An Extensive Assessment of a Proposed Internet-based Voting System

The Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE) is an Internetbased voting system built by Accenture and its subcontractors for the U.S. Department of Defense FVAP (Federal Voting Assistance Program). FVAP’s mission is to reduce voting barriers for all citizens covered by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), namely U.S. citizens who are members of the military services, their family members, and nonresident U.S. citizens. SERVE is intended to allow UOCAVA voters both to register to vote and to vote via the Internet, from anywhere in the world. It is meant to be a complete, Independent Testing Authority-qualified and state-certified voting system that collects real votes. To participate, an eligible voter first enrolls in the SERVE program. After enrollment, the voter may register to vote, and then vote in one or two short sessions from any Internet-connected PC. The PC must run a Microsoft Windows operating system and either the Internet Explorer or Netscape Web browser. The browser must be configured to enable JavaScript, along with either Java or ActiveX scripting, and session cookies; no additional hardware or software is required. When a person registers online to vote, his or her information is stored on the central Web server for later retrieval by the Local Election Official (LEO), at which point the LEO updates its database. When a person votes in the election, the completed ballot is stored on the central server and later downloaded by the LEO, who stores it for canvass. The communication between the user’s Web browser and the central server is protected using the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol. Once that connection is established, an ActiveX control is downloaded to the voter’s PC and run to provide functionality not available in current browsers. By David Jefferson, Aviel D. Rubin, Barbara Simons, AND David Wagner