|
The platform, known as Secure Internet Voting, or SIV, is ran by
a U.S. firm of the same name. Allowing people to vote from their
phones or computers, it is already being used in small pilot
programs around the United States.
But it faces significant hurdles to greater deployment: most
states do not allow for the widespread use of online voting due
to security concerns, instead opting for paper ballots that are
auditable.
"There are a lot of people that have determined that it's only
possible to create insecure internet voting," SIV founder David
Ernst told Reuters at the conference.
"We believe that there are modern tools and technologies that
allow you to make it hyper secure, with a higher level of
security than you can currently achieve with paper."
SIV has already been used at a party level to select a candidate
in a primary race, Ernst said. Republican Celeste Maloy was
selected as a congressional candidate in a vote powered by SIV
in 2023. Maloy went on to win that seat in Utah's 2nd
congressional district in November last year.
Voting security is on Americans' minds, with some fearing this
November's presidential and congressional elections could be the
target of foreign cyberattacks. Senior national security
officials say Russia and Iran are already targeting voters with
online influence campaigns. During the 2016 and 2020 election
cycles, Russian hackers targeted election offices and probed
several voting machine companies.
The team behind SIV has offered $10,000 in prize money to be
shared among any hackers who can successfully identify flaws in
their system.
The event is taking place at the DEF CON Hacking Conference,
which brings thousands of cybersecurity professionals to Nevada
for one weekend a year, and has been organized by DEF CON's
election security group "Voting Village".
Voting Village founder Harri Hursti said the technology had
promise, but that the possibility of widespread online voting
could take decades to realize.
"There are a couple of mathematical approaches which might, in
the future, make internet voting possible," Hursti said. "The
inventor of one of those technologies said he might solve it,
but not in our lifetimes."
(Reporting by James Pearson; Additional reporting by Christopher
Bing in Washington; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
[© 2024 Thomson Reuters. All
rights reserved.]
Copyright 2022 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|
|
