Lydia Emmanouilidou

SCOOP: At least one county in Washington state is letting some voters use an online platform to cast ballots in the March 10 Presidential Primary. The goal is to increase voter participation & access to the ballot box. But election security experts have concerns. THREAD 1/

2/ Pierce County Auditor Julie Anderson, whose office runs elections, says nearly 19k registered military & other overseas voters are eligible to return ballots electronically thru OmniBallot, a tool created by Seattle-based voting company Democracy Live: https://democracylive.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/OmniBallot-FAQ.pdfllot …

4/ Pierce County Auditor Julie Anderson says OmniBallot solution is more secure than other electronic ballot return options available to military & other overseas voters. Those other options? Fax and email...

5/ "Opening e-mail attachments from people in an election is not a good idea. And although we do take precautions when we receive emails to open them up in a sandbox and isolate them, it is still a much inferior option... to an encrypted app or an encrypted portal," Anderson said

6/ While experts seem to agree fax & email are problematic from security perspective, they worry abt introducing new internet-based voting systems that could be vulnerable to hacking. (Ballot return via postal mail is generally seen as most secure option but also has problems)