Category: Ballot Return

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Faxing Isn’t What You Think It Is: Exploring Alternatives to Mitigate Risks

Anyone working in an office until around 2010 likely recalls the oversized machines that fax, copy and scan, and feature the distinctive dial tone of an outgoing fax. This, however, may be a foreign concept for those more recently entering the workforce.

The use of fax machines has dipped significantly since their heyday in the 1980s and many of the younger generation wouldn’t know how to use one. Yet, for military and overseas voters, faxing is still one of the primary methods to return voted ballots using an electronic method, as opposed to snail mail.

Military and overseas voters covered by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) often face unique challenges in requesting, receiving and returning election materials due to living in austere conditions abroad where they don’t have access to many forms of communication. Election officials and state legislatures prioritize giving these voters every chance to cast a ballot — in many cases they are defending our country, after all. As such, 31 states allow for some method for these voters to return a ballot electronically.

Many states specifically use the term “fax” or “facsimile” in statute and list it as one of the methods of electronic ballot return. It is the only permitted method of electronic return in seven states and, in 2016, it accounted for 36% of the total transmitted military and overseas citizen ballots. In some cases, this language is a vestige from previous decades when fax was more heavily used but may also be due to a perception that faxing using land lines is a more secure method of transmitting ballots.

It’s important to note that what we traditionally think of as faxing by use of traditional land lines is not the way that documents are typically faxed today. Household and business landlines are becoming less common. More people are relying on online fax services, which is a trend accelerated by the global pandemic when an influx of workers shifted to working remotely.

A fax today doesn’t look the way it did when the technology was first invented in the 1800s when reproductions of images were sent via telegraph. The method isn’t even the same as it was in the 1990s when the Federal Voting Assistance Program started its Electronic Transmission Service, allowing servicemembers serving in the Persian Gulf to send and receive election materials via fax.

Faxing today isn’t completely reliant on telephone networks; it often uses the internet. Multipurpose fax machines commonly used today typically access an external network, introducing many of the same potential vulnerabilities as other internet-connected systems. At the same time, faxing has proven incapable of evolving, and does not incorporate the security mitigations available to other networked devices.

However, secure electronic voting methods are not entirely far from reach. There is a way to electronically verify digital signatures for Military voters through the end-to-end encryption of a Department of Defense Common Access Card, also known as a CAC. In January 2023, the Federal Voting Assistance Program submitted a Report to Congress on End-to-End Electronic Voting Services. The report describes the opportunity for the Federal Government to utilize email transmissions for Military personnel and election officials with CACs. A CAC comes with digital signature verification, allowing enhanced encryption of the sender and recipient. Unfortunately, a CAC falls under the Department of Defense, which, as it stands, does not extend end-to-end email verification between Military personnel and election officials. There would need to be State level authorization access to accept election materials from digital signatures. However, there is an opportunity to research alternatives such as the Federal Public Key Infrastructure, or FPKI, working in conjunction with other Federal partners.

Exploring more secure electronic submission alternatives to faxing is vital for helping Military and Overseas voters. States may want to consider their permitted methods of electronic return for UOCAVA voters in light of evolving technologies and the fact that faxing today isn’t the same as faxing in the pre-internet era.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson:

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Sandboxes and “Go Bags”: How New Jersey Election Officials Prepare for Crises

An interior image of the NJ "go bag" with the computer and all related components included

The Council of State Governments (CSG) Overseas Voting Initiative (OVI) 2019 report Examining the Sustainability of Balloting Solutions for Military and Overseas Voting, said “states are under increasing legislative pressure to have contingency plans in place for all aspects of their election systems, including the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) balloting solutions, due to recent national disasters such as Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Maria and Hurricane Dorian, and global threats of terrorism, civil disobedience, cyberattacks and mail service disruptions.” A case study in emergency preparedness can be found in New Jersey.

Superstorm Sandy is known as such because it was more than just a hurricane that ripped through the East Coast of North America beginning on October 22, 2012. Sandy was a Category 3 hurricane followed immediately by a post-tropical cyclone that made landfall in rapid-fire succession over several days. The storm did not end until November 2 after killing at least 117 people in the United States plus 69 people in Canada and the Caribbean. It also left $68 billion in destruction in its wake, even forcing the closure of the New York Stock Exchange for two consecutive days, the first time this happened since 1888 due to a weather catastrophe.

The state of New Jersey sustained a great deal of damage as a result of Sandy. Election Day in 2012 – a presidential election year – was on November 6, just four days after Superstorm Sandy ended. State and local election officials in affected areas – especially in hardest hit New Jersey – worked in response to ensure citizens displaced or disrupted by the storm were able to exercise their right to vote. Sandy was obviously no easy situation to manage, but a scenario not unfamiliar to election officials across the nation.

Election officials are some of our nation’s greatest go-to resources for contingency planning and logistical challenges. They are leaders in thought and action when it comes to disaster preparedness and resilience of operations. Elections must always happen as scheduled, in spite of any hurdle, disruption, or disaster. New Jersey election officials in a post-Sandy environment certainly typify this statement.

If a state is going to supply its counties with necessary tools for today’s ever-evolving technology and security environments, they wanted to make their investment – paid for through the Help America Vote Act Election Security Funds – stretch as far as possible to include tools for disaster recovery, contingency planning, redundancy, and sandboxing for UOCAVA and other electronically returned ballots.

Thus, in addition to the Chromebook with its sandboxing environment, New Jersey’s Go Bags were later augmented to include a second Chromebook to serve as a redundant back-up, as well as a printer, a hot spot router, multiple power supplies, paper, and pens. These items were then fitted in secure, durable hard-shell cases for each local election office.

New Jersey’s aptly-termed “Go Bag” is an example of a statewide initiative to enhance contingency planning. Local election jurisdictions can be prepared for all types of unforeseen circumstances and emergencies that can negatively impact the administration of elections in their state.

New Jersey’s Go Bag is a portable election office, developed by the New Jersey Division of Elections team as a contingency plan and business process continuity tool. It contains the necessary supplies for local election officials in New Jersey’s 21 counties to conduct business from anywhere and meet multiple disaster scenarios.

In addition to its role in business continuity efforts, the Go Bag also serves as a stand-alone workstation. It enables the detection and mitigation of malware and other cybersecurity threats from email attachments and other electronic files received by local election officials.

Each Go Bag contains a dedicated, stand-alone, mobile Chromebook workstation with a “sandboxing environment,” for retrieval of electronic ballots, as New Jersey law permits military and overseas citizen ballots to be returned electronically. New Jersey typically requires a mailed ballot as well, but that requirement may be waived in a declared emergency. A sandbox is a separate, partitioned environment where electronic ballot attachments can be opened securely by election officials to isolate potential viruses or other malware prior to an email entering the local network or mail server. If threatening activity is detected, the email is flagged and the election officials is prevented from unknowingly opening the malicious content, thereby infecting their network. Thus, sandboxing provides New Jersey’s local election offices with a more protective environment where electronic ballot attachments and other balloting materials can be opened securely – and separately from their other systems potentially averting a major issue.  For reference, New Jersey’s sandboxing environment deployment is similar to the technology implementation in South Carolina as described in this OVI article.

It’s important to note that New Jersey’s local election duties are divided among multiple county offices. County clerks use the sandboxing solution to process military, overseas citizen, and vote-by-mail applications, while the county boards of election use them to safely open returned electronic ballots from voters authorized to cast electronic ballots. Therefore, the state purchased 51 sandboxing environments – and 51 Go Bags – for all the local election official offices across their 21 counties including county clerks, board of elections offices, and in the case of New Jersey’s larger counties, the county superintendents of elections /commissioners of registration.

New Jersey’s dual purpose “Go Bag” for each of its 21 counties equipped with two Chromebooks, a printer, a hot spot router, multiple power supplies, paper, and pens in a case.

New Jersey’s Go Bags are an effective tool for mitigating cybersecurity risks and enabling continuity of election operations in the face of unforeseen logistical challenges in any type of emergency. Thus, we’re sharing this implementation overview from New Jersey in the event it helps other states and local jurisdictions who are considering various election risk mitigation strategies. We also encourage state and local election officials to share their ideas or proven methods with us by emailing us at [email protected].

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How the Adoption of Secure Email Accounts and Sandboxing Techniques Strengthen the Electronic Ballot Return Process for South Carolina’s Military and Overseas Voters

Electronic Ballot Return Background

Military and overseas voters, and other U.S. citizens covered by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), face significant challenges when attempting to cast their ballot. Recent figures from the U.S. Department of Defense Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) indicate that since 2016, there is a 60-65 percentage point gap in voting participation between U.S. domestic and overseas voters, depending on the type of federal election (presidential or midterm) being administered. Approximately half of this gap can be attributed to obstacles preventing those who want to vote from doing so.

While electronic ballot return presents potential benefits and a unique opportunity to improve voting outcomes among UOCAVA voters, balance between critical security considerations and ballot access is necessary for success. This challenge is discussed in The Council of State Governments (CSG) Overseas Voting Initiative (OVI) 2021 paper, Electronic Ballot Return for Military and Overseas Voters: Considerations for Achieving Balance Between Security and Ballot Access.

In this digital age, many jurisdictions have considered the potential risks and benefits of electronic ballot return and have opted to allow for some method of electronic return for UOCAVA voters. Thirty-one states have authorized some form of electronic return for those voting outside the polling place.* *Only 22 of these states have allowed UOCAVA voters to return their ballot via electronic mail. To mitigate the security risks associated with emailing ballots, states and local election jurisdictions continually deploy measures to verify the integrity of a voted ballot and protect local networks from malware.

Two such risk mitigation measures are the application of sandboxing techniques and the use of .gov email domains by election officials. In the cybersecurity field, a sandbox is another term for an isolated environment on a network that allows the secure review of material potentially infected with malware without risking harm to the host device or network.

Electronic Ballot Return via Email in South Carolina

South Carolina is among the 22 states allowing email return of marked ballots. In 2015, the legislature adopted §7-15-690 allowing the South Carolina State Election Commission to, “take all steps and action as may be necessary” to ensure that citizens covered by UOCAVA have the opportunity to vote. This direction authorized the State Election Commission to allow for the electronic return of marked ballots by all UOCAVA voters.

In South Carolina, as in most states and local election jurisdictions, limited resources have made it difficult for local election officials to acquire and update cutting-edge digital tools that help protect against continually evolving cyber threats. Election officials facing both resource and time constraints often have resorted to using platforms such as Google Mail and Yahoo Mail to conduct election-related duties. These commercial platforms do not necessarily have heightened security protocols in place that allow emails containing ballots to be robustly screened for malware and subsequently quarantined.

Statewide Adoption of Sandboxing Techniques in South Carolina

By late 2018, in an effort to apply heightened security protocols across all local election offices in South Carolina while still being mindful of costs, former Executive Director for the South Carolina Election Commission Marci Andino and her team began collaborating with South Carolina’s State Data Center to set up secure email addresses to be used by all 46 county election offices. The resulting accounts were set up with .gov domains to help voters better identify local election officials and therefore, give the voters confidence in the election information provided.

The creation of these secure email accounts also posed unique security benefits for local election officials. Through the State Data Center, sandboxing techniques were integrated into the new accounts to provide officials with enhanced and continuous protection against malware. In essence, sandboxing provides account holders with a more secure environment where electronic ballot attachments can be opened securely to isolate potential viruses or other malware. This is done prior to an email entering the local network or mail server. If threatening activity is detected, the email is flagged and the account holder is prevented from unknowingly opening the malicious content, thereby infecting their network.

Beginning in January 2019, all counties in South Carolina were required to either adopt the state-issued email account or provide the State Election Commission with proof the county was using another secure system. Given the significant cost of instituting sandboxing techniques individually, most South Carolina local election offices opted to transition their communication with voters to the state supplied .gov accounts. Voter instructions and other supporting ballot materials were modified using these new email addresses.

Rollout Factors Leading to Success in South Carolina

According to Andino, the transition to .gov email addresses was initially met with reluctance from some local officials. That quickly passed when officials understood how easy and cost-effective these changes would be and how much this process would enhance the security of the electronic ballot delivery process. “Resistance to change is natural and rarely is there a perfect time to implement technology changes. Our job at the South Carolina Election Commission was to explain the value of the new technology and make the transition as easy as possible for the local election officials and their voters.” said Andino. “We did just that.”

In South Carolina, the State Election Commission plays an integral role in the conduct of elections at the local level. All local jurisdictions receive the technology infrastructure necessary to conduct an election from the State Election Commission. This structure has facilitated the adoption of secure .gov email accounts throughout the state. Uniform voter registration databases, voting systems and corresponding administrative procedures also have helped minimize the number and type of issues encountered at the local level. Furthermore, the authority of the State Election Commission has helped ensure all South Carolina local election offices, not just a select few, are using secure email accounts.

As of early 2022, the .gov email accounts have been used throughout South Carolina in hundreds of elections without issue. Through leveraging the State Data Center to create these accounts, local election officials in South Carolina have gained access to effective threat detection and mitigation safeguards that would otherwise be too costly for local jurisdictions to implement and troubleshoot.

When authorized by state statute, email remains the most popular electronic ballot return method used by UOCAVA voters. As technology evolves, the cyber threats to the email transmission of ballots increase. Enhanced security measures and risk mitigation strategies are warranted to ensure the secrecy and integrity of a voter’s ballot is preserved. CSG’s work with South Carolina and other states utilizing sandboxing techniques has uniquely positioned OVI to support states as they seek to implement similar solutions. Please reach out if OVI can assist in connecting your office with other states and local election offices who have successfully transitioned to secure email and sandboxing.

*Special acknowledgement to CSG OVI Working Group member and former Director of the South Carolina Election Commission, Marci Andino, for working with the OVI team on this piece, as well as to CSG team member, Rachel Wright.

**For the purposes of this article, forms of electronic ballot return include email, fax, and secure web portal.