Defense Dept. Cancels Use of Internet Voting Project

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/05/politics/campaign/05CND-VOTE.html

February 5, 2004
Defense Dept. Cancels Use of Internet Voting Project
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

iting security concerns, the Department of Defense canceled the use of a
project today that would have allowed Americans overseas to vote over the
Internet in this year's elections.

The system, the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, or
Serve, was developed with financing from the Defense Department.

The decision was announced in a memo from Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz to David Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.

Paraphrasing the memo, a department of defense spokeswoman said "the
department has decided not to use Serve in the November 2004 elections. We
made this decision in view of the inability to ensure legitimacy of votes,
thereby bringing into doubt the integrity of the election results," the
spokeswoman said. The memo also states that efforts will continue to find
other ways to cast ballots electronically for Americans overseas, but "the
integrity of the election results have to be assured," the spokeswoman said.

The decision to cancel use of the project, which was developed by Accenture
under a $22 million contract, the consulting and technology services company,
was announced two weeks after members of a panel of scientists who were asked
by the government to assess the project's security recommended that it be
canceled because any system based on off-the-shelf personal computers and run
over today's Internet was inherently insecure.

Aviel D. Rubin, an author of that report, said today that the Serve project
was a noble idea that could not be carried out in a secure way using today's
technology. "While we appreciate their efforts to allow this segment of the
population to have more accessible voting, we applaud their decision to cancel
this project because of the security concerns, he said.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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