Voting Technology, Security, and Privacy Concerns

Abstract

Previous chapters have firmly establishedthat military and overseas voters have traditionally experienced considerable trouble completing the voting process, which is reflected, for example, in the low ballot return rates described in Chapter 4. These difficulties have been primarily attributed to the voting time line; that is, because of their geographical distance from their local election officials (LEOs) as well as a reliance on traditional postal methods, voters were often unable to receive a blank ballot and/or return a voted ballot by the appropriate deadline. In short, it simply took too long to vote. As described in Chapter 3, since 2000, a series of legislative fixes at the state level and the passage of the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act in 2009 at the federal level have been implemented in order to reduce the hurdles individuals face when voting, for example, extending the time line for voting to a mandatory 45 days.