I vote in Hong Kong tomorrow!

- Taken from: http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2008/02/primary_evote

In an Internet First, Americans Abroad Cast E-Votes in Democratic Primary
By Nicole Martinelli Email 02.05.08 | 4:00 PM

MILAN, Italy -- For the first time, Democrats living abroad from Auckland to Ontario are voting over the internet in a global primary. And a few states may allow expatriate voters to vote online in the general election come November.

For now, expat voters will, in effect, add an extra state to this year's Democratic National Convention. These voters without borders will elect 22 delegates, weighing in with about as much influence as Montana or South Dakota.

Voting is currently open only to Democrats. Republicans Abroad split off from the Republican National Committee and can hold neither in-person nor internet votes in the primaries.

Democrats Abroad declined to reveal how many voters registered for the global primary or the exact cost of the online system (somewhere "under $100,000"), but Meredith Gowan Le Goff, vice chairwoman of Democrats Abroad for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said that membership doubled in the two weeks before the primaries.

The online voting process, explained in a user-friendly cartoon, takes about 10 minutes.

Party members outside the United States who registered for the service through Democrats Abroad by Feb. 1 received an unencrypted e-mail with a 10-digit ballot number and an eight-digit PIN. Latecomers can still vote in person at specified times and places in 34 countries from Feb. 5 to Feb. 12.

After logging on with the ballot number to a secure server at the Democrats Abroad website, users are asked for additional personal information as a security measure, before receiving a certified Java applet.

Once the applet is accepted, the PIN is requested and if correct, the ballot is loaded. After the voter clicks "X" for a candidate, a summary screen pops up asking for confirmation. That's followed by a receipt with the ballot number, while the actual vote speeds back encrypted.

San Diego firm Everyone Counts, which runs the process, said its security procedures are tighter than those at ordinary polling stations.

"We have three forms of information: a piece of personal data, a ballot number and a PIN," said Everyone Counts CEO Lori Steele. "Nothing is hack-proof, but we monitor voting as it happens for breaches. So far, so good." The voting system was also used by the Australian military in 2007.

This isn't the first attempt to expand the franchise to overseas U.S. citizens on the internet. After pilot programs, the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) scrapped plans for e-voting in general elections, concluding that "no internet voting system could be 100 percent secure."

Still, imperfect may be good enough for citizens who want to participate in elections far from home.

For the estimated 6 million Americans who live overseas, red tape and the vagaries of far-flung postal systems leave traditional paper absentee ballots with all the accuracy of a message in a bottle.

Americans abroad requested nearly a million ballots in 2006 elections, but only about a third were cast or counted, according to a government report.

Tara Kelly, an American who has lived in Rome since 1996, attempted to vote from the Eternal City exactly once: "The ballot came about three days before the election," she said. "Sending it back would have been useless. It never would have gotten there on time. I never tried again."

The weakest link in today's e-vote? Probably the security requirement to enter additional personal information, which, at least in three cases, wasn't more than what a friend or partner would know.

"For electronic voting to become reliable, you'd need other types of verification," said Francesco Sullo, Kelly's husband and a software architect for online-password-storage tool PassPack. "For instance, a private, personal key not generated by the same system that collects the vote. You've got to be able to be sure it was really me -- and not my neighbor -- voting."

Peripatetic voters have a better chance of casting a ballot online, nonetheless. Deirdré Straughan, a resident of northern Italy since 1991, voted online in the global primary while visiting California.

With online voting, "more people will be able to vote,” she said. “It's been so difficult to do, you had to be very motivated to actually accomplish it."

For those abroad who favor e-voting, returning to the paper-ballot-and-a-prayer system for the November presidential elections may be difficult.

"I do think that's going to change, and it may start changing after this week," Lori Steele said. In fact, her company is in talks with "half a dozen" states that want to make online voting a possibility for overseas voters in time for the general election.