If I can shop and bank online, why can’t I vote online?

There is widespread pressure around the country today for the introduction of some form of Internet voting in public elections that would allow people to vote online, all electronically, from their own personal computers or mobile devices. Proponents argue that Internet voting would offer greater speed and convenience, particularly for overseas and military voters and, in fact, any voters allowed to vote that way.

However, computer and network security experts are virtually unanimous in pointing out that online voting is an exceedingly dangerous threat to the integrity of U.S. elections. There is no way to guarantee that the security, privacy, and transparency requirements for elections can all be met with any practical technology in the foreseeable future...

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Internet Voting and America's Military and Overseas Voters

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Military and overseas voters have long faced significant challenges in returning voted ballots in time to be counted. These challenges were addressed in recent federal legislation which provided for longer time periods and the ability to receive a blank ballot faster, and return a voted ballot through expedited transport at no cost to the voter. Although the responses to those improvements have been positive, some states unfortunately have opted to allow voters overseas to send in voted ballots over the Internet. This highly hazardous transmission method does not permit legitimate recounts or audits, as the Public Policy Committee of the US Association for Computing Machinery has observed. The map above shows which states allow unauditable, unrecountable voting for military and overseas voters.