The Voting Rights Task
Force asks that you send this letter to your Assembly member, and to
the Assembly Elections Committee by 5 PM, June 29, 2011. The committee's
assistant is Lori Barber, lori.barber@asm.ca.gov. Contact
information for all the committee members is listed
here.
For more information about the bill, please click here.
Dear Assemblymember _________,
SB 908 is a bill that
allows overseas voters to cast their ballots as email attachments. I
urge you to vote "No" on SB 908 when it comes before the
Assembly this summer. Although email voting may sound reasonable, it
would actually endanger the privacy and security of overseas
ballots, and would do a disservice to our troops. It would also set
a dangerous precedent for our entire election system.
Cybersecurity experts
from Lawrence Livermore Labs, MIT, Stanford, Princeton, and other
top universities are essentially unanimous that voting via the
Internet cannot be made secure even with the best available
encryption methods. During just one week in June, hackers attacked
the CIA, the International Monetary Fund, the US Senate, Citibank,
and other organizations protected by "state-of-the-art"
security techniques.
The experts also warn
that ballots sent by email are especially vulnerable to security
breaches. A ballot, like all email, would have to travel through
multiple countries and routers en route to its home county. This
would present multiple opportunities for "photoshopping"
and other forms of tampering. There is no reliable way of even
knowing if an attack has occurred. Also, overseas ballots destined
for a particular county's server on election day could be buried by
a "denial of service" attack that would prevent these
ballots from arriving before the close of polls.
To learn more about
the many dangers posed by email voting, see the recent article by
Dr. David Jefferson, cybersecurity expert at Lawrence Livermore
Labs, at
http://blog.VerifiedVoting.org/2011/06/20/1375.
There is also a good information page at
http://CountedAsCast.org/sb908/.
While SB 908 affects
just the ballots of Californians living overseas, its passage could
have a major impact on US elections. We know that in a close race,
even a small number of votes can change the outcome. And, because
California sets an example for the rest of the country, passage of
this bill would encourage other states to adopt Internet voting.
Finally, allowing service members to vote by email will send us down
a "slippery slope" because once such a system is in
place, voters and registrars will naturally wonder why we shouldn't
just let everyone vote this way. This would spread the dangers of
email and Internet voting to the entire state.
I agree with Secretary
Bowen who wrote: "I believe we must continue to remove as many
barriers as possible to ensure California’s military voters
and their dependents are able to fully participate in their
democracy. However, the return of voted ballots by email is too
risky given current technology and security standards."
Again, I urge you to
actively oppose SB 908. Please let me know how you intend to vote on
this bill.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
[Your name and address]
