Thursday, May 7, 2009

Kaneohe Neighborhood Board Elections

Neighborhood Board Elections to be held on line and by telephone. Honolulu is the first city in the nation to an election entirely on-line and by phone.

Neighborhood Board elections have always had low voter turnout. These elections have been conducted using mail in ballots. The city paid postage to send out the ballot and again when the ballot was returned. To many people dumped the ballots along with the junk mail without even opening them or they just forgot about mailing them back.

The city hopes that the added convenience will increase citizen participation in the Neighborhood Board Elections. They also expect to save the city $100,000.

This election uses military grade encryption. Officials are confident no one can abuse the system to rig the vote. Instructions will be mailed to each voter in each precinct where the Neighborhood Board seat is contested.

Neighborhood Board Elections to be held on line and by telephone. Honolulu is the first city in the nation to an election entirely on-line and by phone.

Neighborhood Board elections have always had low voter turnout. These elections have been conducted using mail in ballots. The city paid postage to send out the ballot and again when the ballot was returned. To many people dumped the ballots along with the junk mail without even opening them or they just forgot about mailing them back.

The city hopes that the added convenience will increase citizen participation in the Neighborhood Board Elections. They also expect to save the city $100,000.

This election uses military grade encryption. Officials are confident no one can abuse the system to rig the vote. Instructions will be mailed to each voter in each precinct where the Neighborhood Board seat is contested.

Eligible voters will be mailed a unique voter I.D. number that they will need along with the last four digits of their social security number in order to access their ballot through a secure website. The mailer will include a list of three locations where the NCO is placing public computers — Honolulu Hale, Kapolei Hale and a site to be identified on the Windward side.

For those that cannot access the Internet a secure phone voting option will be provided. Voters would also use their I.D. number to vote using this alternate method.

Voting ends May 22.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The electronic voting vendor has misled the local Kaneohe officials on the overall security and accuracy of elections that are conducted over the telephone networks and the Internet. Claiming "military grade encryption" is not the same as providing a verifiably accurate election. Moreover, governments should not be turning over any aspect of public elections to a private vendor without independent (non-vendor) accountability and oversight systems that have been developed by those with appropriate technical and auditing qualifications. There is a field known as IT auditing that might be useful to consult for the checks on this system. Also, independent computer scientists that specialize in voting systems are located at the Univ of California (Davis and Berkeley), who could provide counsel.
Someday these technologies may become secure enough for elections, but not today. The citizenry and its officials have been snookered by misleading, inaccurate marketing pitches that reduce democratic accountability.