Missouri Military Absentee Ballots

[LiberalFighter]

I read about this today in our Saturday paper. I don't recall seeing it anywhere on DU and couldn't find it in the search.

Ballots fail to reach all troops in Iraq
Missouri soldiers stationed in Iraq were unable to vote in last week's elections because of trouble getting absentee ballots.

As a result, Secretary of State Matt Blunt's office said Monday that it is exploring whether overseas soldiers could e-mail their ballots for the Nov. 2 general election. Blunt is awaiting a determination from the Department of Defense, spokesman Spence Jackson said.

E-mail voting prompts security concerns

Missouri will allow members of the military stationed overseas to return absentee ballots via e-mail, raising concerns from Internet security experts about fraud and ballot secrecy.

Though state and federal officials insist safeguards are in place to protect the ballots from tampering, duplication or other forms of fraud, critics warn that e-mail is fundamentally insecure.

"E-mail is subject to all kinds of tampering," said Bruce Schneier, co-founder of Mountain View, Calif.-based Counterpane Internet Security Inc. "One of the problems with security is even the appearance of problems is bad."

//snip//
Ballots also contain a tracking number, so if the ballot sent to a particular soldier is not the one returned by that soldier, or several are returned with that same number, election officials will know, Jackson said.

EXCUSE ME... but if there is a tracking number on the ballot then that means that the military or election board can find out how the military vote.

Insane plan to let military to vote using insecure email

Increasing voter turnout is always a good idea, but this is a dangerous way to go about it. E-mail is not secure. E-mail is not reliably from the person named on the "from" line. E-mail is subject to all kinds of tampering. Every week we learn about new ways to hack into computers, and spammers know all sorts of tricks for forging e-mail headers. A common Internet worm trick is to send emails from hacked computers, or to pretend to send emails from other computers.


The military have the right to vote but they don't have the right to have exemptions that allow them to vote that are not provided to those that vote absentee in the states or that live overseas. Each state need to do a better job of getting the ballots to the voters in those situations.

An appropriate alternative would be to offer only a ballot for federal positions. President - U.S. Senator - U.S. Representative

The cause of the delay in Missouri was a dispute as to whether an amendment would be included on the ballot.

I would be totally against having a ballot emailed, faxed or otherwised compromised by the voters vote revealed to anyone.