Today is polling day here in Britain, with millions flocking to polling stations to cast their vote in the general election.  Given how technology has advanced in recent years, it seems peculiar that we have to physically visit a facility to cast our vote (or post in our voting paper).

John Bercow, the speaker of the House of Commons, has pledged to offer online voting by the time of the 2020 general election, and I outlined a new Harvard based project to offer mobile voting earlier this week.

Securing our online votes

Suffice to say, a major challenge is to ensure that the votes we cast our safe and secure.  A recent paper from researchers at the University of Birmingham highlights how this is possible, even from a computer riddled with viruses.

The researchers have taken a leaf out of how banks handle security to develop a system whereby independent hardware devices are deployed alongside the PC of each voter.

The authors believe their system should be easily ready for roll out by the time of the 2020 General Election.

“This system works by employing a credit card-sized device similar to those used in online banking. It is called Du-Vote, and we have been developing it over the past two years. From the voter’s perspective, it’s straightforward: you receive a code on the device and type it back into the computer,” the authors say.

“The main advantage of this system is that it splits the security between the independent security device and a voter’s computer or mobile device. A computer is a hugely powerful, all-purpose machine running billions of lines of code that no one really understands, whereas the independent security device has a much, much smaller code base and is not susceptible to viruses,” they continue.

Keeping elections secure

If voting online is to be allowed, then it’s crucial that the whole process is secure to avoid any unwanted interference, whether by foreign governments, fraudsters or even criminal gangs.

With viruses and malware said to affect anywhere from 20-40 percent of PCs around the world, it is certainly not beyond the realms of possibility for specific malware to be devised to disrupt online elections.  It’s a problem that the researchers believe they’ve cracked.

“This is currently the only piece of work that addresses a core problem of e-voting – namely, that someone may have viruses or other malware on their computer. For example, the system in Estonia, where they have already introduced online voting, does not deal with this potentially undetectable source of vote manipulation or breach of voter privacy,” they say.

The security is supplied via a separate device similar to that used by banks.  Where the Birmingham system trumps the banks however, is that it can also detect if it itself has been infected by malware.

It’s an interesting development that will hopefully go some way to supporting an online vote in 2020.