Electronic voting – safe
or not?
Kaspar Tilk
Electronic voting
• E-Voting (physical machines)
• Remote e-Voting or
I-voting(Internet voting)
Percentage of votes cast using ivoting
• 1.9% - Local Elections 2005
• 5.5% - Parliamentary Elections 2007
• 14.7% - European Parliament Elections 2009
• 15.8% - Local Elections 2009
• 24,3% - Parliamentary Elections 2011
• 31,4% - European Parliament Elections 2014
• 30,5% - Parliamentary Elections 2015
Voting machine for e-voting
• Defining ballots
• Casting and counting votes
• Reporting election results
• Producing audit trail information
Drawbacks of voting machines
• Poorly programmed
• Vulnerable to malicious code
• Self-spreading malware
• Weak encryption – same key for all
• Cannot check if vote is recorded
• Patching one flaw could produce another
Examples of problems
• 4438 of votes lost by North Carolina’s electronic
voting machines
• 232 unconfirmed votes in Finland
• 197 votes erased from database due to a security
flaw in California
• Graduate students from the University of
Michigan hacked into the online voting systems
Remote e-voting or Internet voting
• Database could be attacked from all over the
world
• Malware in voters device
• Trojans in central servers
• Physical access to servers
Examples of problems in Estonia
Secure or not?
• Never too secure
• As secure as possible
• No voting machine = no problem?