For elections, the principal asset is governmental power. That power is transferred by the
results of counting voted secret ballots. Hence, integrity of the voted ballot is critical through
the entire process from capturing the voter's intent, casting it into the ballot box, counting it to
produce the election results, and finally retaining it to resolve disputes.
Given that the primary asset of an election is governmental power, it must be assumed that
attackers are highly motivated, well financed, sophisticated, and could be outsiders as well as
insiders with full knowledge of the election system. These attackers could be political
operatives, voters, vendor personnel, polling place workers, election administrators, foreign countries,
international terrorist organizations, or just pranksters.
Sitting governments must guarantee the accuracy of electoral results and the secrecy of votes.
Unfortunately the social groups & the economical powers which are the base of any government have
the obvious interest in falsifying electoral results and violating the secrecy of votes to mantain the power.
They could also succeed thanks to the complete control they have over the electoral process.
For that reason it is absolutely necessary that electoral procedures guarantee also against hidden attacks
coming from the inside of the sitting administrations.
It is assumed that the most virulent attacker is extremely motivated, sophisticated and well
financed, thus it is assumed that
insiders are not trusted since the attacker could compromise them as well. In fact attacks could also
be mounted from the incumbent government.
The principal vulnerabilities to the voted secret ballot are
- undetected compromise of election integrity
- compromise of ballot secrecy
- denial of voting service.
An undetected compromise of election integrity is the most horrific vulnerability because it
results in an unwarranted change of political power. In contrast, a detectable compromise
reduces to a denial-of-service attack against the system. For example, the September 11,
2001 terrorist attacks occurred on Election Day in New York. Because many voters were
denied the mechanism of voting, the election was disqualified and postponed. However, the
principal asset (i.e., governmental power) was not erroneously transferred and, thereby, not
compromised.
Electronic elections can easily be couterfeit by:
- Those who are in charge of the election, that is those
who physically have the "keys" of the computers.
Such persons could
do anything to the data and the programs in these computers. Probably
the expiring Cabinet or a big national or international Company debtor to
the expiring Cabinet for allocation of contracts.
- Large organizations.
As computers must of
course be networked to one another and to the polling stations , it's
possible to enter via the net and alter the memorized data and programs..
Kids of 14 entered computers of the Pentagon and also altered data kept in other
extremely protected sites. How can we deceive ourselves thinking that
political, criminal, terrorist, or economic organizations vill not do the
same, having adequate financial means? Criminal organizations are
designing, producing and selling decoders for video satellite signals that
have been cripted with technologies quite similar to those used for the
transmission of the election data. What would prevent them from knowing
who voted whom, or from counterfeiting the results
in order to elect their own representatives in the democratic institution?
- International spy intelligence.
International spy intelligence (e.g. Echelon) have
the know-how and the power to read and to alter any piece of
information going through any network all over the world. Are you sure
they will not be activated in order to counterfeit the polical balance of
other Countries?
Of course small criminal groups will not
able to modify or detect votes, nevertheless they would go on threatening,
frightning and promissing before the election, just like they do now.
But
they would heavely interfere if people could vote in places not
under the control of the public, like houses.
Nowadays we face
terrorism as one of the most dangerous attack to our Democracies.
Since in Democracy the political power is given to politicians by means of elections,
a good goal for terrorists could be the alteration of electoral processes. If they could delegitimate
the ruling power, they would have a great victory against democracies!
Ballot paper elections are very robust and have no single point of failure:
there is NOT a single place which abnormal functioning could lead to the impossibility to declare the winner.
Paper elections can be held despite of black outs and interruptions of computer networks. Infact paper elections
have properly worked also when electricity and computer did not even exist!
On the contrary, electronic elections are based on computer networks and computer centers which are
very good targets for terrorists. A terrorist attack to the network infrastucture, to power distribution lines,
or to a computer center
could lead to the impossibility to know who is the winner of the election. It would deny governments any democratic
legitimation, seriously harming any Democracy
Thus the existence of terrorism is a very good reason to elect our Parliaments and Governments using ballot papers!
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