Digitizing NSW elections will be "easy": Dominero

2021-11-25 07:05:05 By : Mr. Steven Xiao

The New South Wales government will consider digitizing state elections, and its Minister of Digital Victor Dominello described the switch to online voting as “easy” despite the warnings from experts and the state’s electoral authority said there is a lack of funds to solve “emergency” cyber issues. risk.

At the digital.nsw event on Tuesday, Mr. Dominello stated that it is “crazy” for citizens to vote in person, and compared the simplicity and convenience of online voting and digital identity verification methods with digital gambling.

"I thought that in a country that was fascinated by Mount Everest [horse racing] and the Melbourne Cup-you could literally go up, place a bet, and within a few microseconds of the horse crossing that line, you would get Scores-we can do something similar for elections instead of waiting weeks, weeks, and weeks to make a decision sometimes," he said.

Mr. Dominero has led a comprehensive reform of the state's digital service delivery and government information technology, including the popular New South Wales service phone application, which provides integrated COIVD-19 registration and digital driving license functions.

The state is now working to roll out digital credentials and identification more widely, which it says will reduce the regulatory burden and improve citizens’ access to services.

Mr. Dominero said that digitizing state elections is something he will "consider", marking online voting and digital voting recording systems as in-person voting.

"Every time I ask a colleague this question, I just shake my head. I don't know why we don't do this."

In the 2015 New South Wales elections, more than 280,000 ballots were obtained through computers or telephones. This is the largest binding election ever using online voting. But security researchers quickly discovered a serious loophole in the state's iVote system, and they discovered that the system could be used to manipulate votes.

The researchers said that there is no evidence that the system has been compromised, but the loophole highlights the risk of digital voting. They pointed out that certain seats are decided by less than the number of online votes. In 2017 and 2019, the iVote system also had similar security issues, and the New South Wales government promised to open the iVote source code to the public.

Cybersecurity researcher Vanessa Teague discovered several flaws in the iVote system. She said that the system should be cancelled and that digitizing elections is no easy task, especially for online voting.

"The risk of Internet voting is not only that it may crash and have obvious problems. The real risk is that it may appear to be okay, but it is actually vulnerable to undetectable fraud," Dr. Teague told InnovationAus.

"Every time iVote runs, it has been proven to have serious security vulnerabilities. Many of these are directly related to undetectable fraud opportunities.

"You may come to the final stage of the election, everything seems to be fine, but in fact you don't have any evidence that the results accurately reflect the people's choices."

Before the local government elections in New South Wales, which will use iVote next month, the state's electoral authorities warned that it would need $22 million to address an "emergency" cybersecurity risk. However, the government did not provide funding, and the government stated that it is cooperating with the New South Wales State Electoral Commission on the business case for this funding.

On Tuesday, Mr. Dominero downplayed the risk of fraud in digital elections, saying that he believed the government could build trust in the digital voting system, and the requirement to vote in person made him “crazy”.

"This is a cultural issue. It's crazy," Mr. Dominero said. "In a world where I haven't really brought a wallet for three years or more, this is crazy. Because we digitally process the driver's license, you don't need to do this anymore.

"So, when it comes to votes, it's like entering a parallel universe."

Mr. Dominero stated that elections in New South Wales are "absolutely" digitized. "I don't know why we didn't do it, because you can do it. It's so easy."

Do you know more? Contact James Riley via email.

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