BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 887
Page 1
Date of Hearing: January 13, 2016
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON ELECTIONS AND REDISTRICTING
Sebastian Ridley-Thomas, Chair
AB 887
(Ting) - As Amended January 4, 2016
SUBJECT: Military and overseas voters: ballot submission by
electronic mail: Internet voting.
SUMMARY: Permits a military or overseas voter to return his or
her vote by mail (VBM) ballot by electronic mail (email), as
specified, and allows a military or overseas voter to cast his
or her vote on the Internet, as specified. Specifically, this
bill:
1)Permits a military or overseas voter to return his or her VBM
ballot by email, as specified.
2)Provides that, to be counted, the ballot returned by email
must be received by the voter's elections official no later
than the closing of the polls on election day and must be
accompanied by a copy of an identification envelope and an
oath of voter declaration, as specified.
3)Provides that in order for a ballot to be submitted by email,
the ballot, identification envelope, and oath of voter
declaration, must be scanned to create electronic copies of
the documents. Requires the electronic copies of the
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documents to be included in the email sent to the elections
official as attachments.
4)Requires the Secretary of State (SOS) to adopt uniform
regulations for the use of email in returning ballots.
5)Requires each elections official to adopt appropriate
procedures to protect the secrecy of the ballots returned by
email.
6)Requires the elections official, upon receipt of a ballot
returned by email, to determine the voter's eligibility to
vote by comparing the signature on the scanned copy of the
identification envelope with the signature on the voter's
affidavit of registration
7)Allows a military or overseas voter to cast his or her vote on
the Internet by electronically marking his or her ballot and
securely transmitting the voted ballot to the appropriate
election official using the Internet. Provides that, in order
to be counted, the voted ballot must be received by the
voter's elections official no later than the closing of the
polls on election day.
8)Requires the SOS to adopt uniform regulations for military and
overseas voters to cast votes using the Internet.
9)Provides that the Internet voting provisions of this bill
shall become operative only if the SOS certifies that he or
she has identified and addressed all issues regarding the
security of casting a vote using the Internet.
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10)Makes conforming changes.
EXISTING LAW:
1)Defines a "military or overseas voter" as an elector absent
from the county in which he or she is otherwise eligible to
vote who is any of the following:
a) A member of the active or reserve components of the
United States (U.S.) Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps,
or Coast Guard; a Merchant Marine; a member of the U.S.
Public Health Service Commissioned Corps; a member of the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Commissioned Corps of the U.S.; a member on activated
status of the National Guard or state militia;
b) A citizen of the U.S. living outside of the territorial
limits of the U.S. or the District of Columbia; or,
c) A spouse or dependent of a person described above.
2)Provides that when a military or overseas voter applies for a
VBM ballot, the application shall be deemed to be an affidavit
of registration and an application for permanent VBM status.
3)Requires each elections official to have a system available
which allows a military or overseas voter to electronically
request and receive a VBM application, an unvoted ballot, and
other information.
4)Requires elections officials to request an email address from
each military or overseas voter who registers, as specified.
5)Requires elections officials to send VBM ballots by means of
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transmission (mail, facsimile, or electronic transmission)
requested by a qualified military or overseas voter.
6)Requires the elections official to send a VBM ballot to a
military or overseas voter not earlier than 60 days, but not
later than 45 days, before the election.
7)Allows a military or overseas voter who is temporarily living
outside of the U.S. to return his or her ballot by facsimile
transmission. Requires a ballot returned by facsimile
transmission to be accompanied by an identification envelope
and an oath of voter declaration in which the voter
acknowledges that the electronic transmission of a completed
ballot may compromise the secrecy of the ballot.
8)Requires the county elections official to determine the
voter's eligibility to vote by comparing the voter's signature
from the materials returned by facsimile transmission to the
signature on the voter's affidavit of registration.
9)Allows a military or overseas voter who is unable to appear at
his or her polling place because of being recalled to service
after the final day for applying for a VBM ballot to appear
before the elections official in the county in which the voter
is registered to apply for a VBM ballot.
10)Permits a military or overseas voter to use a federal
write-in absentee ballot in any election in which he or she is
qualified to vote.
FISCAL EFFECT: Unknown. State-mandated local program; contains
a crimes and infractions disclaimer and reimbursement direction.
COMMENTS:
1)Purpose of the Bill: According to the author:
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The nonpartisan Overseas Vote Foundation (OVF) claims 2012
was a tipping point in the use of electoral technology by
Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting [Act]
voters (UOCAVA voters). That year, UOCAVA voters nearly
doubled the rate at which they returned their ballots via
email and more UOCAVA voters than ever cast their votes
online. This technological transition eliminated the
biggest roadblocks preventing these voters from
participating in the democratic process.
Research shows paper ballots often arrive too late for
voters overseas to meet the required deadline to return
their ballots, that ballots are lost in the mail, and that
many ballots are undeliverable.
Over thirty states already offer their UOCAVA voters the
option of submitting their ballots through email and two
states offer UOCAVA voters the option of casting their
votes online. Unfortunately, California does not offer
either of these options. We mandate a paper process.
Assembly Bill 887 enables California to catch up with the
times. By giving California's UOCAVA voters the option to
cast vote online and to submit their ballots through email,
California can start to administer elections in electronic
formats, which have permeated how our citizens live and
work. Through these means, we will reduce the largest
voting barriers facing California's overseas voters.
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2)New Ballot Return Election Policies: This bill breaks new
ground and permits new methods by which a voted ballot may be
returned and how a ballot may be cast that have never been
used in California. This bill allows a military or overseas
voter to return his or her VBM ballot by email. For the
ballot to count, the voter must send electronic copies of the
voted ballot, a copy of the identification envelope and an
oath of voter declaration to the voter's elections official no
later than the closing of the polls on election day.
Returning a voted ballot by email is not currently allowed
under existing law. As mentioned above, military or overseas
voters currently are only allowed to return a voted ballot by
mail, fax, or in-person return.
In addition, this bill allows a military or overseas voter to
cast his or her vote on the Internet by electronically marking
his or her ballot and securely transmitting the voted ballot
to the appropriate elections official using the Internet. In
order for the ballot to be counted, the voted ballot must be
received by the voter's elections official no later than the
closing of the polls on election day. Again, this change
proposes a major departure from how a military or overseas
voter may currently cast his or her ballot.
3)How Would a Voter Cast a Ballot on the Internet? While this
bill authorizes a military or overseas voter to cast his or
her ballot on the Internet by electronically marking his or
her ballot and securely transmitting the voted ballot to the
appropriate elections official using the Internet, it does
not, however, indicate how or by which method this new
procedure to vote on the Internet will occur. Will a military
or overseas voter vote on the Internet via a kiosk, a
web-based application, or his or her own personal computer?
This bill does not provide any detail as to how this new
process or system would work. Theoretically, some sort of new
voting system would need to be reviewed, certified, and
approved for use in order for a military or overseas voter to
utilize this option to cast his or her ballot. Under current
law, no voting system or part of a voting system may be
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connected to the Internet at any time. Consequently, new
testing and certification protocols and procedures will need
to be developed to ensure the system is appropriately tested
and examined. Because this bill requires the SOS to adopt
uniform regulations for military and overseas voters to cast
votes using the Internet, an argument can be made that the SOS
will include those details in the regulations. The committee,
however, may wish to consider requiring the SOS to develop new
testing and certification protocols and procedures for a
voting system that allows for Internet voting. Currently,
there are no state laws or regulations governing the use of
Internet voting systems and the committee staff is unaware of
any official federal standards.
Moreover, this bill provides that the Internet provisions of
this bill will not become operative until the SOS certifies
that he or she has identified and addressed all issues
regarding the security of casting a vote using the Internet.
This language, however, is vague and ambiguous. This bill
does not include specific safeguards or safety measures to
protect a voter's private information and voting selections,
nor does it include any requirements for encryption or other
safeguards to protect against information being intercepted
during transmission. Again, while an argument can be made
that those provisions will not be operative until the SOS
certifies that all security issues have been addressed, more
detail and specificity is needed to understand what it means
for an Internet voting system to be secure. As noted later in
this analysis, various documented studies and reports
generally conclude that the current architecture of the
Internet and the variety of ways in which its security can be
compromised pose a significant threat and risk to Internet
voting systems. Many specifically state that Internet voting
systems can be vulnerable to a variety of different attacks,
the most common attacks include, but are not limited to,
denial of service, Trojan horse viruses, malware, website
spoofing, and phishing. Depending on the attack, a variety of
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outcomes can result, all of which could compromise the
integrity of the election.
In addition to the security issues mentioned, there are other
important concerns that are not currently addressed or
contemplated in this bill, such as usability, transparency,
auditability and verifiability. If it is the will of the
committee to approve this bill, it may be appropriate to
include more detail to address these important issues.
4)What is an Internet Voting System? According to the U.S.
Election Assistance Commission's (EAC) September 2011 report
entitled, "A Survey on Internet Voting," the term "Internet
voting" is used to refer to many different methods, or
channels, of voting. What the channels have in common is the
use of the communications connectivity and protocols by the
Internet. The report classifies Internet voting as a subset
of electronic voting. For the purposes of their study, an
Internet voting system was defined as any system where the
voter's ballot selections are transmitted over the Internet
from a location other than a polling place to the entity
conducting the election. Consequently, the term "remote
electronic voting" is often used as a synonym.
The report states that the remote voting location can be
either a controlled or an uncontrolled voting environment. It
defines a controlled environment to mean a situation where the
voting platform, such as the computer used for voting, was
supplied by and under the control of the entity conducting the
election. The report describes an uncontrolled environment to
mean a situation where the voter supplies the computer used
for voting, which may be the voter's personal computer,
workplace computer, or any other public computer.
According to the survey, there are two forms in which a
voter's ballot selections can be returned - electronic ballot
return, where the entire ballot document, including the
voter's selections, are transmitted, or vote data return,
where only the voter's selections are transmitted.
Furthermore, the survey describes that there are three
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channels, or methods, for electronic ballot return: a
web-based communications application which uploads a digital
representation of a voted ballot (e.g., pdf or jpeg) file to a
website; a digital facsimile, where a voter's ballot is
scanned and transmitted as a graphics file; and, email, where
a digital representation (e.g., pdf or jpeg) of a voter's
ballot is transmitted via email.
In addition, their survey outlines three methods for
presentation of the ballot and vote data return. They include
a web browser or computer application which the voter executes
to display the ballot, record selections, and transmit
selections; a direct recording electronic (DRE) device or
kiosk connected to the Internet to transmit vote data; and a
Voting Over Internet Protocol approach for the voter to access
the ballot, record selections, and transmit selections.
5)California Internet Voting Task Force: In 1999, Secretary of
State Bill Jones convened the California Internet Voting Task
Force (Task Force) to study the feasibility of using the
Internet to conduct elections in California. The goal of the
Task Force, which was comprised of more than two dozen experts
in the field of data security and elections and voter
participation, was to examine the feasibility of Internet
voting and develop a report that included recommendations,
analysis, and suggested technical requirements. The Task
Force issued a final report in 2000. According to the report,
the implementation of Internet voting would allow increased
access to the voting process for millions of potential voters
who do not regularly participate in our elections. However,
the Task Force concluded that technological threats to
security, integrity, and secrecy of Internet ballots are
significant and very real. Among the recommendations provided
by the Task Force was that the election process would be best
served by a strategy of evolutionary rather than revolutionary
change. The report states that the implementation of Internet
voting will be a complex undertaking with no room for error.
Consequently, the Task Force recommended a phased-in approach
that will allow for the gradual testing of various components
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of technology to authenticate voters and provide secure and
secret ballots. Other recommendations included ensuring
Internet voting would serve as a supplement to, not a
replacement of, traditional paper-based voting, be accessible
to all voters, and ensure there is large public support
otherwise large levels of skepticism may compromise the
fundamental trust in the democratic process.
6)Security Concerns: Many computer scientists and cyber
security experts and documented studies and reports, generally
conclude that the current architecture of the Internet and the
variety of ways in which its security can be compromised, pose
a significant threat and risk to Internet voting systems and
electronic ballot delivery. Both private and public entities
are susceptible to attacks via the Internet. Experts say they
can happen by anyone, anywhere in the world who has a computer
and an Internet connection. According to various studies and
reports, Internet voting systems and electronic ballot
transmission can be vulnerable to a variety of different
attacks.
Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST), the technical advisors to the U.S. EAC, have been
conducting research into the use of electronic technologies to
support military and overseas voting, including casting a
ballot over the Internet. In a 2008 report entitled, "A
Threat Analysis on UOCAVA Voting Systems," NIST analyzed the
use of several electronic technologies for different aspects
of the absentee voting process. Their research concluded that
widely-deployed security technologies and procedures could
help mitigate risks associated with electronic ballot
delivery, however the risks associated with casting ballots
over the Internet were more serious and challenging to
overcome.
Specifically, the report concluded that the use of email to
return ballots presents several significant security
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challenges. Several different computer systems are involved
in sending an email from a voter to an election official.
Many of these systems, such as the voters' computers and email
servers, are outside the control of election officials.
Attacks on these systems could violate the privacy of voters,
modify ballots, or disrupt communication with election
officials. Because other individuals or organizations operate
these systems, there is little election officials can do to
prevent attacks on these systems. The security challenges
associated with email return of voted ballots are difficult to
overcome using technology widely deployed today.
Additionally the report stated that casting ballots via the web
(the Internet) also pose a large number of security challenges
that are difficult to overcome. Using this transmission
method, voters would log into a web site and submit their
selections on a web page. A great deal of trust must be placed
in the software on the election server to accurately record
votes, as there would be no opportunity for voters to directly
verify that their ballots have been recorded correctly.
Furthermore, the reports states that similar to email voting
systems, a web-based system for casting ballots would rely on
computer systems outside the control of election officials.
Attacks on these systems, such as voters' computers, could
significantly threaten the integrity of elections or the
ability of voters to cast ballots. Moreover, less
sophisticated attacks, such as phishing and spoofing, could
trick voters into giving up their voting credentials to an
attacker. Such attacks are common in the banking industry,
and are difficult to defend against.
Moreover, in 2011 NIST released a report entitled, "Security
Considerations for Remote Electronic UOCAVA Voting," which
studied Internet voting in more detail. The report identified
and analyzed current and emerging technologies that may
mitigate risks to Internet voting, however it also identified
several areas that require additional research and
technological improvements. Ultimately, the study concluded
that Internet voting systems cannot currently be audited with
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a comparable level of confidence in the audit results as those
for polling place systems. The report also concluded that
malware on voters' personal computers poses a serious threat
that could compromise the secrecy or integrity of voters'
ballots. Finally, the report stated that the U.S. currently
lacks a public infrastructure for secure electronic voter
authentication and recommended that additional research and
development is needed to overcome these challenges before
secure Internet voting will be feasible.
7)Electronic Transmission of Ballots in Other States: According
to a 2015 report by the National Conference of State
Legislatures, two states permit some voters to return ballots
via the Internet. In addition, the District of Columbia and
22 states (Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas,
Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana,
Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina,
North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, Utah, Washington, and
West Virginia) permit UOCAVA voters to return their voted
ballots by email or fax. Five of the 22 states, however, only
permit a UOCAVA voter to return his or her voted ballot via
email or fax under certain circumstances, such as when a more
secure method is not available, only in certain emergency
situations, if the voter is in an area eligible for imminent
danger, serving in a hostile fire area, or must also send a
hard copy of the ballot via postal mail. The report also
states that 19 states do not allow electronic transmission and
voters must return voted ballots via postal mail.
As mentioned above, California permits a military or overseas
voter to return a voted ballot via mail or fax.
8)Existing Laws to Facilitate Voting by Overseas and Military
Voters: On October 28, 2009, President Obama signed into law
the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act to
expand the 1986 UOCAVA, which was established to protect the
rights of service members to vote in federal elections
regardless of where they are stationed. The MOVE Act builds
on UOCAVA to provide greater protections for service members,
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their families, and other overseas citizens.
The provisions of the MOVE Act have been in effect since the
November 2010 election. However, given that California law
already included provisions to facilitate voting by military
members and other California residents who are outside of the
U.S., the SOS's office and local elections officials only had
to make minimal adjustments to their practices in order to be
in compliance. For example, the MOVE Act requires states to
establish procedures to allow overseas voters to request voter
registration applications and absentee ballot applications by
mail or electronically, and requires at least one means of
electronic communication for voters to request, and for all
states to send, voter registration applications, absentee
ballot applications, and voting information. Current law
allows a military or overseas voter to register to vote and
apply for VBM ballot by facsimile transmission and allows
elections official to send a VBM ballot by mail, facsimile, or
electronic transmission. Exceeding the requirement of the
MOVE Act, current law allows a military or overseas voter who
is temporarily living outside of the US to return his or her
ballot by facsimile transmission.
In addition, the MOVE Act requires states to transmit a
requested absentee ballot to overseas voters not later than 45
days before an election for federal offices. Again,
California law exceeds this requirement by specifically
requiring the county elections official to send ballots to
overseas voters with a list of all candidates who have
qualified for the ballot beginning on the 60th day before the
election, along with a list of all measures on which the voter
is qualified to vote.
9)One Step Further: In addition to being compliant with all
provisions in the MOVE Act, California law also makes other
accommodations to facilitate voting by military voters and
other California residents who are outside of the U.S.
Specifically, current law provides that an application for a
VBM ballot by an overseas voter is deemed to be a request for
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voter registration (if the voter was not already registered to
vote) and an application for permanent VBM voter status. In
addition, California makes all overseas voters permanent VBM
voters, thereby eliminating the need for overseas military
voters and other overseas voters to request a VBM ballot for
each election.
More recently, in 2012 the Legislature passed and the Governor
signed AB 1805 (Huffman), Chapter 744, Statutes of 2012, which
established new voting procedures for military and overseas
voters, as defined, to comply with the UOCAVA and implement
the policies of that act and the Uniform Military & Overseas
Voter Act adopted by the National Conference of Commissioners
on Uniform State Laws. Among other provisions, AB 1805
expands the universe of people who can be considered military
or overseas voters; expands the use of the Federal Write-In
Absentee Ballot by allowing it to be used by military or
overseas voters in non-federal elections; and makes other
conforming changes, where appropriate in California, to ensure
continuity and uniformity across state lines for military and
overseas voters.
AB 1929 (Gorell), Chapter 694, Statues of 2012, established
processes and procedures for the review and approval of ballot
marking systems, as defined, for use in California elections.
A ballot marking system speeds up the amount of time it takes
for military or overseas voter to cast a ballot by allowing a
military or overseas voter to electronically obtain a ballot
specific to the precinct in which they reside and
electronically mark his or her ballot. The information marked
on the voter's ballot is formatted onto a document that the
voter may print out and mail or fax to their county elections
official.
SB 29 (Correa), Chapter 618, Statues of 2014, allows a VBM
ballot to be counted if it is cast by election day and
received by the elections official by mail no later than three
days after the election, as specified.
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10)Efforts on the Federal Level: The Federal Voting Assistance
Program (FVAP) works to ensure service members, their eligible
family members, and overseas citizens are aware of their right
to vote and have the tools and resources to successfully do so
- from anywhere in the world. The Director of FVAP
administers UOCAVA on behalf of the Secretary of Defense. In
general, the FVAP exists to: 1) assist uniformed services and
overseas voters in exercising their right to vote so that they
have an equal opportunity with the general population to have
their vote counted; 2) assist states in complying with
relevant federal laws by providing current information; and 3)
advocate on behalf of the uniformed services and overseas
voters, identifying impediments to their ability to exercise
their right to vote, and proposing methods to overcome those
impediments.
According to a 2015 Congressional Research Service report,
entitled "The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting
Act: Overview and Issues," the FVAP has had a long history of
conducting research on barriers to absentee voting and working
with states to determine how these hurdles can be reduced or
eliminated. In 2000, FVAP conducted a Voting Over the
Internet (VOI) pilot project that was intended to address the
specific needs of the military when attempting to vote
absentee remotely. The VOI pilot was limited in scope and
participation (only 4 states and a total of 350 potential
voters were eligible to participate). The project was
designed to explore the viability of using the Internet to
assist UOCAVA voters, most of whom face unique challenges when
registering and voting. According to the report, under the
VOI, to request a ballot, a voter would fill out an electronic
version of the request form and sign it with a digital
certificate. A local elections official would then post an
electronic version of the ballot on a secure server, where it
would be retrieved by the voter. Once the ballot was
completed by the voter, it was digitally signed and encrypted
and placed on a FVAP server. The completed ballot could only
be decrypted by the appropriate election office, who printed
the ballot and counted it with mail-in absentee ballots. In
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2001, FVAP issued a report evaluating the program and noted,
among other conclusions, that "further development is needed
before Internet remote registration and voting can be provided
effectively, reliably, and securely on a large scale."
According to a December 2015 FVAP research report, entitled
"Review of FVAP's Work Related to Remote Electronic Voting for
the UOCAVA Population," although the VOI was limited in scope
and participation, Congress recognized the initial success of
the VOI pilot and mandated the conduct of an electronic voting
demonstration project (e.g. remote Internet voting) through
the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002
(FY 2002) for a statistically relevant population of absent
uniformed service personnel.
As a result, according to the Congressional Research Service
report, an expanded version of the VOI project was to be used
in the 2002 elections and called on the Secretary of Defense
to "carry out a demonstration project under which absent
uniformed services voters [were] permitted to cast ballots in
the regularly scheduled general election for federal office in
November 2002 through an electronic voting system" called the
Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE).
The report states that SERVE was to provide the capability to
authenticate voters and local election officials using unique
digital signatures. In order to do so the voters and
officials had to register with SERVE in order to be assigned
the digital identity, which would allow them to access servers
hosted by FVAP in order to register and vote. The SERVE
program was expanded from four to seven states, with a target
of 100,000 participants.
The Congressional Research Service reported that FVAP assembled
a Security Peer Review Group to review the SERVE program's
security design, and that several members of the group
unofficially asserted that the program had fundamental
security problems that made it vulnerable to a variety of
well-known cyber attacks. The report also stated that as a
result, in 2004, the FVAP's attempt to execute the SERVE
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project was suspended and the defense authorization act for FY
2005 instructed it to wait until the EAC issued guidelines for
electronic absentee voting before pursuing another Internet
voting project.
According to the December 2015 FVAP research report, in the
National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2015, Congress
eliminated the requirement for FVAP to conduct the electronic
voting demonstration project and with the repeal of that
requirement, the Department of Defense is no longer exploring
program implementation in this area.
11)Arguments in Support: In support, the Inyo County
Clerk/Recorder writes:
Currently twenty-four states allow some voters to return ballots
via electronic delivery, but California is not one of them.
Military and Overseas voters from California must use either the
Postal Service or a fax machine to return their voted ballot.
The last 30 to 40 years have seen a steep decline in the
availability of fax machines as demands to move from paper to
electronic have increased. If a Military or Overseas voter does
not have access to a fax machine, they may not have time to
return their ballot and have it counted in California. However,
if that same voter lived in Colorado or the District of Columbia
- they would be afforded the ability to use secure electronic
methods to return their voted ballot.
12)Arguments in Opposition: In opposition, VerifiedVoting.org
writes:
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We oppose the electronic transmission of voted ballots because
ballots cast over the Internet are highly vulnerable to online
failures through attacks and malfunctions of various kinds. We
need to safeguard with special care the ballots of our military
to ensure they are cast and counted as intended so that our
service members are not disenfranchised. Online ballot
transmission needlessly risks the security and secrecy of the
troops' ballots.
The Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) of the Department
of Defense does not support online return of voted ballots,
pointing out that given unsolved security issues, postal mail is
the "most responsible" method of ballot return. Researchers for
the federal government have studied the electronic return of
voted ballots for years and have concluded that it is currently
not possible to ensure the security, privacy, auditability and
integrity of ballots cast over the Internet. For this reason,
the U.S. Election Assistance Commission has not set security
standards or guidelines for Internet voting systems. There are
no federal security guidelines because the federal government
concluded online voting cannot be done securely. Return of
voted ballots by email, as proposed in AB 887, is considered the
"least secure" method of ballot return by election technology
experts. Moreover, because federal researchers determined that
secure online voting is not currently feasible, last year the
federal government ended its effort to try to develop a
secure online voting system for the military. The question of
offering secure online voting for the troops has been asked and
answered. It's not presently possible.
It should be noted that California has a proud standard of
requiring voter-verifiable paper
records, which are used in post-election manual tallies to check
the proper functioning of our systems. Ballots returned by email
- even when printed on the receiving end - cannot be construed
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as voter-verified, because they are digital ballots subject to
alteration in transit?
13)Upcoming Deadlines and Amendments: Due to impending
committee deadlines, if this bill is approved in this
committee today, it would need to be heard in the Assembly
Appropriations Committee next week, absent a waiver of the
Joint Rules. However, if this bill is amended in committee
today, that may prevent this bill from being heard in the
Assembly Appropriations Committee before next week's deadline
for committees to hear and report two-year bills. In light of
this fact, if it is the committee's desire to approve this
bill with amendments, committee staff recommends that this
bill be passed out of committee with the author's commitment
to take those amendments subsequent to passage by this
committee.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION:
Support
American Legion-Department of California
AMVETS-Department of California
California Association of County Veterans Service Officers
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California State Commanders Veterans Council
Inyo County Clerk/Recorder
Military Officers Association of America, California Council of
Chapters
VFW-Department of California
Vietnam Veterans of America-California State Council
Opposition
Secretary of State Alex Padilla (Unless Amended)
VerifiedVoting.org
Five Individuals
Analysis Prepared by:Nichole Becker / E. & R. / (916) 319-2094
AB 887
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