UWSA voting system contested
By Natasha Marar
News Editor
March 19, 2008
 The UWSA is being questioned about its decision to implement online voting for last week’s general elections, but the CRO’s office and IT Services maintain that it is a safe and effective system.
Online voting was first introduced for UWSA elections last fall.
“The October [by-]elections was our first run at this so we expected some learning process,” said Richard Dumala, manager of Web Services Group.
Shiladitya Chakrabarti, a computing consultant for IT Services and designer of the UWSA’s online voting system added that, “There were no privacy problems, but we had some technical problems with the servers overloading.”
Like the by-elections, the general elections also suffered from a slight server overload on Wednesday night that prevented students from voting for a couple of hours.
Despite the minor set backs, Dumala assured that UWSA online voting system is very safe. “We are using the same technology that we would be using for online surveys. “The UWSA vote is just an online survey, so the same security is in place there.”
Dumala did admit that a student’s UWIN ID could be “compromised” if someone else had access to their password and could vote on their behalf and is aware of the possibility of voting parties. “I agree that a candidate could have a party.”
Dumala also indicated that instead of students gathering at a candidate’s home to vote, where a large amount of votes for one candidate will be associated with one IP address, they can guard against identification by spreading out in a public place such as the library.
“We do have a plan where if one regular IP address gets more than a certain amount of votes than that IP [address] gets flagged and the CRO can see the flag,” said Chakrabarti.
When asked how many votes would need to come from one IP address before it is flagged in the system, Dumala said, “That would be up to [the CRO] to decide. If we can detect that a specific location is voting like crazy [the CRO] has tools to recognize that.”
Some UWSA members, including senator and former Electoral Monitoring Committee (EMC) member Viva Dadwal, have expressed concern that voters can use a technique called IP spoofing to conceal the identity of voters at voting parties.
IP spoofing allows computer users to disguise their computer’s unique identify, its IP address, to either conceal the sender or to impersonate another computer.
Teeuwen does not believe IP spoofing is a concern.
“It’s a concern because it can be done and its not hard to do,” said Dadwal.
Dadwal believes that Teeuwen should have educated the EMC, council, and voters on the pros and cons of online voting. “What [Teeuwen] did was circumvent the check point of the EMC, and the fact that he didn’t educate anyone on [online voting].”
The question of voting security and voter confidentiality are not limited to online voting. Regularly cross-referencing voting lists from the different polling stations is essential for ensuring voting security.
“In the paper ballot, what’s to prevent me from going from one poll to the other because the voter list doesn’t get checked off,” said Dumala.
Under the UWSA’s paper ballot system, an anonymous vote is placed into an envelope which is then placed into a larger envelope that identifies the voter. Vote counters are trusted to separate the two envelopes and discard the larger envelope before counting the votes.
With online voting, IT Services does have the ability to associate votes with the voter’s identity.
Chakrabarti indicated that their computer keeps two separate tables of who has voted and the candidates that have been voted for, which can be correlated together.
“It can be done at this end under very special circumstances,” said Dumala.
“The UWSA didn’t want the CRO to have that ability. They requested that, so they couldn’t compromise the [voters] privacy.”
“What he can only access is which candidates [received votes] and how many votes [were cast],” Chakrabarti remarked.
Ultimately, Teeuwen believes that online voting protects voter privacy better than paper voting, but he admits there are security checks under both systems.
There is also a possibility with online voting, because paper ballots are still used at some poll stations, that students can vote twice–both by paper and online–since the voter’s lists cannot be cross-referenced instantaneously.
“If [Teeuwen] doesn’t check the paper ballots that possibility could exist without question,” said Dumala.
Teeuwen indicated that voting lists are cross-referenced at the end of the voting period, and any double votes are counted as spoiled ballots.
Overall, Dumala feels that online voting is effective for a variety of reasons. “It’s certainly a very cost effective way of [voting], it’s convenient for the voters, and I think if [the UWSA does] go online completely...you are going to get your results quicker.”
When asked if the UWSA should eventually switch completely to online voting, Teeuwen replied, “I think a hybrid model may be needed – like [keeping] one poll station at the CRO’s office. But I think the UWSA will move to a fully automated online system once it’s perfected.”
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