while also greatly reducing
the level of commercialism involved, that is, the need to rely on paid
signature-gatherers, from in or out of state, political dropouts or not.
As set out first in the Virtual Voting Rights Initiative which I wrote and
circulated in 1996 and then in the original version of California State
Assembly Bill AB 44, which was eventually amended into a study of
electronic voting, passed by both houses of the California Legislature and
vetoed on nonsensical grounds by former Governor Pete Wilson, the
Electronic Voting System would have three major components: Electronic
Registration, Electronic Voting, and Electronic Initiatives.
Electronic Registration involves allowing citizens to sign up to vote over
the Internet or by phone. Electronic Voting involves allowing them to
cast their ballots securely and remotely over the Internet or by phone.
Electronic Initiatives involve allowing citizens to digitally sign
initiative petitions online over the Internet or by phone.
In each of these three processes, a variety of methods, including digital
certificates on hard drives or smart cards, fingerprints, voiceprints,
face scans, hand configuration scans, or retinal or iris scans could be
used to identify and authenticate the citizen as he or she interacts with
the Electronic Voting System.
Rather than having to print initiative forms to be carried around by paid
or volunteer circulators, rather than forcing people to stop what they're
doing while out and about and decide on the spot if they want to support
an initiative hurriedly explained by the circulator, instituting
Electronic Initiatives would mean that citizens could, at their own
convenience, from home, office, or, soon, car, or wherever, access the
entire text, as well as the summary, of a proposed initiative, click over
to linked sites advocating or opposing the measure, and then, using one of
the approved methods of identifying and authenticating themselves,
virtually "sign" those initiatives they want to see put on the ballot for
consideration by themselves and their fellow citizens. Those who desired
to could easily join mailing lists or discussion groups about initiatives
of their choice.
No longer will it be necessary to pay, or argue about paying, initiative
mercenaries, either individual free-lancers or corporate entities, to
facilitate this aspect of the democratic process. By lowering the cost of
circulating the petitions, more good ideas without big money behind them
could get a fair hearing. By lowering the cost to voters of signing the
petitions, they could pay more quality attention to the merits of the
individual proposals and make more reasoned judgments about which ones to
support.
In short, we would be on the way towards "friction-free democracy."
The possibility always exists, with such a system, that it would become
"too" easy to draft, circulate, and qualify an initiative for the ballot.
Well, if the Legislature is doing its job of translating the people's will
into law, then this will become less of a problem. If it doesn't, then
perhaps allowing the people to legislate on its own behalf, through the
Electronic Initiative process, is the proper way to proceed. In any
event, initiatives, however many of them are qualified for the ballot by
means of the Electronic Initiative process, have no legal force until they
are approved by the people in an Electronic Election and pass
constitutional muster in the courts. So there may be less of a problem
here than first meets the eye.
There are individuals and groups now working to promote the creation of a
National Initiative Process, which would do for federal legislation what
the individual state initiative processes do on the state level.
Establishing such a system would, obviously, require amending the Federal
Constitution, to give the force of national law to measures passed through
a National Initiative Process. And, clearly, it would be much easier,
cheaper, and practical to use a National Electronic Initiative System to
implement and operate such a mechanism.
Instituting an Electronic Initiative, as part of an Electronic Voting
System, in one or more states and learning from its operations would be
the best possible way of gaining the expertise and experience needed to
scale such a system up to meet the technical requirements of a National
Electronic Initiative System. Of course, in order to facilitate the
operations of such a NEIS, each of the several states would need to
install an Electronic Voting System of its own for its citizens. The same
system could be used by voters in their role as citizens of their state
and as citizens of the nation. Thus would the advantages of the American
system of "dual" (state and national) citizenship be lifted to a higher
level through the power of modern voting technology.
There is much happening now and even more on the horizon that is working
to disconnect citizens from their government. Whatever one's take on the
substance of the charges, the current spectacle in Washington, D.C., is
not enhancing many people's views of their national government.
The massive and accelerating flood of news, commercials, and other
infoedupolitainment media is as likely to cause people to turn it all off
as it is to
institutions spewing it out. Coupled with real as well as perceived
powerlessness to effect these institutions, we are drifting into a
condition, not of community but of near-universal anomie, alienation,
withdrawal, and public apathy.
The response to similar conditions at the turn of the last century,
spearheaded by the Progressive Movement, was to institute a series of
political reforms, chief among which was the initiative process. Since
then, that process for implementing the will of the people has
accomplished great things, according to some, or great evils, according to
others. But it has, generally, lived up to its intended purpose of
allowing citizens to directly pass some of the laws they want enacted.
As this century turns again, the initiative process is a little tarnished,
it's picked up a bit of rust. Why don't we refurbish it for the next
century by porting it to the technology that will dominate that century,
networked computer intelligence? Why don't we supplement our own
capabilities and desires by using these powerful tools we've created, that
we use to shop, make travel reservations, gamble, chat, send e-mail,
listen to music, and watch videos? Why don't we give ourselves the means
to generate Electronic Initiatives within the context of an Electronic
Voting System and get on with the business of deciding how we want to
govern ourselves, instead of wasting time, energy, and money arguing about
the means
for making these decisions?
Message
Number 26 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Mailing
List
Date:
Jan 26 1999 16:07:27 EST
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
Electronic Elections Bill
To CDD Subscribers,
The draft legislation below has now gone out to the Office of Legislative
Counsel in Sacramento, where it is being translated into legal language in
order to be considered by the California Legislature. It has also gone
out to staffers in the Elections Committee of the Massachusetts House of
Representatives and the Secretary of State's Office in Washington State.
A copy has been e-mailed to the office of Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura.
I wanted all of you to have a copy, too.
Please feel free to get back to me with comments about this proposed bill.
Also, if you know staffers or representatives in your state legislature or
reporters anywhere, or if you are a staffer or representative or reporter
yourself, please do what you can to get these ideas and this language
inserted into the political and media conversation wherever you are and
whenever you can.
The current fiasco in Washington has convinced millions of citizens that
either some new ways of governing ourselves have to be found or many more
people will just opt out of the self-governance process entirely.
Electronic elections, including Internet voting and electronic
initiatives, may offer a way out of the current crisis of
(non-)participation.
But people need to know what their options are. This Electronic Elections
Bill, if passed in states throughout the country, will give them as much
convenience and choice in politics as they already enjoy in other areas
where the Internet has taken root. Not nearly enough, but more. It's
only a start, but it is a start.
Please let everyone know.
Sincerely,
Marc Strassman
Executive Director
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Draft Elements for an "Act to Establish an Electronic Election System"
for California
by Marc Strassman
Executive Director
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Section 1. It is the intent of the Legislature in enacting this bill to
establish the ability of voters and county election officials to use an
Electronic
Election System to promote
in California. To implement this goal, it is the intent of this bill to:
1. legalize the use of electronic networks for election
purposes, including registration, initiative and in lieu petition
signing, and voting.
2. authorize and require the Secretary of State to create
and apply standards according to which proposed Electronic Election
Systems may qualify for official use within the state
3. authorize county election officials to use Electronic
Election Systems within their jurisdictions in all future elections
4. prohibit the wrongful manipulation, fraudulent use or
violations of the integrity of the Electronic Election System, and
establish suitable sanctions against such illegal acts
Section 2.
All qualified California voters shall be entitled to register to vote,
sign initiative and in lieu petitions, and vote in all primary, general,
and special elections using an Electronic Election System over any secure
electronic network from any point and by any means by which they can
access such a network.
Section 3.
The Secretary of State will be authorized and required to set out the
standards that any Electronic Election System will need to satisfy
before it can be sold or used in California.
To qualify for use in elections in California, an Electronic Election
System must:
1. provide for the secure identification and authentication
of the voter
2. provide for the secure identification and authentication
of the official jurisdiction supervising and responsible for the
election process of which the registration, petition signing, or voting is
a part
3. protect the privacy, integrity and anonymity of the
voter's ballot
4. prevent multiple castings of a ballot in any one
election cycle by any individual voter
5. provide protection against tampering, fraudulent use,
illegal manipulation or other unauthorized abuse by voters, hackers, or
election officials
6. be easy to use by every voter
7. legibly convey all information mandated by law to be
included in the ballot for each voter, including lists of all candidates
for office and all ballot measures qualified to appear on his or her
ballot, in whatever set or randomly-generated order is mandated by law
8. provide the means by which voters can cast write-in
votes for candidates whose names do not appear on the ballot but who
have qualified for official "write-in status" according to the laws and
regulations of the jurisdiction conducting the vote
9. reliably provide uninterrupted availability 24 hours a
day and 7 days a week during the designated electronic voting period
10. be sufficiently scaleable as to provide electronic
voting access to all voters in any jurisdiction where it is employed,
over the course of the designated electronic voting period
11. be accessible to all voters, either through
personally-owned computers at their homes, computers in their place of
work, or publicly-available computers in public kiosks, schools,
government offices, or polling places
12. be capable of being upgraded as technology improves
13. assure the non-repudiation of electronic electoral
transactions between voters and government.
14. be useable by mobility- and visually-challenged voters
15. be capable of being audited as to contents, results and
process at a sufficiently high level to guarantee the integrity of the
system and the public's confidence in its integrity.
Section 4.
Once the Secretary of State has developed a detailed set of
specifications based on these principles, and once a proposed
Electronic Election System has been shown, through tests conducted by
the Secretary of State's Office to have met these specified
requirements, the successfully-tested system shall be designated as
"approved by the Office of the Secretary of State for use by all
election authorities within the State of California." The Secretary may
contract with a recognized independent testing facility to perform the
tests necessary to establish the system's conformance with the
technical specifications put forward by the Secretary.
Section 5:
Upon approval of a system pursuant to section 4, county election
authorities will then be authorized to use approved systems within their
jurisdiction. Counties are authorized, pursuant to and consistent with
(current) law, to buy, lease, contract for services, and generally take
any otherwise authorized actions to effectuate the use of an Electronic
Election System within their county.
Section 6: Penalties
Any person interfering with the lawful operation of any element or
activity of the Electronic Election system with the intent of committing
any fraud or in any manner violating the integrity of the Electronic
Election System, including its internal code, contents or results, shall
be subject to the penalties included in the Elections Code, commensurate
with the
severity of the infraction.
Message
Number 27 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Mailing
List
Date:
Jan 27 1999 15:26:19 EST
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
link to Electronic Elections Bill
For your convenience, I've posted the Electronic Elections Bill on its own
webpage. So if you want to send a copy of it to a reporter you know, or
an elected state legislator, just send them this URL:
http://www.suresite.com/ca/e/elelbill/
Thanks,
Marc Strassman
Executive Director
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Message
Number 28 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Mailing List
Date:
Jan 29 1999 20:08:16 EST
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
House Bill 1594 in Washington State Would Authorize Study of Electronic
Elections
Washington State, the home base of many Internet-related companies, is
making a move towards becoming an early adopter of electronic election
technology with House Bill 1594, which would require its secretary of
state to "assemble a task force to conduct a study of the issues and
challenges presented by incorporating on-line and Internet technologies in
the voting process."
Read the whole bill at:
ftp://ftp.leg.wa.gov/pub/billinfo/1999-00/house/1575-1599/1594_01291999
Here are the names and e-mail addresses of the bill's co-authors. Why not
e-mail them in support of their work on behalf of our right to use the
Internet to vote, wherever we live?
Rep. LAURA RUDERMAN
(D) 45th LEGISLATIVE DISTRICT
ruderman_la@leg.wa.gov
Rep. DAVE SCHMIDT
(R) 44th LEGISLATIVE DISTRICT
schmidt_da@leg.wa.gov
Rep. ERIK POULSEN
(D) 34th LEGISLATIVE DISTRICT
poulsen_er@leg.wa.gov
Rep. MARK MILOSCIA
(D) 30th LEGISLATIVE DISTRICT
miloscia_ma@leg.wa.gov
Rep. HANS DUNSHEE
(D) 39th LEGISLATIVE DISTRICT
dunshee_ha@leg.wa.gov
If you want to grab all their e-mail addresses and insert them into the
bcc: slot
on your
and a generic message of support to all of them at once, use this list:
ruderman_la@leg.wa.gov, schmidt_da@leg.wa.gov, poulsen_er@leg.wa.gov,
miloscia_ma@leg.wa.gov, dunshee_ha@leg.wa.gov
If you live in Washington State, please contact your elected
representatives and tell them you'd like to see this bill passed.
Sincerely,
Marc Strassman
Executive Director
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Message
Number 29 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Mailing
List
Date:
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
An Internet E-Ballot for Democracy
Whatever city, or sparsely-populated county, you live in, the Internet can
make it more convenient for you to vote, while saving you money as a
taxpayer.
To see how this general principle applies specifically today to the
archetypal city of tomorrow, click below.
Feel free to apply these observations to your own location and to work to
persuade local government officials, media, and voters to launch similar
Internet voting projects in your jurisdiction. And let us know here at
CDD about your activities in this area so that we can co-ordinate and
synergize
all our efforts to
states, and nations everywhere.
http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/VALLEY/COMMENT/t000009545.html
Sincerely,
Marc Strassman
Executive Director
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Message
Number 32-35 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Mailing
List
Date:
Feb 09 1999 05:36:10 EST
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
Please Support House Bill 1594 in Washington State, Part 1
From 1:30
pm until 3:30 pm, on Wednesday, Fe
members of the Washington State House of Representatives who constitute
that body's State Government Committee will conduct hearings in the
beautiful state capitol building. One of the bills they will consider
will be House Bill 1594, a measure ordering that:
"The secretary of state shall assemble a task force to conduct a study
of the issues and challenges presented by incorporating on-line and
Internet technologies in the voting process....At the secretary's
discretion, the office of the secretary of state, in conjunction with
one or more county auditors, may permit limited elections for the
purposes of validating the accuracy, integrity, and security of on-line or
Internet voting."
Because the entire Washington State House of Representatives consists of
49 Republicans and 49 Democrats, each committee consists of equal
numbers of Democrats and Republicans, in the case of this committee four
each.
Here are the names and e-mail addresses of these eight Representatives:
Cathy McMorris mcmorris_ca@leg.wa.gov
Sandra Romero romero_sa@leg.wa.gov
Tom Campbell campbell_to@leg.wa.gov
Mark Miloscia miloscia_ma@leg.wa.gov
Hans Dunshee dunshee_ha@leg.wa.gov
Kathy Haigh haigh_ka@leg.wa.gov
Kathy Lambert lambert_ka@leg.wa.gov
Dave Schmidt schmidt_da@leg.wa.gov
Here's a combined list with all of their e-mails:
mcmorris_ca@leg.wa.gov, romero_sa@leg.wa.gov, campbell_to@leg.wa.gov,
miloscia_ma@leg.wa.gov, dunshee_ha@leg.wa.gov, haigh_ka@leg.wa.gov,
lambert_ka@leg.wa.gov, schmidt_da@leg.wa.gov
Elected officials rightly listen more attentively to the opinions of
those citizens whom they represent, not least of all because they need
their votes for re-election. If you reside in the districts of any of
these officials, please e-mail them and politely express your views on
the need for them to approve House Bill 1594 in the State Government
Committee.
If you live elsewhere in Washington State, please e-mail them and
identify yourself as a Washington State resident who supports the bill
and would like to see it passed. If you don't live in Washington State,
please let them know that you are looking to them for leadership in the
national movement towards electronic elections.
Please cc: your communications to info@vpac.org.
Below is a transcript of what my testimony on House Bill 1594 would have
been had I been able to go to Olympia to deliver it in person.
Thanks for your help.
Remarks of Marc Strassman, Executive Vice President,
Communications, and Chief Legislative Officer, eballot.net
to the State Government Committee of
the House of Representatives of Washington State
1:30 pm,
Wednesday, Fe
Olympia, WA
Introduction
Co-Chairs, Vice Chairs, Members of the Committee:
Thank you very much for this chance to talk with you about
electronic elections, something I've had on my mind for three years and
which I don't get to talk about that often in public.
My name is Marc Strassman. For about three years, I've been
Executive Director of Campaign for Digital Democracy, an advocacy group
committed to convincing elected officials that it is safe and feasible to
allow citizens to use the Internet to register to vote, sign initiative
petitions, and vote in all local, state, and federal elections.
For about a week, I've been the Executive Vice President,
Communications, and Chief Legislative Officer, of eballot.net, an
Internet start-up based in Kirkland, Washington, which is currently
developing software and security systems that will allow citizens to
vote, sign initiative petitions, and vote in all local, state, and
federal elections.
My interest in electronic elections and in this bill in particular
is twofold: I am pursuing this goal of electronic elections because I
think it will benefit all of us greatly, by helping to put the demos, the
people, back in democracy. I am also pursuing the secular grail of
electronic elections to earn a living and so I can pay more taxes in
Washington State and to Washington, D.C., for the benefit of the state and
the country.
I want to do good, and I want to do well. I believe that there is
no contradiction here, but only a particularly clear example of what
democracy, capitalism, together, democratic capitalism, is all about.
Five Groups and their Relation to Electronic Elections
Now I'd like to explain why I think you ought to approve House
Bill 1594, a bill to authorize the establishment of a task force to study
electronic elections in Washington State and to allow the Secretary of
State, along with county election officials, to run what will essentially
be proof-of-concept tests of electronic voting within
selected jurisdictions.
While Julius Caesar's Gaul was divided into three parts, I think
that the public, and perhaps members of this committee, is divided into
five groups, in terms of how they feel about using the Internet to allow
people to vote in official elections and to sign initiative petitions.
The first group understands and supports the eballot and members
of it want to vote on the Internet as soon as possible. Except for those
in this group who feel that half a virtual loaf is worse than none at all,
everyone in this category strongly supports House Bill 1594 and applauds
the Secretary of State's office for proposing it and its House sponsors
for introducing it and will applaud you for approving it.
The second group is from Missouri--we have to show them. They are
open-minded on the concept of electronic elections, or even support it in
principle, but they want to know that any Electronic Election System (or
EES) that will be entrusted with receiving and counting their votes is
secure, easy-to-use, protected against hackers and fraud, auditable, and
cost-effective--in short, honest and economical. House Bill 1594 is just
the bill for people in this group. The point of this bill is to research,
test, examine, and explore the electronic elections terrain to see if it
can support and nourish a community of electronic voters. Everyone in
this second group supports the passage of HB 1594.
The third group of citizens has never heard of electronic voting,
and therefore has no opinion of it as yet. For them, electronic elections
are more like the proverbial tree falling in the deserted forest than
anything else. Electronic elections are not yet on their radar screen.
Clearly, proceeding with passage and implementation of this bill would
suit the needs of this group, by making them aware of the existence of the
possibility of electronic voting, and providing them with solid data upon
which to ponder and decide their opinion of it.
The fourth group has heard of electronic elections, but they don't
know how they feel about it yet. This group needs more information so it
can make up its mind. It needs to see HB 1594 passed and carried out so
it can weigh the facts and trade-offs and make up its mind.
The fifth group consists of individuals and groups who know about
and understand electronic elections, and do not approve, either because of
philosophical reservations about the whole concept, specific worries about
the cost of such systems, their potential vulnerability to fraud, or the
uneven accessibility of networked computers, or because they believe
making voting too convenient will somehow undermine the democratic process.
For this group, the task force and investigations mandated by this
bill are especially necessary. Only by investigating, costing out,
studying, testing, and discussing the dynamics and possibilities of
electronic voting can we acquire the information we need to make a
well-founded decision about whether electronic voting is something the
State ought to pursue or something we ought to forget about, at least for
now, and stick with the technology we now use to conduct elections.
It's my own belief that the results of the Task Force's
investigations and tests will be to show that electronic voter
registration, initiative petition signing, and voting are feasible,
cost-effective, and likely to substantially increase voter participation,
which might come to be called "voter stayin," rather than "voter turnout,"
with such a system.
I am hesitant to make reference to this phenomenon, since I still
live in Southern California, where, in the words of the classic 70's song,
"it never rains." But one real benefit of an electronic elections system,
especially
in Washington, is that voters do not have to involve um
in the electoral process. (And by the way, it is raining here now today
in Los
Angeles, and so maybe we'd benefit here from this law as well.)
Who Wants to Vote Online?
Before I go any further, I'd like to cite some polls that support
the idea that I am here not just on my own behalf, and on behalf of
eballot.net, but as the unappointed spokesperson for millions of Internet
users who want to vote.
In the October, 1994, issue of Macworld, poll respondents
indicated that the Internet application they most wanted to see was online
voting.
Two years later, Republican pollster Kellyanne Fitzpatrick
reported:
Report from The Polling Company, December 12, 1996:
Majority of Americans Favor Voting by Internet
12/12/96
MAJORITY OF AMERICANS FAVOR VOTING BY INTERNET
Most say Internet will be better than TV for news and
information by 2000
Contact:
Betsy Cragon Public Relations Manager
betsy@proxicom.com 703.918.0270 or
Kellyanne Fitzpatrick - The Polling Company
202-667-6557
Washington, DC: December 12, 1996 --A new survey suggests that
the historically low turnout in last months elections could increase in
the future through a single mechanism: voting on the Internet. Fifty-one
percent (51%) of those polled said they would support allowing registered
voters to cast their ballots by Internet if proper safeguards were in
place, with 28% strongly supporting the idea. Key demographic groups
favoring voting-by-Internet include:
68% Generation Xers (18-29)
65% Daily Internet users
56% Blacks
56% Independents
55% Never watch network news programs
53% Pacific Region
53% Liberals
52% Conservatives
52% Urban dwellers
52% Labor union households
50% of those who voted on Election Day (November 5, 1996)
On the flip side, 42% of those polled voiced opposition to
voting by Internet. Opposition was particularly salient among senior
citizens (49% opposed), whose current access to the Internet is somewhat
limited.
Kelly Fitzpatrick is famous for being a Republican pollster; that
is how she was identified when she appeared as a guest recently on Geraldo
Live! More than two years ago, she found that a majority of American
voters favored being allowed to vote on the Internet.
Mr. Poll reports that 55% of those polled want to vote by
Internet. See it at:
http://www.misterpoll.com/results.wga?id=848407562
A recent poll taken in Montesano, in Grays Harbor County, WA,
asked, “If available in your area, would you use the Internet to vote?”
More than 75% of voters answered yes.
Most voters, and a strong majority of Internet users who are
eligible to vote, want to vote over the Internet. It makes sense, in a
democracy, to allow them to.
Florida, California, and Washington in the Race
towards Electronic Elections
Washington State is already home to the biggest on-line bookseller
anywhere; the biggest provider of streaming video systems; and the most
important maker of computer operating systems, as well as generator of
associated anti-trust lawsuits by the federal Justice Department.
Even though I'm a Californian, I believe that Washington State
should also be the home of the biggest and most influential designers,
builders, and sellers of Internet-based voting systems.
I'd help put what you're doing here into context by telling you a
little of my experience with a similar bill during the 1996-1997
legislative cycle in California.
In 1996, with help from the Office of Legislative Counsel in
Sacramento, I drafted the Virtual Voting Rights Initiative, a bill that
would have required the California Secretary of State's Office to
develop and deploy an electronic elections system that would give
citizens the rights to register to vote, sign initiative petitions, and
vote in all official elections.
I failed to collect the required 433,000 signatures while standing
outside my local natural foods store, and the initiative died, but not
before it was written up in State Legislatures, the magazine of the
National Conference of State Legislatures, noticed by Assemblymember (now
State Senator) Kevin Murray of Culver City, and introduced into the
California Assembly as Assembly Bill 44, in early December, 1996
AB44 languished as a pending bill in Sacramento for a few months,
until Secretary of State Bill Jones sat down with Assemblymember Murray
and agreed to support it if it were amended to call for a study of
electronic elections rather than their implementation. Senator Murray
amended the bill as agreed to with the Secretary of State.
After a lot of bickering, it passed both houses of the California
Legislature, and then was vetoed by former Governor Pete Wilson on the
grounds that since the security of electronic elections hadn't yet been
proven, it would be premature and inappropriate to set up a task force to
evaluate their security. He vetoed AB44 in October of 1997.
Since then, Internet technology has been moving forward, in power
and popularity. Washington State's House Bill 1594 is essentially
identical to California's AB44, although it includes a provision to allow
for actual tests of Internet voting, if agreed to by the Secretary of
State and country voting officials.
As for California, I've written an updated version of the original
AB44, one that leaves the design and development of the electronic
elections systems to private companies. This proposed Electronic
Elections Bill for California legalizes Internet-based voting, requires
the secretary of state to develop standards by which to judge the
security, auditability, integrity, etc. of electronic voting systems,
allows county elections officials to buy or license electronic elections
systems for use in their counties, and criminalizes any fraudulent use or
intrusion into any EES.
This bill is being converted into legislative form by the same
Office of Legislative Counsel that helped me draft the Virtual Voting
Rights Initiative in 1996, only this time it is working at the behest of
Senator Murray, who is one of several members in Sacramento considering
whether to sponsor the bill there.
Also, Florida's Secretary of State has now collected suggestions
from the public, and plans to issue guidelines soon, for approving
electronic election systems using Internet protocols, but limited to the
collection of votes within traditional polling places.
What all this means is that if Washington State moves vigorously
ahead by passing HB 1594 into law now, establishes the Electronic
Elections Task Force, conducts a study and runs the necessary tests, it
could take the lead within the United States of the movement to give
voters all the benefits that would accrue to them from such a system.
Since having an electronic election system in place would save the
state money, increase ballot security, make it easier to audit the
ballots, and make voting considerably more convenient and even pleasant
for Washington State voters, I strongly and respectfully urge you to
approve this bill.
As I was quoted as saying in an article that appeared the
Post-Intelligencer last week:
The Campaign for Digital Democracy, a Los Angeles-based
advocacy group, is monitoring the issue. Its executive director,
Marc Strassman, argues that "the technology to support electronic
voting will continue to get cheaper and more powerful, and
public demand for its implementation will only grow as the
potential
of these systems for
democratic political process becomes more well-known."
Bipartisanship
Given the recent evidence coming from Washington, D.C., of how
annoying partisanship can be, I hope that everyone in Olympia might want
to see if they can find a way to demonstrate its opposite. Supporting
HB1594 as a matter of bi-partisan consensus might be such an opportunity.
Democracy ought to be a vigorous competition of ideas and also
personalities. The purpose of the electoral infrastructure ought to be to
provide a means by which the voters can decide which ideas and which
personalities they prefer to be governed by. Friction-Free Democracy
The speed, cost-effectiveness, accuracy, and coming ubiquitousness
possible with an Electronic Election System argue for putting it in place
and then using it to let the people make decisions about how they want to
be governed. Microsoft Chairman Gates argues in his book, The Road Ahead,
that networked computer technology will or could give us "friction-free
capitalism," in which the transaction costs are very low and the free
market in goods and services will be able to reach close to some sort of
theoretical perfection.
Similarly, an Electronic Election System could facilitate a form
of "friction-free democracy," in which lowered transaction costs and
ubiquitous sources of political information will allow our democracy to
approach a similar level of perfection.
But just as Gates' ideal market cannot be achieved without a
network infrastructure in place and accessible to market participants,
neither can we develop a more ideal democracy unless a networked political
infrastructure is in place and accessible to all citizens.
For these reasons, it is essential that HB 1594 be enacted,
carried out and that its findings be used to help build such a
democracy-facilitating network.
A Political Amendment to Moore's Law
Once the political system is undergirded by such a networked
infrastructure, all subsequent improvements in that network's power and
efficiency can be directly translated into a more perfect system for
determining and carrying out the will of the electorate.
Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, originated Moore's Law, which
states, in its current form, that the cost of computer calculations can be
expected to be cut in half every 12 months.
I'd like to propose a political amendment to Moore's :Law, one
that holds that political interactivity, and hence the level of democracy,
ought to double every year as well. And it would, if that democracy were
carried out through an electronic election system the components of which
could be upgraded proportionally as the computing and networking
technologies underlying them grew more powerful according to Moore's Law
itself.
The Argument from Washington State's Economic Self-Interest
It makes sense for Washington State to lead the way as a state
government so that private companies within its borders will,
collectively and equally, have the advantage of being incubated and
grown here, before they are more fully-fledged, and set off to win new
markets in our neighbor to the north, across the Pacific, and in the
states and nations to our south and east.
By going forward with this study, Washington State will have
significant impact in all the other states who study this later. We
can even hope that many states, and foreign countries, will rely on the
work product of this Task Force to make their own decisions about
electronic elections over the next few years.
"Just look at the Washington Study," they will say. "It's all in
there. Let's go ahead with it."
Let's go ahead with it.
Let's Encourage Young People to Vote
Young people are turned off by politics; they are turned on by
computers and the Internet. Allowing Internet voting will mean a much
higher participation rate among young voters.
Let's Consider Speeding the Process Up
In politics, it's called fast track; in the world of high-tech,
it's called Internet time.
We
need to
Imagine the power and flexibility of a WEES (Wireless Electronic
Election System), fueled by penny Pentiums. As this technology evolves,
so will the politics that's built upon it. And we haven't spoken at all
(and won't here) of the immeasurable benefits in terms of delivery of
government services that will come from building and using this election
system and its offshoots and follow-ons.
Even if you don't want to move the Report Delivery Date up to June
1, 1999, you might want to consider the option of allowing the Electronic
Elections Task Force to file its Final Report as soon as they're finished
with it, and not make them and all of us wait a year, while technology
improves and politics and government slip further behind the dominant
economic and cultural curves.
Any search engine can find much of the data the Task Force will
need in a few seconds. It doesn't have to take 11 months to study this
data, discuss it in depth, debate it, make decisions, and write a report.
eballot will have working prototype of the EES ready by April 1st.
I understand there is another company, also in Kirkand, that would want to
participate in any tests as well. I'm sure we could find hundreds if not
thousands of Washington State voters ready to be beta testers of these
systems.
I believe a working, tested, secure, convenient, easy-to-use
electronic election system could be in operation in Washington State by
the end of the year and ready to use in the 2000 elections.
If this committee passes HB 1594, if the Washington Legislature
passes it and the Governor signs it, then Washington State will be
remembered
as the place where, and Fe
the time when, the power of the Internet was decisively unleashed for the
benefit of present and future generations of free men and women in this
state and around the world.
Technological Marvels of Their Time
Like the emblematic technological marvel of an earlier time, the
Grand Coolee Dam, the Internet is a product of federal vision and the work
of countless individuals. Like the Dam, the Net is a prodigy of
engineering which daily impacts countless aspects of our lives. Like the
Dam, the Net will eventually fade into the twilight of our
consciousness. It will just be there, behind the scenes, enabling all
manner of transactions, including political ones, as we go about our
business, living our lives.
But before that could happen with the Dam, before it could be
created, a political decision needed to be made, a decision to go ahead, a
decision to mobilize the best engineers, the strongest workers, and all
the apparatus of government and private commerce to build what then was
the biggest and most powerful machine in the world.
Today, and even more so into the future, our economy is and will
be based more on information than on energy as such. The vast quantities
of electricity generated by the Grand Coolee are still important; they
make possible the flow of information through the Net as well as the
illumination of our towns and cities.
But it is electrons as carriers of data, and photons, too, that
are the waves washing the future up on our shore now. For that reason,
the Internet is now our lifeline, as the powergrid energized by the
spinning of giant magnetos spun by falling water has been until now.
It took courage by farsighted officials back then to make the
decisions that gave birth to that gigantic concrete wall and its embedded
rotors. They took those decisions in the face of critics who attacked
them as socialists and worse. They made the right decision and we've been
benefiting from it ever since.
Sometime in the future, perhaps not too distant, others will look
back at us as we wrestled with this bill, this decision. In a sense, they
are looking back on us already, and now. Will we make the right decision?
When I was in my later adolescence, I liked to imagine myself as
being in the same situation as Matthew Arnold, who wrote that he was:
Wandering between two worlds,--one dead,
The other powerless to be born.
Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse.
Well, to quote St. Paul, who said that when he was a child he
thought as a child, but when he had grown, he put away childish things, I
don't think I see my surroundings that way anymore. I think now that we,
together, have the power to give birth to that new world. I certainly
hope we'll try.
Appendix A
A Task Force without Legislation
Some people believe that the Secretary of State has the authority
to conduct this research and these tests without the explicit approval of
the Legislature as set forth in this bill. I strongly believe that it is
far better to have the Legislature on record in support of these steps.
An instructive example of how not to proceed in this area is provided by
the California experience.
Even though AB44, which would have mandated California's Secretary
of State to set up an Electronic Voting Task Force, was vetoed in October
of 1997 by Governor Wilson, this item appeared in the Sacramento Bee of
May 18, 1998:
The office of California Secretary of State Bill Jones is working on a
project to allow electronic voting from the traditional voting booth -- as
opposed to voting from a home computer -- and is close to
approving a couple of systems, a spokesman said. Voting from
remote terminals or via the Internet will also be studied by a task
force.
On November 13, 1998, this paragraph appeared in the Christian
Science Monitor:
Digital "signatures" are already legal in California for many
business purposes, but they are not yet permitted in the election code. A
spokesman says Secretary of State Bill Jones will convene a task force
next month that will begin exploring Internet voting and ballot signatures.
Five days ago, on Fe
which said, in pertinent part:
Jones said allowing people to sign petitions with digital signatures
would require an act of the Legislature. Jones is currently
assembling a commission to develop recommendations for the
Legislature on that issue as well as the concept of allowing
Californians to cast ballots via Internet. It will not be an easy issue
to tackle for a large state with a burgeoning political system.
For the Secretary of State to proceed on his own is not, if the
California example is any indication, the way to generate a lot of
momentum
behind the concept of electronic election systems.
Appendix B
E-Mail of
Fe
of the State Government Committee
Dear Representative McMorris,
I am writing to you as Chief Legislative Officer of eballot.net, a
Kirkland-based Internet start-up dedicated to developing and marketing
electronic election systems.
The State Government Committee, of which you are Co-chair, will be
holding
hearings on this bill on Wednesday, Fe
not be able to attend, so I am sending you a link now that will allow me
to make the case for electronic voting directly to you on your computer
screen without either of us moving an inch.
The very fact that we can communicate this easily over the Internet is, I
think, a strong argument in favor of allowing this networked
capability to be harnessed in the service of greater democratic
participation, lower costs for election agencies, and more convenience
for citizens.
The technology that lets you see and hear me comes from Seattle-based
RealNetworks. Washington State is already home to leading Internet
companies such as Amazon.com, Microsoft, and the aforementioned
RealNetworks.
Passing HB 1594 will be an important step towards establishing
Washington State as THE source of the world's best electronic voting
systems. Your vote to pass it would be greatly appreciated by us at
eballot, by everyone in Washington State whose ability to vote will be
enhanced, and by everyone out-of-state who will think kindly of
Washington State when they use systems originated here to enhance their
own democratic political life.
You can see and hear me making the case for electronic voting at:
http://www.polemic.net/marcs1.ram
If you'd like to see a model electronic elections law, you can access
"An Electronic Elections Law for California" at:
http://www.suresite.com/ca/e/elelbill
There are links at that site to the New Zealand Electronic Electoral
Trial, which you can reach directly at:
http://www.polemic.net/nzeet.html
If you'd like to join the mailing list of the Campaign for Digital
Democracy and receive updates as well as access to archives of past
postings about the latest in technology and politics as it impacts
electronic voting, you can go to:
http://digitaldemocracy.listbot.com
Finally, I'm attaching a Rich Text Format version of The Virtual Voting
Book, Volume 1: 1994-1998, which should provide you with a fairly
exhaustive collection of documents chronicling my work and others'
comments over the last few years on the subject of electronic elections.
If you have questions about any of this material, or any other aspect of
the electronic elections process, please feel free to e-mail them to me at
transmedia@pacificnet.net.
Thank you in advance for your consideration of this bill and this
subject, which are both of vital importance to the future of democracy
in
Washington State.
Message
Number 36 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Mailing
List
Date:
Feb 13 1999 02:17:28 EST
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
Washington State Hearing on House Bill 1594, Establishing an Electronic
Elections Task Force
To hear testimony at the Washington State State Government Committee
hearing
on the Internet Voting Task Force Bill on Fe
Olympia, Washington, click on the URL below and start listening at the one
hour and ten minute point in the clip.
http://198.239.32.144/ramgen/199902/1999021106.ra
Message
Number 37 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
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List
Date:
Feb 17 1999 00:18:52 EST
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
Hearings on Electronic Elections Task Force Bill in Washington State Senate
To hear the testimony at the Washington State Senate State and Local
Government Committee hearing on the Electronic Elections Task Force bill,
Senate
Bill 5662, on Monday, Fe
start listening at the seven minute point in the clip.
http://198.239.32.144/ramgen/199902/1999021142.ra
Message
Number 38 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
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List
Date:
Feb 21 1999 20:49:21 EST
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
NZEET Update
The New Zealand Electronic Electoral Trial (NZEET), which was the subject
of the very first Campaign for Digital Democracy message, has been growing
and growing until it has become the foremost exemplar of electronic voting
in the South Pacific.
To see what it's been up to, click here:
http://www.nzii.org.nz/projects/edemocracy/n
Message
Number 39 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
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Date:
Feb 23 1999 00:50:14 EST
From:
marc strassman <transmedia@pacificnet.net>
Subject:
message
One story in today's Los Angeles Times and one story in yesterday's
edition of that paper point to the increasing desperation with which
efforts are being made to get out the vote in an era of dwindling
participation by voters.
Perhaps allowing people to vote over the Internet would solve both the
problem of diminishing participation and the problem of paying so much
to conduct the elections.
Sunday, Fe
Lack of Interest Cancels Some Elections
http://www.latimes.com/sbin/iawrapper?NS-search-set=/36d23/aaaa0032nd23b7b&NS-doc-offset=2&NS-adv-search=0&
Monday, Fe
Weekend Election Puts Santa Monica Voters in Spotlight
http://www.latimes.com/sbin/iawrapper?NS-search-set=/36d23/aaaa0032nd23b7b&NS-doc-offset=5&NS-adv-search=0&
CDD subscribers who would like to sign up for a new, related, list, the
eBallot.net list, can do so at:
http://eBallot.net.listbot.com
The eBallot.net list will feature news about eBallot.net, a
Seattle-based Internet voting systems start-up.
Attachments:
eballotnetlores.gif
Message
Number 40 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
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Date:
Feb 23 1999 19:27:01 EST
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
One Step Further for eballoting in Washington State
On what would have been George Washington's 267th birthday, the State &
Local Government Committee of the Washington State Senate issued a
majority report of "Do Pass" for Senate Bill 5662, thereby moving this
bill, which calls for a study of eballoting to be conducted by
Washington's Secretary of State, including official Internet voting tests,
one step further forward in the process that will lead to its enactment.
The report of the committee can be found at:
ftp://ftp.leg.wa.gov/pub/billinfo/1999-00/senate/5650-5674/5662_s
For a copy of the bill itself, go to:
ftp://ftp.leg.wa.gov/pub/billinfo/1999-00/senate/5650-5674/5662_02011999
For a digest of the bill, go here:
ftp://ftp.leg.wa.gov/pub/billinfo/1999-00/senate/5650-5674/5662_dig_02011999
Message
Number 41 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
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Date:
Feb 25 1999 04:28:31 EST
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
California Office of Legislative Counsel's Draft Electronic Elections Implementation Bill
Last minute maneuvers are underway in Sacramento, California, to see that
a bill implementing electronic elections is introduced before the Friday,
Fe
The Office of Legislative Counsel of the California Legislature has
prepared a draft bill embodying Campaign for Digital Democracy's vision
of the legislation necessary to implement online, Internet-based voting in
California elections in time for the 2000 elections.
You can read this implementation bill yourself at:
http://www.suresite.com/ca/e/elelbill
Why not take a look at it now, then follow the exciting events of the next
40 or so hours, through this mailing list and, perhaps, in the mainstream
media, if I can get them to pay any attention?
Sincerely,
Marc Strassman
Executive Director
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Message
Number 42 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
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Date:
Mar 07 1999 19:06:07 EST
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
California Secretary of State Bill Jones' Record on Internet Voting
The Secretary of State of California, Bill Jones, is ostensibly charged
with facilitating the voting process in the state. Since 1996, when I
began working to establish eballoting in California, he has been working,
in effect if not in intention, to delay what everyone now acknowledges is
the inevitable coming of Internet voting.
In 1996, while I was circulating the Virtual Voting Rights Initiative,
and asked his office if I could collect signatures on petition forms
posted to the Net, downloaded, printed out, signed and mailed in, I
received little but annoyed and grudging answers.
In 1997, when Assembly Bill 44, based verbatim on the same Virtual Voting
Rights Initiative, had been introduced into the California State Assembly
by Assemblymember Kevin Murray, Secretary of State Jones met with
Assemblymember Murray and agreed to a two-part compromise: 1. the
original bill, which called for the implementation of eballoting in
California, would be gutted and replaced by an amended bill calling for a
study of the feasibility of eballoting 2. Secretary of State Jones'
office would support passage of the amended bill.
Both parties to this agreement kept their word. Assemblymember Murray
amended his bill to call for a study rather than an implementation of
eballoting. Secretary of State Jones sent someone from his office to
testify in favor of the bill at the Senate Elections and Reapportionment
Committee hearings on it on June 18, 1997.
After a concerted effort to overcome the opposition of Republicans in
both the California State Assembly and State Senate, AB44, now a bill to
set up a task force to study the feasibility of eballoting, passed both
houses and went to Republican Governor Pete Wilson for his signature.
Governor Wilson vetoed AB44 in October, 1997.
On May 18, 1998, the Sacramento Bee reported that:
The office of California Secretary of State Bill Jones is working on a
project to allow electronic voting from the traditional voting booth --as
opposed to voting from a home computer -- and is close to
approving a couple of systems, a spokesman said. Voting from remote
terminals or via the Internet will also be studied by a task
force.
Six months later, no eballoting task force had appeared when this
paragraph ran in the Christian Science Monitor, on November 13, 1998:
Digital "signatures" are already legal in California for many business
purposes, but they are not yet permitted in the election code. A spokesman
says Secretary of State Bill Jones will convene a task force next month
that will begin exploring Internet voting and ballot signatures.
On Fe
in pertinent part:
Jones said allowing people to sign petitions with digital signatures would
require an act of the Legislature. Jones is currently assembling a
commission to develop recommendations for the Legislature on that issue as
well as the concept of allowing Californians to cast ballots via Internet.
While all this was going on, and while Internet technology was becoming
more powerful, cheaper, and much more widely-used and -commented upon in
all media, I decided to draft a new bill that would move directly to
implement eballoting in California.
After I'd written the proposed bill, I found an established lobbyist in
Sacramento, with whom I re-wrote it to more completely fit the conventions
of the legislative process. The lobbyist submitted the bill to now-State
Senator Kevin Murray's chief legislative staffer, who in turn submitted it
on behalf of Senator Murray's office to the Office of Legislative Counsel,
where it was re-written again to conform even more thoroughly to the
conventions regarding the proper form for proposed legislation.
Then the lobbyist and I did everything we could to persuade Senator
Murray to introduce this language as a bill. In the jargon of the trade,
we lobbied him to "drop the bill," to "put it across the desk," to "carry
it."
On
Wednesday afternoon, Fe
decide whether or not to officially introduce this bill to implement
Internet voting in California, at a time when his chief legislative
staffer and the lead staffer on the Senate Elections and Reapportionment
Committee were about to recommend that he do so, State Senator Kevin
Murray met with Secretary of State Bill Jones.
One may recall the result of the last meeting between Secretary of State
Jones and Senator Murray on the subject of Internet voting, in the Spring
of 1997. It resulted in a compromise that led to two years in which no
progress was made towards studying, let alone implementing, eballoting in
California, during a period when tremendous progress was made in every
aspect of the Internet generally, both technically and in terms of its
acceptance and use by viewers, shoppers, bank customers, polling subjects,
and many other types of users, and during which more and more citizens,
including Michaela Alioto, the nominee of the California Democratic Party
for Secretary of State who narrowly missed defeating Jones in his 1998
re-election bid, strongly voiced their support for implementing Internet
voting.
Now, two days before the 1999 deadline for introducing bills for
consideration in the current session of the California Legislature,
Secretary of State Jones offered Senator Murray a spot on the Internet
Voting Task Force that Jones had been saying publicly since May 18, 1998,
that he was going to set up.
Senator Murray reportedly accepted Secretary Jones' offer, and then
decided that it would now not be necessary to introduce the proposed new
eballoting bill.
On Friday, March 5th, a reporter in the Capital working on the story told
me that Secretary of State Jones had sent out letters of invitation for
the task force and that a public announcement would be made on March 17th.
The new eballoting bill for California can be found at
http://www.suresite.com/ca/e/elelbill
Next time:
What eballoting in Y2K would mean for re-apportionment in California and
what that would mean for the balance of political power nationally in the
US, and therefore globally.
Message
Number 43 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
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List
Date:
Mar 09 1999 00:07:34 EST
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
The Ethics of eballot Lobbying
Some people worry, or complain, that it's unseemly for a company that
provides eballotting services to lobby the government to provide its
citizens with...eballotting services.
What about a biotech company that had discovered a vaccine or a treatment
for a disease that was infecting and killing large numbers of citizens?
What if the vaccine or treatment had cost a lot to develop and cost a lot
to produce? Would it be ethical for the biotech company to lobby the
government to subsidize the distribution of the treatment so that more of
those suffering from the disease could benefit from the discovery?
Isn't this exactly what happened in the case of HIV, where giant
pharmaceutical companies
other chemical compounds that were effective against this plague, but cost
a lot, and which, through government action encouraged by the makers of
the drugs, were included in health plans and generally made more available
to those who needed them?
Bad government, unresponsive government, government by special interest,
government by minority rule--all of these may not be as blatantly deadly
as the HIV virus, but, in the long run, they too are very detrimental to
the interests, and even the physical health, of those exposed to them.
eballotting, which among its other benefits is likely to significantly
increase the levels of voter participation in elections, is therefore a
social good that the entire community, regardless of its specific
preferences on the issues, will benefit from. In that sense, low voter
turnout is the political equivalent of a social disease. It is, in a way,
a public health problem.
So eballotting, as a treatment for this political condition, is something
that is eminently desirable for the community as a whole, as well as the
individual member/voters of it. As such, it is also ethical that the
private company which desires to provide this social good to the community
do what it can to move the government in the direction of a rapid adoption
of a voting technology policy that will benefit that community.
Legacy voting companies spend plenty of money to see that antiquated and
inefficient methods of voting continue in place. It only makes sense that
companies with new products that can do a far better job of delivering
secure voting services be involved in formulating policy in this important
area.
Cars and freeways have arguably had more impact on our lives than voting
ever has. Certainly radio, television, and music impact us daily, shaping
how we see the world. Car makers, road builders, and media corporations
have never refrained from vigorously making the case for why their
interests should be well taken care of in the halls of government. It
seems silly, then, to argue that there are ethical constraints that should
hold back a company that has a product that will empower the real holders
of power in our society, the people, the voting public, from vigorously
making the case that these powerholders should have the latest and most
effective tools for exercising that authority.
-30-
Anyone who disagrees with this point of view, or who agrees with this
point of view, is invited to send his or her comments to me at:
marcs@eballot.net
thank you,
Marc Strassman
Executive Director
Campaign for
Digital Democracy
Message
Number 44 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Mailing
List
Date:
Mar 12 1999 00:52:56 GMT
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
Join the Young Fabians in Discussing Digital Democracy
An active online discussion leading up to A Young Fabian Conference in
association with the BBC
Digital Technology: What does it Mean ?
National Science Museum, Exhibition Road, London - nearest Tube station,
South Kensington
10.00am - 4.30pm , Friday 19th March 1999
is now in progress. You can get involved from the Young Fabian website at:
http://www.fabian-society
Message
Number 45 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Mailing
List
Date:
Mar 12 1999 19:19:21 GMT
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
eballot Presentation in San Diego, California, on Saturday, March 20, 1999 at 11:00 am PST
Bob Jellison, a member of the San Diego Democratic Party Executive Board,
has invited me to address the Council of Clubs of the San Diego Democrats
at 11:00 am on Saturday, March 20, 1999, at Democratic Headquarters at 413
Laurel Street, Suite B. This is, he says, about 11 blocks north of
downtown San Diego, and I have no reason not to believe him.
Bob also says:
There is a parking lot on the corner - you may find a parking place there
if you are very lucky. If not, go south on 4th, just a few feet past the
corner parking lot, to the first alley to the left. This alley leads to a
large parking lot directly at the rear of the building. The only entrance
to Democratic Headquarters is from the corner parking lot, so you will
need to walk back to the corner to get in.
If you're coming from Los Angeles or Orange Country:
you should continue south on I-5 past CARMEL VALLEY RD.
Exit I-5 LEFT to I-805 SOUTH.
Exit I-805 RIGHT to CA-163 SOUTH (this exit is after the BALBOA AVE. exit).
Exit CA-163 RIGHT towards UNIVERSITY AVE. (this is the first exit after
CA-163 passes under I-8).
Continue straight, across UNIVERSITY AVE., to 6TH AVE.
Continue down 6TH AVE to LAUREL STREET.
Turn right on LAUREL STREET to 4TH AVE.
Democratic Headquarters is on the left, at the SE corner of 4TH and LAUREL.
If you're already in San Diego, I'm sure you can figure it out.
I'd send you a copy of my presentation now, but then you'd have no reason
to come.
In general, though, my speech will contain these elements:
1. A
2. California Secretary of State Bill Jones' efforts to delay the coming
of the eballot to California and why we need the implementation of the
eballot, not a study of its feasibility
3. Answers to commonly raised objections about the eballot
4. The possibility of organizing an initiative drive to legalize the
eballot in 2000
5. The Campaign for Digital Democracy
6. eballot movements in New Zealand, Mexico, and South Africa
7. Making the Information Superhighway safe for democracy
8. Why you should spend $6.00 to buy a floppy disk with a copy of The
First Complete Virtual Voting Book, in Rich Text Format, on it.
Assuming I don't get stuck in traffic on the legacy superhighway
connecting Los Angeles and San Diego, my presentation should begin
sometime around 11:00 am on Saturday, March 20, 1999. I hope to see you
there.
Regards,
Marc Strassman
Executive Director
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Message
Number 46 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Mailing
List
Date:
Mar 14 1999 00:28:46 GMT
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
Initiative & Referendum Conference in Washington, D.C., May 6-8,1999
Former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese and I will both be addressing the
first national conference on the initiative process in 20 years in
Washington, D.C., on May 6-8, 1999, although not at the same time, and
probably not from the same perspective.
Called, "A Century of Citizen Lawmaking--National Initiative and
Referendum Conference," this event will provide an opportunity for
participants and observers to move the dialogue on the more direct forms
of democracy a little bit further along.
On Friday, May 7th, I'll participate in a panel discussion focusing on
electronic initiatives:
4:00 pm 6th session begins - Increasing voter participation in initiative
and referendum?
Location: Washington Court Hotel - room: TBD
Moderator: Paul Jacob
(President, U.S. Term Limits Foundation)
Panelists: Professor Ted Becker
Marc Strassman (Campaign for Digital Democracy)
Purpose:
The purpose of this session is to analyze how technology can be used to
get more people involved in the initiative process and the democratic
process.
To learn more about the Initiative and Referendum Institute, or if you
think you might like to attend this conference in May, visit their website
at: http://www.iandrinstitute.org/.
If you can't make it in person, you might be able to catch the event
online, since D.C.Orbit, principal partners in the Streaming Video Public
Affairs Network (SV-PAN), will be webcasting the presentations at the
conference in their entirety.
To learn more about D.C.Orbit and/or to contact them about how you or your
organization can get prime exposure to a select audience of technology and
politics aficionados, visit their website at: http://www.dcorbit.com/.
Below is a copy of a summary of my planned remarks at the "A Century of
Citizen Lawmaking--National Initiative and Referendum Conference,"
scheduled for two months from now. Intervening developments may require
substantial changes.
Summary of Remarks at "A Century of Citizen Lawmaking--National Initiative
and Referendum Conference," May 6-8, 1999
by
Marc Strassman
Executive Director, Campaign for Digital Democracy
The core principle of democratic government is that, within the limits
set by the nation's constitution, public policy is to be determined by the
will of the people. Difficulties often arise in attempting to determine
exactly what the will of the people is. The generally-accepted
expectation is that the people will elect representatives, and the
representatives will, with greater or lesser decorum, negotiate among
themselves to reach agreement on the set of policies to be pursued by the
nation as a whole.
But today, the candidates who will become these representatives are not
always, but often, designer electoral commodities, selected by elites,
prepped by professionals, marketed like sausage, and sent out to do, not
the people's
business, but the business of "them that
legislative body.
Initiatives, generated by the people, signed by the people, and passed by
the people, theoretically offer an alternative. But nowadays the
campaigns to create, market, and pass initiatives pretty much belong to
the same forces that control the election of candidates. Again, with some
exceptions, various elites, big money, television commercial producers,
and marketing pros, not the masses of citizens, are responsible for
formulating and executing initiative campaigns.
And with the current levels of political apathy, the daily frenzy, and
the privatization of public space, it is hard to gather enough signatures
on a traditional petition form to qualify for the ballot. Collecting
enough signatures by hand with volunteers can usually only be done when an
issue is deeply felt by a lot of people. To qualify an initiative for the
ballot in 1999, usually, professionals must be hired, with no end of
attendant detriments.
So, if we agree that democracy is vanishing or has vanished in candidate
elections and also increasingly in the initiative process as currently
structured, what is someone who still wants to see democracy actually
practiced going to do?
I would like to suggest that he or she turn to the same technology that
is transforming entertainment, shopping, education, correspondence, and
other basic aspects of human life, namely, the Internet. Already, in the
1998 elections, the Internet had an important influence on our political
life, providing a cost-effective means for creatively communicating
information about candidates and initiatives to millions of citizens.
But all that power, all that creativity, and all that cost-effectiveness
has not yet been put to work in the direct service of democracy. It could
be if state laws were changed to allow for the collecting of valid
signatures on initiative petitions over the Internet.
Allowing for the collection of signatures on initiative petitions over
the net would reduce the cost to circulators and increase the convenience
to signers. It would replace harried interactions in parking lots with
considered judgments based on a careful examination of the contents and
supporting materials of an initiative measure in the relative comfort of
one's own office or home.
There is, of course, the issue of possible fraud in collecting signatures
over the Net. This needs to be addressed. But, taken overall, which do
you think is more secure, what we have now where written signatures are
checked laboriously and randomly by hand, where a certain number of
possibly valid signatures are rejected on the basis of a single ineligible
signature, or an electronic system where EVERY signatures is validated
before it is counted and the most modern and powerful techniques are used
to validate every single online signature, something that can't (or won't)
be done by hand, but CAN be done by computer?
Once the citizenry has placed an initiative on the ballot electronically,
and a system of authentication and identification has been built to
protect against fraud in this part of the process, clearly there is no
reason not to use this same system of authentication and identification to
give those who want it the right to vote on these initiatives and
hand-signed initiatives and candidates in the elections held to approve or
reject these initiatives and to select candidates for office.
Before this Initiative Nirvana can come about, however, we need to change
the laws in every state, since no state in the US now allows for
electronic signing of initiatives. Fortunately, three years ago I wrote
the Virtual Voting Rights Initiative. The VVRI called for the creation of
state-supported websites for candidates and supporters and opponents of
initiatives. Countless efforts by candidates and initiative campaigns has
made that part real already. The VVRI also called for electronic
registration, initiative signing, and voting. That part remains to be
realized.
My organization, Campaign for Digital Democracy, is in the midst of a
campaign we call "99 in 99," which is our effort in the last year of this
century to put forward and pass an up-dated version of the Virtual Voting
Rights Initiative or legislation like it in every one of the 99
legislative houses in the US, and get these bills signed by 50 governors,
so that elections in 2000 can use the best possible means of ascertaining
the will of the people.
Clearly, the Virtual Voting Rights Initiative is a sort of
"meta-initiative," because passing it would mean that future initiatives
could take advantage of the ease-of-use, low cost, clarity, and
accountability that an electronic electoral system would provide. We
expect there will be some opposition from sitting state legislators, when
asked to approve a measure that will take power out of their hands and put
it into the hands of the people.
It is precisely to deal with situations as this, where the legislators
refuse to do the will of the people because those interests conflict with
their own interests as legislators, that the initiative process was
instituted. It is precisely because now at the end of the 20th century we
are facing the same concentrations of power, manifested in every public
institution, that our democratic predecessors faced at the end of the 19th
that we must combine their commitment to popular sovereignty with the
incredibly more powerful technology we now have at our disposal to forge a
system of electronic democracy that will be the means by which we can
protect our own interests, care for the public welfare, and shape our
lives and the lives of our descendants for years to come.
A Note from the Executive Director:
Subscribership of this list is holding steady at 98. It wouldn't cost us
any more to send it out to 200 people, or 2000. If any of you reading
this have friends, relatives, professional associates, or neighbors who
you think might enjoy being on this list and receiving these posts, please
invite them to join at:
http://digitaldemocracy.listbot.com.
Thanks,
Marc Strassman
Executive Director
Campaign for
Digital Democracy
Message
Number 47 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Mailing
List
Date:
Mar 14 1999 02:21:12 GMT
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
Possibly a Big Week for Internet Voting in California
California Secretary of State Bill Jones is reported to be planning an
announcement in Sacramento on Wednesday, March 17, 1999, of a
"Cyber-Voting Task Force" to investigate the feasibility of voting over
the Internet.
As you'll see in the material re-purposed below, I'm planning on making a
presentation on the same subject, from a different point of view, in San
Diego on Saturday, March 20th.
It's possible that the day after, on Sunday, March 21st, that the
Sacramento Bee will run an op-ed piece I've written for it entitled, "An
eballot for California."
In this column, I argue that Secretary of State Jones much-belated
appointment of his task force is a thinly-disguised effort to delay
adoption of Internet voting in California long enough to prevent it from
having any effect on the 2000 elections.
Next year's elections will be particularly important for California and
the U.S. because they will choose the officials who will do the next
re-apportionment of Congressional and other districts. The nature of the
boundaries they draw will have serious consequences for the balance of
political power in California and the U.S. over the subsequent ten years.
From Sacramento in the North to San Diego in the South, different visions
of what democracy means in the digital age are being put forth and argued
over. Those of us who know that Internet voting will be good for the
Internet, good for politics, and good for us need to organize ourselves,
recruit others, and move now to implement the paradigms and policies we
know will best serve the public interest now and in the future.
Next time: more about the "An eballot for California" Initiative Campaign
Sincerely,
Marc Strassman
Executive Director
Campaign for Digital Democracy
*** Welcome to SDCDP DIRECT ***
The San Diego County Democratic Party's weekly e-newsletter.
Saturday, 3/13/99
Issue #81
More than 1,100 subscribers
-------------------------------------------------
SDCDP DIRECT is free! To subscribe just use SUBSCRIBE as the message
subject, and send it to <mailto:jellison@san.rr.com>jellison@san.rr.com
-------------------------------------------------
SDCDP Headquarters is located at 413 Laurel St., STE B, San Diego 92101.
Hours: M 10:30 am - 3:30 pm, Tu - Th 9:00 am - 1:00 pm, F 10:30 am - 5:30
pm.
Phone: 619/696-7199, E-mail: <mailto:sdcdp@aol.com>sdcdp@aol.com,
E-mail Harmony at <mailto:harmlee@aol.com>harmlee@aol.com
Visit the SDCDP Website at http://www.sddemocrats.com
=============
IN THIS ISSUE
=============
1. NOTICES
- 2000 Democratic National Convention will be in LA!
- Task force to study voting via the Net
------------------------------------------
* Task force to study voting via the Net *
------------------------------------------
Will Californians one day may be able to bypass long lines at the polls by
casting their votes online? The answer to that question is yes. The
question remaining is when!
Steve Grossman, chair of the Democratic National Committee, has recently
come out strongly and publicly in support of implementing eballoting in
the US. Almost every political analyst and commentator believes that
higher voter turnout favors, everything else being equal, Democratic
candidates over Republican ones. Campaign folklore is replete with
comments about how bad weather on Election Day favors Republicans for this
very reason.
Secretary of State Bill Jones says many Californians complain that they
don't have time to vote through traditional methods and that the process
is too inconvenient.
To address this issue Jones has convened a task force to study
cyber-voting, which is scheduled to meet for the first time later this
month.
Marc Strassman, Executive Director of the Campaign for Digital Democracy,
and author of California's first eballoting initiative, points out that
Bill Jones is one of only two Republicans holding statewide office in
California. Marc suggests that anything the Republican Secretary of State
can do to limit voter turnout in the 2000 elections will be seen by his
Republican friends as a positive contribution to preventing a Democratic
landslide, and the resulting advantage to Democrats that would ensue in
the coming reapportionment.
Marc wonders why, if UPS can safely deliver hundreds of thousands of
packages everyday and provide digital copies of recipients' signatures to
the senders within seconds of delivery, does the California Secretary of
State need years more of "study" to determine if it's possible to let
voters vote online?
If you would like to learn more about eballoting sign up for the Campaign
for Digital Democracy's mailing list at:
http://digitaldemocracy.listbot.com, or join the newly-formed eBallot.net
mailing list at: http://eBallot.net.listbot.com.
Or better yet, you can hear Marc address these issues, and others, on
March 20th, at the SDCDP Council of Clubs meeting. Marc's presentation
will be at 11:00 am, at the SDCDP Headquarters at 4th and Laurel. (The
meeting will start at 10:00.) For more information call 619/755-4006.
=====================
2. CALENDAR OF EVENTS
=====================
---------
* MARCH *
---------
Saturday, March 20th, 10:00 am to 12:00 noon. SDCDP Council of Clubs
meeting. The guest speaker will be Marc Strassman, Executive Director of
the
Campaign for Digital Democracy. Marc will present a
the eballot movement in California, discuss CA Secretary of State Bill
Jones' efforts to delay eballoting. He will also answer commonly raised
objections about the eballot, discuss the possibility of organizing an
initiative drive to legalize the eballot in 2000, and answer questions
from the audience. All SDCDP club members and their guests are invited to
hear Marc speak about this important issue. SDCDP Headquarters at 4th and
Laurel. Free parking available in lot directly behind the headquarters
building.
Call 619/696-7199 for info.
Message
Number 48 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Mailing
List
Date:
Mar 15 1999 01:39:29 GMT
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
The Fight for "An eballot for California" Initiative Campaign is the Fight for Electronic Democracy
Date:
Mar 15 1999 01:28:54 GMT
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
The Fight for "An eballot for California" Initiative Campaign is the Fight for
Electronic Democracy
I just wanted to announce that the Campaign for Digital Democracy mailing
list signed up its 100th subscriber today. Onward and upward!
Campaign for Digital Democracy Email transmedia@pacificnet.net
While Jones Fiddles,
"An eballot for California" Initiative Campaign Ignites
For Immediate Release
March 15, 1999
Los Angeles, California
For more information, contact:
Marc Strassman
Executive Director
Campaign for Digital Democracy
transmedia@pacificnet.net
Join the Campaign for Digital Democracy mailing list at:
http://digitaldemocracy.listbot.com
(Los Angeles, CA, March 15, 1999) Campaign for Digital Democracy today
announced it would launch its "An eballot for California" Initiative
Campaign just as soon as California Secretary of State Bill Jones gets
around to launching his "Cyber-Voting Task Force," if not sooner.
Jones recently said he'd be announcing the establishment and the make-up
of this panel on Wednesday, March 17, 1999. He has, however, been saying
that he'd appoint such a task force since at least May 18, 1998, and, as
of Monday, March 15th, he hadn't yet done so.
"An eballot for California" (full text below in next Message) would make
it legal to vote over the Internet in all California elections. This
initiative, if passed, would only permit Internet voting on computer
networks that met certain stringent requirements for security, access,
privacy, and so on.
Jones' CVTF would be charged with investigating the feasibility of
building an Internet voting system. The eballot Initiative, however,
already clearly specifies that only Internet voting systems that are
certifiably secure, accessible, private, easy to use, and so on, would be
acceptable for use or sale in California.
Marc Strassman, Executive Director of Campaign for Digital Democracy, and
Executive Vice President, Communications, and Chief Legislative Officer of
eBallot.net, a Washington State-based corporation that is developing the
eBallot(tm) Internet voting system for use in California and elsewhere,
will be kicking off the "eballot for California" Initiative Campaign at an
appearance before the San Diego County Democratic Party's Council of
Clubs, at 413 Laurel St., Suite B, San Diego, at 11:00 on Saturday, March
20, 1999.
He'll be talking about the history of the
effort to
to California, collect signatures on a petition to the Office of
Legislative Counsel in Sacramento asking it to draft an initiative based
on his new Internet voting bill, and, possibly, sign copies on floppy-disk
of his new "The First Complete Virtual Voting Book."
Strassman said:
"In every article written now about Internet voting, the reporter and
most of those quoted recognize that Internet voting is inevitable. As
this "network of networks" transforms education, banking, shopping,
dating, publishing, news distribution, investing, and political campaigns,
it's become obvious that it makes more sense to cast your ballot over this
same platform.
"In my experience trying to
encountered two types of objections, which can be referred to either as
"technical objections" or "the objection that dares not speak its name."
These objections can also be called, respectively, "principled" and
"unprincipled."
"Technical objections are raised even by those who think that, in
general, voting on the Internet is a good idea. Because elections are so
important, and the vote is such a sacred instrument of democracy,
concerned citizens want to know that their electronically-gathered vote
will be private, secure, anonymous as to content, and that they will not
be prevented from freely and easily voting if they don't own, or don't
want to own, a computer.
"They also want to be very sure that some 12-year-old hacker in Palo Alto
is not going to violate the system and use his programming skills to elect
his dog to Congress.
"I agree that all these objections must be carefully considered and
resolved before we can safely allow citizens to cast their ballots online.
I have spent several years looking for solutions to them. I think that my
company, eBallot.net, is going to build a Internet voting system that will
meet and exceed every required level of security, access, privacy, and so
on necessary to satisfy every critic except those who are, in fact,
raising "the objection that dare not speak its name."
"This is the criticism that Internet voting is too easy, and that putting
it in place will increase the abysmal levels of turnout in elections of
recent years.
"Now, there's been a flood of articles in the last few weeks addressing
low voter turnout. The thrust of these articles has been that low turnout
doesn't matter, because the results are about the same as they'd be if
there'd been higher turnout.
"Well, election results are usually pretty close to those predicted by
pollsters. Why have elections at all? Why not use the polling results?
"The reason full turnout matters is because democracy is a form of
government based, theoretically at least, on an arrangement by which the
people make the rules for their government, and then abide by them, in
part because they're rules they've made and in part because it makes sense
for them to do so.
"So what does it mean when around 16% of the registered voters (meaning
about 8% of the eligible voters) elected a Charter Reform Commission in
Los Angeles in 1997? Does this kind of turnout lead to "public ownership"
of whatever results from this commission's work? When the reformed
charter they, along with an Appointed Charter Reform Committee, wrote is
presented to Los Angeles voters this year and a similar level of turnout
determines its approval or defeat, what stake will the other 92% of the
city's population have in making the result work for them?"
He continued:
"In October, 1997, former Governor Pete Wilson vetoed AB44, a bill that
would have established the same task force that Bill Jones says he'll be
establishing this week. Wilson's veto message non-sensically said that
because the security of an Internet voting system had not yet been
established, it would be premature to set up a task force to study if it
would be possible to establish it.
"Pete Wilson was here using a technical objection to cover up an
unprincipled one. As the nation's foremost opponent of "Motor Voter," a
very successful effort to increase voter registration by putting
registration forms in the DMV and (even) welfare offices where many of the
former governor's close friends and contributors would certainly never go,
Wilson was already on record as using "security" as an excuse to limit the
franchise of those he couldn't identify with.
"It was the same principle that led him to veto AB44."
Strassman continued:
"Jones' relationship to this task force is rather interesting, if
convoluted. The Virtual Voting Rights Initiative, which I wrote and
unsuccessfully circulated in 1996, was picked up by then-Culver City
Assemblyman Kevin Murray in late 1996 and introduced by him verbatim into
the California Assembly as AB44. The VVRI, and AB44, called for the
Secretary of State's Office to develop an Internet voting system and put
it to work in California. It also specified that the State of California
would provide free web sites for candidates for public office and for
proponents and opponents of initiatives.
"In the Spring of 1997, Assemblyman Murray met with Secretary of State
Jones. Jones offered to support "AB44" if Murray would gut the bill's
implementation of Internet voting and insert instead language to set up a
task force to study the concept of Internet voting. Murray agreed.
"As a result, there was never a serious debate about introducing Internet
voting in California, only the need to persuade legislators that the
subject was worth studying. Despite the Republican Secretary of States
implicit promise to win support for the amended study bill among his
fellow Republicans in the State Assembly and the State Senate, that
support never materialized. In the Senate Republicans twice turned the
bill back on the floor of the chamber. Only semi-heroic efforts got it
passed by a single vote.
"Then the Republican governor vetoed it."
Message
Number 49 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Mailing
List
Date:
Mar 15 1999 01:39:29 GMT
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
The Fight for "An eballot for California" Initiative Campaign is the Fight for Electronic Democracy
continued from the previous message
"Then, out of the blue, on May 18, 1998, while reading an article in the
Sacramento Bee that I appeared in, I read that Bill Jones was planning to
appoint a task force to study Internet voting. I thought this was weird,
because the bill authorizing the task force had been vetoed seven months
before.
"I contacted the Secretary of State's office and spoke to his
spokesperson. I asked why, if the Secretary of State now considered
himself entitled to set up such a task force, he hadn't felt so empowered
during the months I'd spent trying to get the amended version of AB44
passed. Or why he hadn't just done so before I came along.
"The non-answer I got was even more incoherent than the 'reason' given by
Pete Wilson for vetoing the AB44.
"But let's not be naive. A representative of the Washington State
Secretary of State's office was recently testifying before a legislative
committee there that is considering passing a bill much like the amended
version of California's AB44, one that would set up a task force in the
Washington State Secretary of State's Office to investigate the
feasibility of Internet voting. That representative forthrightly said
that his office indeed already had the legal right to proceed with such a
study. The Secretary of State of Washington's office was pursuing
legislation to authorize the study because they wanted the full
participation
and endorsement of that
"The New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor both ran stories,
the Times in
Fe
to Jones' plans to launch his task force.
"Frustrated by all this nothing, I wrote a new, streamlined Internet
voting bill, one that left the development of the system up to private
industry and dropped the provision for state-supported political websites.
The bill said four simple things:
1. Internet voting is made legal in California.
2. Any Internet voting system intended for use in California would need
to meet strict standards for security, privacy, access, etc., and could
only be used if it did. It would be the responsibility of the Secretary
of State to test and certify all such systems.
3. Such certified systems could be used by county and other election
officials.
4. Violating the system would be a crime and would be punished.
"I contacted a respected Sacramento lobbyist. Together, we polished my
proposed
bill. The lobbyist
Kevin Murray's office. A staffer there sent it to the Office of
Legislative Counsel, to be converted into proper legislative form.
"This new Internet voting bill was written up as a bill by the Office of
Legislative Counsel. According to the lobbyist, Senator Murray's top
legislative aide was about to recommend that he introduce it into the
Senate, where he now was, not incidentally, the new chair of the Senate
Committee on Elections and Reapportionment. One of the staffers from
that committee was also ready to recommend that he introduce it.
"It was Wednesday, Fe
introducing legislation in Sacramento during 1999.
"Reportedly just a few minutes before he was about to get the final
recommendations to introduce the bill from his staffers, Kevin Murray met
with Bill Jones. Remember what happened the last time they met to discuss
this issue.
"This time, Jones offered Murray a spot on the elusive Cyber-Voting Task
Force, and he accepted. This put him as far out on the cutting edge of
this issue as he wanted to be, and he decided not to introduce the bill.
"It's all been anti-climax since then. Whatever else I might think about
Bill Jones, cutting this bill off with only two days before the deadline
for introducing new bills was a very clever way of trying to kill it. I
guess he was using all the skill and experience that he'd gained
throughout his long career as a public servant in Sacramento.
"Of course, having given Kevin Murray the right of first refusal on this
bill and, out of respect for him and the rituals of the legislature, not
cultivated a back-up introducer, I was in a pretty weak position to find
someone else to perform this essential legislative function during the
next two days.
"Every legislator I approached had already reached his or her quota of
introduced bills, meaning that I had been effectively turned back.
"So I decided to take it to the Net.
"Campaign for Digital Democracy knows that we can't use the Internet to
collect online signatures; that's a provision of the still-unpassed
legislation. But we can post facsimiles of the initiative petition form
and ask Internet users who want to vote online to download the form, print
it out, copy it, sign it, and mail it in.
"This approach is, of course, a ludicrously inefficient and inelegant
means of collecting the consent to our proposal of 600,000 California
voters. But since the chief elections officer of the State of California
seems intent on delaying and delaying the coming of the inevitable to our
State, there seems to be no other choice.
"As for the role of his Cyber-Voting Task Force: whatever it might find,
and however long it might take to find it, in the end, it will recommend
that Internet voting only be allowed in California if the systems to
implement it meet certain standards of security, privacy, access, etc.
Well, that's precisely what "An eballot for California" already does.
"Whose money is going to be wasted on this task force? Ours. Whose
chance to vote over the Internet will be delayed interminably? Ours.
Who's it up to do something about this? Us."
Finally, he commented:
"Reluctant as I am to ascribe partisan motives to anyone, or to exhibit
them myself, I would like to mention that Steve Grossman, chair of the
Democratic National Committee, has recently come out strongly and publicly
in support of implementing eballoting in the US. Almost every political
analyst and commentator believes that higher voter turnout favors,
everything else being equal, Democratic candidates over Republican ones.
Campaign folklore is replete with comments about how bad weather on
Election Day favors Republicans for this very reason.
"Bill Jones is one of only two Republicans holding statewide office in
California. While I can't speak for him, or see inside his head, it only
stands to reason that anything he can do to limit voter turnout in the
2000 elections will be seen by his Republican-supporting friends and
contributors as a positive step towards preventing a Democratic landslide
then, and a way to minimize the extra advantage to Democrats that would
therefore ensue in the crucial re-apportionment that will follow the 2000
census.
"Being known as the man who at least partially turned back the tide of
popular discontent with Republicans by making it harder than necessary for
tens of millions of people to vote in 2000 would certainly not go
unnoticed when Republican voters and, even more to the point, big
contributors, began making up their minds about whom they wanted to
represent the party in the race for California's governorship in 2002.
For a politician who was barely re-elected to the Secretary of State's job
in November, 1998, when he polled only a few votes more than Michaela
Alioto, in her first run for state-wide office, it couldn't hurt."
-30-
Message
Number 50 for
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Date:
Mar 15 1999 02:30:12 GMT
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
The Fight for "An eballot for California" Initiative Campaign is the Fight for Electronic Democracy
last part of three-part message "The Fight for 'An eballot for California'
Initiative Campaign is the Fight for Electronic Democracy"
An eballot for California
by Marc Strassman
Executive Director
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Section 1. It is the intent of the Legislature in enacting this bill to
establish the ability of voters and county election officials to use an
Electronic
Election System to promote
in California. To implement this goal, it is the intent of this bill to:
1. legalize the use of electronic networks for election purposes,
including registration, initiative and in lieu petition signing, and
voting.
2. authorize and require the Secretary of State to create and apply
standards according to which proposed Electronic Election Systems may
qualify for official use within the state
3. authorize county and all other election officials to use Electronic
Election Systems within their jurisdictions in all future elections
4. prohibit the wrongful manipulation, fraudulent use or violations of
the integrity of the Electronic Election System, and establish suitable
sanctions against such illegal acts
Section 2.
All qualified California voters shall be entitled to register to vote,
sign initiative and in lieu petitions, and vote in all primary, general,
and special elections using an Electronic Election System over any secure
electronic network from any point and by any means by which they can
access such a network.
Section 3.
The Secretary of State will be authorized and required to set out the
standards that any Electronic Election System will need to satisfy before
it can be sold or used in California.
To qualify for use in elections in California, an Electronic Election
System must:
1. provide for the secure identification and authentication of the voter
2. provide for the secure identification and authentication of the
official jurisdiction
supervising and responsible for the election process of which the
registration, petition signing, or voting is a part
3. protect the privacy, integrity and anonymity of the voter's ballot
4. prevent multiple castings of a ballot in any one election cycle by
any individual voter
5. provide protection against tampering, fraudulent use, illegal
manipulation or other unauthorized abuse by voters, hackers, or election
officials
6. be easy to use by every voter
7. legibly convey all information mandated by law to be included in the
ballot for each voter, including lists of all candidates for office and
all ballot measures qualified to appear on his or her ballot, in whatever
set or randomly-generated order is mandated by law
8 provide the means by which voters can cast write-in votes for
candidates whose names do not appear on the ballot but who have qualified
for official "write-in status" according to the laws and regulations of
the jurisdiction conducting the vote
9. reliably provide uninterrupted availability 24 hours a day and 7 days
a week during the designated electronic voting period
10. be sufficiently scaleable as to provide electronic voting access to
all voters in any jurisdiction where it is employed, over the course of
the designated electronic voting period
11. be accessible to all voters, either through personally-owned
computers at their homes, computers in their place of work, or
publicly-available computers in public kiosks, schools, government
offices, or polling places
12. be capable of being upgraded as technology improves
13. assure the non-repudiation of electronic electoral transactions
between voters and government.
14. be useable by mobility- and visually-challenged voters
15. be capable of being audited as to contents, results and process at a
sufficiently
high level to guarantee the integrity of the system and the public's
confidence in its integrity.
Section 4.
Once the Secretary of State has developed a detailed set of
specifications based on these principles, and once a proposed Electronic
Election System has been shown, through tests conducted by the Secretary
of State's Office, to have met these specified requirements, the
successfully-tested system shall be designated as "approved by the Office
of the Secretary of State for use by all election authorities within the
State of California." The Secretary may contract with a recognized
independent testing facility to perform the tests necessary to establish
the system's conformance with the technical specifications put forward by
the Secretary.
Section 5:
Upon approval of a system pursuant to section 4, county and all other
election authorities will then be authorized to use approved systems
within their jurisdiction. Counties and all other jurisdictions,
including municipalities and special districts of all types, are
authorized, pursuant to and consistent with (current) law, to buy, lease,
contract for services, and generally take any otherwise authorized actions
to effectuate the use of an Electronic Election System within their
jurisdiction.
Section 6: Penalties
Any person interfering with the lawful operation of any element or
activity of the Electronic Election System with the intent of committing
any fraud or in any manner violating the integrity of the Electronic
Election System, including its internal code, contents or results, shall
be subject to the penalties included in the Elections Code, commensurate
with the
severity of the infraction.
Message
Number 51 for
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Date:
Mar 15 1999 22:41:17 GMT
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
Washington State Senate Passes eballot Study Bill
A model of concision and clarity, Senate Bill 5662 has passed the
Washington State Senate. The complete text is below.
If you want to look it up or tell others about it, here's the URL:
ftp://ftp.leg.wa.gov/pub/billinfo/1999-00/senate/5650-5674/5662_e_03121999
_______________________________________________
ENGROSSED SENATE BILL 5662
_______________________________________________
State of Washington 56th Legislature 1999
Regular Session
By Senators Finkbeiner, Brown and Winsley; by request of Secretary of
State
Read first time 02/01/1999. Referred to Committee on State & Local
Government.
AN ACT Relating to a study of on-line voting; creating a new
section; and providing an expiration date.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:
{+ NEW SECTION. +} Sec. 1. The secretary of state shall assemble a
task force to conduct a study of the issues and challenges presented by
incorporating on-line and Internet technologies in the voting process.
These issues may include the use of on-line technology within existing
systems and the requirements for authorization of collection, storage, and
processing of electronically generated and transmitted digital messages to
permit any eligible person to vote in any election, including applying for
and casting an absentee ballot.
In conducting the study, the secretary of state shall do all of the
following:
(1) Create, and be assisted by, an advisory committee, who serves
at the pleasure of the secretary of state, composed of county election
staff, technical experts, and such other individuals whom the secretary
deems to have expertise in these issues, to research the issues and
challenges presented by incorporating on-line and Internet technologies
into the voting process;
(2) Determine and define the appropriate security measures required
and minimum standards for certification of systems, and make
recommendations concerning statutes and rules to be adopted in order to
implement the system;
(3) Consider the impact of an on-line or Internet voting system on
voter participation rates, public accessibility, potential external
influences during the elections process, and other issues related to
the conduct and administration of elections.
The secretary of state shall report in writing to the legislature
no later than March 1, 2000, on the results of the study required by
this section.
{+ NEW SECTION. +} Sec. 2. Section 1 of this act expires June 30,
2001.
--- END ---
Message
Number 52 for
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Date:
Mar 17 1999 19:44:00 GMT
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
Cyberevolution 1.0
Just a few short notes on the continuing evolution of the process that
will lead to the implementation of the eballot, hopefully within our
lifetime.
On Tuesday, March 16th, the United States Senate voted to deploy a
national missile defense shield "as soon as technologically possible."
So why can't the California's Legislature pass a law to deploy the
eballot "as soon as technologically possible," which would be now? "An
eballot for California" specifically calls for allowing only Internet
voting systems capable of meeting certain strict standards for security,
authentication, privacy, etc., to be sold or used in California.
You can get a copy of the current draft of "An eballot for California" at:
http://www.suresite.com/ca/e/elelbill
With eballot projects now underway involving expatriate South Africans
and Mexicans and stay-at-home New Zealanders, California risks
jeopardizing its position as the most advanced deployer of digital
technologies in everyday life, unless it moves right away to implement "An
eballot for California."
Californians without the right to vote on the Net in a world where such a
privilege is commonplace would become victims of an "eballot gap."
As such, they would be forced to forego the advantages that citizens and
consumers in other, more fortunate, jurisdictions would be able to take
for granted, such as renewing their driver licenses online, doing
extremely secure home banking, securely accessing distance learning
opportunities, downloading e-cash, and so on, in addition to being able to
clearly express their views to their elected representatives, after they'd
used powerful Internet voting technology to nominate and elect them.
On March 24th, Bill Gates' new book, Business@the Speed of Thought, will
launch. For what I've been able to learn about what's in it, the Duke of
Redmond outlines how to provide the enterprise with the same efficiencies
inherent in the powerful microprocessors that lie at the heart of the
entire cyber-project. To do so will make an organization as powerful a
processor of data as a Pentium III, or even the IA-64/Merced. It's a
sobering thought.
Even more so is the idea of Government@the Speed of Thought, or
Politics@the Speed of Thought. Or, since we all know the limitation of
carbon-based processing, what about Business, Government, or Politics@the
Speed of Quantum Switching? Internet voting then becomes a blip in our
evolution. But a blip we ought to
take care of soon.
Message
Number 53 for
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Date:
Mar 18 1999 00:25:26 GMT
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
Company at Last
Finally, someone besides me has written an op-ed piece saying that it's
about time we could vote over the Internet. Amazingly, his arguments and
examples are almost word-for-word the same ones I've been making and using
for years.
Check it out at:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/03/11/ED36896.DTL
Cheers,
Marc Strassman
Executive Director
Campaign for Digital
Democracy
Message
Number 54 for
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Date:
Mar 18 1999 06:52:08 GMT
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
eballot study bills begin to proliferate
There are now two states in the US that have pending legislation that
would establish study groups to look into Internet voting. The bill to do
this in the Washington State Senate has passed.
You can see it at:
ftp://ftp.leg.wa.gov/pub/billinfo/1999-00/senate/5650-5674/5662_e_03121999
The companion bill in the House there hasn't passed yet.
You can see it at:
ftp://ftp.leg.wa.gov/pub/billinfo/1999-00/house/1575-1599/1594_01291999
And in Minnesota, where the Internet and electoral politics are
practically synonymous, thanks to Governor Ventura and Steve Clift, bills
have been introduced in both houses to set up a group to study the eballot.
You can read the Minnesota Senate bill at:
http://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/cgi-bin/bldbill.pl?bill=S0979.0&session=ls81
You can read the Minnesota House bill at:
http://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/cgi-bin/bldbill.pl?bill=H0427.0&session=ls81
Who'll be next?
Cheers,
Marc Strassman
Executive Director
Campaign for
Digital Democracy
Message
Number 55 for
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Date:
Mar 18 1999 07:09:33 GMT
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
An eballot for California Initiative
Dear Campaign for Digital Democracy mailing list subscriber,
Anyone receiving this message who is a registered voter in California is
urged to go to
http://www.suresite.com/ca/e/elelbill
and read the page there.
If you want to vote over the Internet in 2000 and you live in California,
the only way that's going to happen is if we qualify and pass the "eballot
for California" initiative.
The first step in this process is to have the Office of Legislative
Counsel in Sacramento turn the CDD draft initiative into a certifiable
legal document. If 25 registered California voters download the petition
at the site cited above, sign it, and mail it to the address given on the
site, the OLC will write the initiative for us.
If you want to vote over the Internet next year in California, please go
to the site, download the petition, sign it, and mail it in.
If you live outside of California and would like to vote over the Internet
in 2000, please contact me at info@vpac.org so we can launch similar
efforts to qualify and pass Internet voting initiatives in your state as
well.
According to the Initiative Resource Center in San Francisco, these states
currently have the initiative process:
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Florida
Idaho
Illinois
Maine
Massachusetts
Michigan
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Ne
Nevada
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
South Dakota
Utah
Washington
Wyoming
If you live in one of these states and want to work with CDD to organize
an initiative campaign for the eballot in your state, e-mail me at
info@vpac.org and we can talk about it.
It's less than a year now until the crucial California primary on March 7,
2000. If we run on Internet time, we may still be able to use the machine
you're reading this on to make our choices among the candidates and ballot
measures.
Sincerely,
Marc Strassman
Executive Director
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Message
Number 56 for
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Date:
Mar 20 1999 13:52:51 GMT
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
Should Mexicans Living in the US Vote by Snail or by Wire?
The Mexican Constitution guarantees every Mexican the right to vote in
that country's elections, even if they are in "el extranjero"--outside the
country. For 99% of Mexicans in el extranjero, this means the United
States.
But the Mexican Government has not yet passed legislation to implement
this constitutional provision. Various groups in the US are working to
encourage it to do so.
Many of these groups will be meeting in San Antonio, TX, next weekend to
further this project. I may be there and I may address some of them.
Below is the current version of what I intend to say. Naturally, I will
suggest the eballot as a big step in the right direction for democracy in
Mexico.
If you have any comments about this material, please send them to me at
marcs@eballot.net.
If you help determine the news menu for a website, newspaper, or tv
station, why not prepare something about the San Antonio meeting this
week? Feel free to include any of my remarks in
whatever you
Cheers,
Marc Strasssman
Executive Director
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Should Mexicans Living in the US Vote by Snail or by Wire?
by
Marc Strassman
Executive Director, Campaign for Digital Democracy
Executive Vice President, eBallot.net
The eballot--voting securely and privately over the Internet--is a secret,
low-cost, and convenient way to collect the votes of citizens. It is a
good way to vote under three different types of government.
The eballot is a good way to vote in pretty good democracies, countries
like the United States, Great Britain, and Canada, where elections are
generally honest and the population is not just allowed to vote but often
strongly encouraged to do so. In pretty good democracies, the eballot can
save money, increase convenience for voters, thereby increasing
participation rates, speed up the counting of ballots, and make it easier
to audit the results.
The eballot is a good way to vote, or would be a good way to vote, in
non-democracies, countries like China where voting for top officials is
not only not encouraged, it isn't even allowed. Countries like China,
which are planning to put many more of their people online in order to
speed up economic development, will also be making it possible for them to
use the eballot to vote in unofficial elections, run from offshore
computers in distant, but freer, lands.
The eballot is an especially good way to vote in imperfect democracies,
countries, like Mexico, that are officially democracies but where voter
intimidation, uneven access to polling places, electoral fraud, and vote
theft stand in the way of a more fully democratic process. Electronic
voting over the Internet would let voters vote in the comfort, privacy,
and security of their own homes or offices, free from intimidation or
other interference.
While it might be an improvement to be able to vote over the Internet,
there are two main obstacles to realizing this improvement. First,
Internet access is not very widespread in Mexico. Second, the Mexican
Government
may not be prepared to em
for millions of its own citizens to vote more easily, with a greater
likelihood of having their vote count.
For both of these reasons, it is crucial that Mexican voters living in
the United States work hard to win the right for themselves to use the
Internet to vote in the Mexican presidential elections in 2000. It is
important for several reasons.
First, winning the right to use the eballot to vote in these elections
will save Mexican taxpayers a significant amount of money. Assuming seven
million eligible voters in the US, with a cost per voter using "votando de
caracol"--"snail voting"--of between US$10 and US$35 for each voter, the
cost to conduct this election would be between US$70 million and US$245
million.
Assuming all these voters could vote online, it would probably cost no
more than US$5.00 per voter to collect and process their votes, meaning a
savings of 50% off of the lowest estimate for more traditional,
snail-like, voting methods.
This low cost for administering the actual voting would mean that more
money, if available, could be used for outreach and voter education, both
of which, by the way, could also be done more cost-effectively by Internet
than by other methods.
Second, voting by eballot means more security and less intimidation for
voters. By allowing voters to vote from the privacy of their offices,
cubicles, or homes, the eballot avoids the potential problems associated
with public voting under the supervision of officials who may not be
completely impartial.
Third, using the Internet technology that supports the eballot system
means that the votes will be counted by impartial, in fact, non-human,
entities which will function extremely equitably to collect and tabulate
the results.
Fourth, using the eballot means that records of the voting, without
voters names attached to ballots, can be used by auditors or international
or non-governmental observers to check and re-check the election's
accuracy and honesty.
Fifth, using the automated eballot system means that the results can be
calculated and released to the media and public almost instantaneously
after the balloting is completed, with no time wasted and no time allowed
for tampering with the results.
So, using the eballot to allow Mexicans in the US to vote in Mexican
elections will save money, reduce intimidation, make the count more
accurate, provide a means for observers to check the process, and speed up
the calculation of the results. For all these reasons, the eballot would
mean higher rates of participation and therefore an election that more
fairly represents the will of the voting population.
Finally, by conducting and participating in a fair, cost-effective, and
more accurate election through the eballot, Mexican voters in the US will
be setting an illuminating example for Mexican voters in Mexico, by
showing them that such an election is possible.
This may all be admirable, but how can we provide access to the Internet,
which is required for the eballot, to all Mexican voters living in the US?
For those Mexican voters in the US with access to the Internet through
their place of business or work, or through computers in their homes, this
is not a problem. For voters without such access, there is another
solution.
eBallot.net, a company based in Washington State, which I incidentally
partly own and work for, is designing and will be building an Electronic
Voting Appliance, or EVA, that will provide access to the Internet for
voting purposes at low cost. We plan to build large quantities of these
EVAs. Using them to vote will probably be even easier than voting by
eballot over a PC, because they will be specially-designed to be used for
voting and will make it very easy for users to access their choices, make
their selections, and submit their eballot.
These EVAs can be placed in schools, consulates, churches, community
centers or wherever polling will take place. They can collect votes
directly over the Internet and add them to the overall totals.
We haven't discussed how we will collect and certify the names of
eligible voters, nor have we talked about how we will collect "tokens"
from the voters so that they can be authenticated by the eballot system.
These are important and potentially complicated questions, but they need
to be addressed and resolved in order for a successful implementation of
this Internet voting system.
But once we have this information, and once it is entered into the
eballot database, and once the choices in the election are decided upon,
this automated system for casting ballots will be able to offer a
reasonably-priced and very fair means of conducting a smooth, honest and
accurate polling of the preferences of the Mexican voters using it to
express their political will.
And, of course, for such an election by eballot to take place in Mexico
proper, many more Mexicans will need access to the Internet, either at
work, at home, or through EVAs. But successful eballoting among Mexicans
living in the US will certainly be both an example and an impetus for
further such developments in Mexico itself.
It is up to us here, and others who share our desire for such an
election, among Mexicans in the US and, eventually, Mexicans everywhere,
to do what has to be done to see that such an exemplary election is made
possible and,
indeed, becomes a reality.
Message
Number 57 for
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Date:
Mar 22 1999 00:53:43 GMT
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
Security and Access Answers
You may be familiar with the old joke about Army food: it's really
bad-tasting and there's never enough of it.
Similar complaints about the eballot are often raised by its critics:
it's insecure and not everyone can get access to it.
Below is a copy of an e-mail I just sent to a colleague in a large, East
Coast state who is working diligently there to convince his state
legislature to adopt the eballot. My response addressed issues of
security. Below that are some remarks about access. Feel free to use
these arguments when discussing the eballot with curious neighbors,
diligent journalists, or your state legislators.
There are a number of answers to the security question:
1. the answer from analogy. The New York Stock Exchange, the
Department of Defense, and the international banking system, among others,
all maintain extremely high levels of authentication for individuals and
integrity for systems in order to protect equities, munitions, and
trillions of dollars transferred daily. Using similar technology can
protect the security of the eballot system.
2. the answer from demonstration. We will build a system and put it
out there for hackers, skeptics, hobbyists and journalists to try to
violate. If they violate it, we
can fix it where it's
it stronger for the next demo. If they can't violate it, we can claim
it's safe.
3. the answer from deterrence. Let's not forget that committing
electoral fraud online is as punishable as committing it offline. Any
legislator who believes that strong punishment deters other crimes ought
to believe that threatening strong punishment against those who would
interfere with the honest operation of the eballot system ought to be
willing to adopt the eballot, while specifying harsh penalties for those
who would mess with it.
4. the answer from logic, the answer according to the principles in "an
eballot from California." The legislation I'm pursuing in California says:
1. the eballot is legal
2. any proposed eballot system must meet certain strict criteria,
including especially security criteria, before it can be certified for
sale and use in the state
3. once a proposed system meets those standards, including security, it
becomes "certified" and can be used in the state and sold or leased or its
use can be contracted for by county and other local election
authorities
4. violating the system with intent to fraudulently interfere in an
election becomes a crime, punishable at the discretion of legislators
and judges
In short, we all agree that security is important and we therefore agree
that only certifiably secure systems can be sold or used. The systems'
security will be established according to agreed upon standards and
proposed systems will be tested to see if they meet these standards, the
same way the Boeing 737 and other mission-critical pieces of automated
machinery are tested and certified for safety before they are allowed to
be put into operation.
I've somewhat re-written "an eballot for California," my draft
legislation for use in our state. You can see the current version at:
http://www.suresite/ca/e/elelbill
You might want to include some of these changes in "an eballot for Your
State."
Thanks very much for your work on this. If you have any more questions,
or comments on my answers here, please let me know.
The access question likewise can be answered in a number of ways:
1. the (for-the-moment) impractical but possibly-ideal solution: make
sure that every voter (indeed every person able to reach a mouse) has
access to the Internet for business, personal, and every other purpose
they might want to pursue online. This solves the "access-to-the-eballot"
problem pretty directly.
2. vote-by-(e)mail: extend the voting solution now in place in Oregon
(100% absentee ballots, sent in by USPS mail) to include an e-mail option,
under which everyone votes by "mail," some by snail, those who prefer, by
e-.
3. the EVA solution: build and install many Electronic Voting
Appliances, in polling places, schools, churches, community centers, etc.,
and let voters who don't have access to computers at home or at work come
in and use
one of these machines to access
Message
Number 58 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
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Date:
May 05 1999 02:31:00 GMT
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
Internet-based Initiatives Initiative
The Initiative and Referendum Institute is a non-profit organization that
exists to educate people about the initiative and referendum processes as
political options. On May 6th-8th, it will be conducting, and DCOrbit
will be webcasting, "A Century of Citizen Lawmaking: Initiative and
Referendum in America." Visit the Institute site at
http://www.iandrinstitute.org/ and learn more about the Institute and the
DCOrbit webcast.
At 4:00 pm Eastern Time on Friday, May 7th, Campaign for Digital Democracy
Executive Director Marc Strassman will participate in the conference's 6th
session, "Increasing voter participation in initiative and referendum."
Here's the leak: During his presentation, Strassman will announce plans
to begin circulating initiative petitions over the Internet, under the
theory that existing digital signature laws in several states already
permit the collection and submission to election officials of initiative
petitions digitally signed with an individual's properly-obtained digital
certificate.
The first initiative to be virtually circulated will be the California
Internet Voting Initiative (CIVI), sponsored by CDD, which legalizes
Internet voting, the digital signing of initiative petitions, and requires
the California Department of Motor Vehicles to contract for the delivery
to everyone already dealing with them of a high-level digital certificate
on a smart card that will become an individual's driver license or state
identification card, as well as the downloading by e-mail of each person's
digcert to up to five computers, where they can be used by the cert holder
to digitally sign initiative petitions and to authenticate them when they
use one of the Internet Voting Systems authorized under the CIVI, as well
as for many other purposes relating to e-commerce and personal records,
all at no additional cost to citizens.
Download your RealNetwork viewer for free at http://www.real.com and tune
in at http://www.dcorbit.net/ at 4:00 pm Eastern Time on Friday, May 7th,
to hear this proposal made and watch the reaction to it of the other
panelists and the audience. In fact, tune in starting Thursday, May 6th,
at 7:30 pm Eastern Time and stay until 5:30 or so on Saturday, May 8th.
Send e-mail to marcs@votesite.com
Those interested can visit the soon-to-be launched "California Internet
Voting Initiative Committee" (CIVIC) website at:
http://www.votesite.com
and sign
up for the new CIVIC mailing list.
Message
Number 59 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Mailing
List
Date:
May 16 1999 00:37:36 GMT
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
Interview and Article from May 6th
On Thursday, May 6th, I stopped by IBM's Institute for Electronic
Governance in Washington, D.C., and was interviewed by the Institute's
director, Janet Caldow, about current matters of mutual interest in the
field of Internet voting.
You see and hear our conversation at:
http://www.ieg.ibm.com/cyber/government/0506.html
If you visit the IBM site before they have a chance to re-arrange the
links, you may find that to see the interview I did, you need to click on
the camera logo next to the interview that took place on March 11th with
the two Chief Information Officers of Tennessee and Utah, since the one
next to my name launches their interview.
On the same day, an article I'd written for IntellectualCapitol.com about
Internet voting was published on their site. You can read it at:
http://www.intellectualcapitol.com/issues/issue228/item4339.asp
Please send any comments or suggestions about these items that you may
have to me at info@vpac.org.
Regards,
Marc
Strassman
Message
Number 60 for
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Mailing
List
Date:
May 21 1999 21:16:15 GMT
From:
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Subject:
Internet Initiatives at the Initiative & Referendum Institute Conference in Washington, D.C.
On May 7th, I spoke at the Initiative and Referendum Institute's "A
Century of Citizen Lawmaking" Conference in Washington, D.C. You can
access a webcast of the conference at:
http://www.dcorbit.net/docs/initiative.html
My presentation was part of Session 6, "Increasing Voter Participation in
Initiative and Referendum?", beginning 19 minutes and 45 seconds into that
session.
I also
make a
50 minutes and 35 seconds into the segment. So does California Secretary
of State Bill Jones.
Everyone interested in the initiative and referendum processes should drop
by and take a look.
Regards,
Marc Strassman
Executive Director
Campaign
for Digital Democracy
Chapter
2
Additional
Essay
Lou Gerstner's support for digital voting convinced me
that we now needed to move on to the formation and building of real Internet
Parties. Such parties could stand alone
or work with existing parties they found compatible, while forming their own
network. These Internet Parties would
need to have a (Net-oriented) set of substantive policies that they supported
and worked for. This was the list I put
together over Thanksgiving weekend in 1998.
Substantive Policies for Internet Parties 1999
With the coming-on-board of Louis Gerstner, Chairman and CEO of IBM, to the movement for electronic voting, while we can't consider it a foregone conclusion, we can reasonably surmise that digital voting will soon be a reality. This is good, but it requires that we answer the question, "Now what?"
What we need to do now, I think, is create Internet Parties everywhere to take advantage of the migration of politics into cyberspace. Specifically, we need to create Internet Parties with programs that will simultaneously grow the Net and serve the people. Here is one suggested list of policies that might be made the centerpiece of organizing efforts for the Internet Parties of 1999.
Suggested Substantive Policies for the Internet Parties of 1999
1. Establish and adequately fund a network of Public Technology
Academies to
2. Facilitate through education, tax incentives, and the creation of an adequate administrative and physical infrastructure the proliferation of Home Cubicle Units so that a significant portion of the population can work in their homes, thereby cutting down on traffic, pollution, the generation of greenhouse gases, traffic accidents, traumatic traffic injuries, grisly highway deaths, local news reports of grisly highway injuries and deaths, alienation, home burglaries, divided families, traffic, and having to sit in traffic.
3. Launch a web-based effort to educate and change the behavior of citizens in the area of diet, exercise, and fitness, thereby cutting down on billions of dollars in health-related expenses that could be avoided by proper preventative behavior by individual citizens.
4. Develop and implement a program for web-based education on all aspects of the Social Security Funding Issue, using computer graphics and other modeling methods to present the facts and the options to the citizens for their consideration and decision.
5. Expand this project to encompass the creation and operation of a Public Knowledge Management and Decision Support System to collect, organize, process and use all existing data concerning the formulation, modification, and implementation of public policy in all areas to develop the best possible means of developing and carrying out new public policies in areas currently covered and in new areas as they arise from the confluence of changing demographics, evolving ecology, and the development and proliferation of new technologies.
This system should be linked to public education and electronic decision-making systems in order to deeply involve the population in terms of providing new ideas, evaluating the ideas of "decision-makers" and their staff and advisors, allowing the population to conduct its own evaluations and discussions of proposed policies and, of course, allowing the population to take the decisions, through public electronic decision-making systems, that it prefers in terms of the policies to be adopted.
6. Greatly expand the presence of mini-cams in public places, and make the feeds from these cameras, along with the feeds from all surveillance cameras on private property (drug stores, banks, department stores, malls, etc.) available to all, by way of the Net. This publicly-available and free network should also include feeds from cameras monitoring traffic on freeways and surface streets, satellite surveillance cameras, but should not include feeds from surveillance cameras operated by private individuals for the purpose of monitoring their own property and premises, unless they choose to make it publicly available, in which case it should be.
7. Establish, fund, and operate a Global Interactive Governance Association, designed to develop and implement a system for worldwide digital democracy to involve all world governments and all world residents. Provide a Public Knowledge Management and Decision Support System, as discussed in Point 5 above, for all world residents, along with all the technology, training, and access necessary to empower all world residents through the use of state-of-the-art digital technology deployed optimally to assure popular control of the apparatus of governance, whatever it is at any particular moment in time, while, of course, guaranteeing the protection of the individual and group human rights of all people.
-30-
The
Smart Initiatives Book Volume 1:
1999-2000
by
Marc Strassman
Founder and Executive
Director
Campaign for Digital Democracy
Copyright 2000 by
Transmedia Communications
All Rights Reserved
Chapter 1
Core Documents
Jump-Starting the Digital
Economy
(with
Department of Motor Vehicles-Issued Digital Certificates)
Chapter 2
Myths and Realities in Internet Voting
Chapter 3
David Broder Covers Me at
the
Initiative and Referendum
Institute Conference
Remarks at the
“Frontiers of Internet
Politics” Conference
Remarks on Open Access
Powered by a Universal PKI
(Microsoft Word version)
(PowerPoint version)
Chapter 4
Why
a Campaign for the Universal Distribution of Digital Certificates Makes Sense
The
Smart Initiatives Prospectus
A
Brief History of the Struggle
for
Internet Voting in California
How
the California Digital Signature Authority
Will
Arrange for the Issuance of Digital Certificates
Putting Democracy Back on
Track:
A Reply to David S. Broder and
Global Electronic Democracy
the Answer to Global
Corporatism
Real
Time Democracy
After Florida, What?
Some
Notes on the Political Economy
of Qualifying an Initiative
The Current Future of Smart
Initiatives
The Teledemocracy Revolution
that Never Was
Towards an Open Source
Democracy
A Third Way for Electoral
Technology
Fuzzy Math for Smart
Initiatives
Slip Sliding Away
Chapter 5
Smart idea
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Campaign for Digital Democracy Mailing
Brief Afterward