SERVE will not be used in the 2004 elections.

[Paul Walmsley <paul@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

According to the New York Times, SERVE will not be used in the 2004 
elections.  Great news!

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/05/politics/campaign/05CND-VOTE.html>


- Paul

February 5, 2004
Defense Dept. Cancels Use of Internet Voting Project
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

iting security concerns, the Department of Defense canceled the use of a 
$22 million project today that would have allowed Americans overseas to 
vote over the Internet in this year's elections.

The system, the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, or 
Serve, was developed with financing from the Defense Department.

The decision was announced in a memo from Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul 
Wolfowitz to David Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and 
readiness.

Paraphrasing the memo, a department of defense spokeswoman said "the 
department has decided not to use Serve in the November 2004 elections. We 
made this decision in view of the inability to ensure legitimacy of votes, 
thereby bringing into doubt the integrity of the election results," the 
spokeswoman said. The memo also states that efforts will continue to find 
other ways to cast ballots electronically for Americans overseas, but "the 
integrity of the election results have to be assured," the spokeswoman 
said.

The decision to cancel the project, which was developed by Accenture, the 
consulting and technology services company, was announced two weeks after 
members of a panel of scientists who were asked by the government to 
assess the project's security recommended that it be canceled because any 
system based on off-the-shelf personal computers and run over today's 
Internet was inherently insecure.

Aviel D. Rubin, an author of that report, said today that the Serve 
project was a noble idea that could not be carried out in a secure way 
using today's technology. "While we appreciate their efforts to allow this 
segment of the population to have more accessible voting, we applaud their 
decision to cancel this project because of the security concerns, he said.