FSFP Senior Advisor On Election Security Susan Greenhalgh recently issued a statement on the Election Assistance Commision’s press release disavowing false claims made by online voting system vendors.

Read the statement below.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) took an extraordinary step yesterday to push back on the false claims and deceptive marketing practices advanced by voting system vendors by issuing a press release to disavow any implicit claims that online voting systems have been federally certified. 

The brazenly dishonest effort to claim these systems were federally certified was not new or unique. For years the vendors of online voting systems have pushed their products and the expansion of online voting with unchecked fiction, subject to zero oversight or accountability. In turn, States have passed legislation and adopted policies for dangerously insecure online voting based on lies. 

This statement is welcome but it’s too little, too late as 32 States across the nation allow online voting for some voters with more than 200,000 ballots expected to be cast online in the 2020 presidential election. Online voting has flourished even though computer security experts and the National Institute of Standards and Technology have long warned online voting can’t be done securely. A few months ago, the Department of Homeland Security, FBI and EAC concurred in a risk-assessment sent to election officials but some officials continue to disregard the federal security agencies and cyber experts in favor of the vendors’ claims. This week West Virginia’s Secretary of State testified before Congress that lawmakers should mandate online voting for all military voters. The spurious claims of the vendors continue to influence policy.

Our elections remain a target of our foreign adversaries and online voting constitutes an incredibly vulnerable segment of our election system under this pronounced threat. It’s long overdue for Congress and State Attorneys General to hold the vendors accountable and take action to prevent and punish them for potentially illegal false claims and deceptive marketing which undermine the security of elections and our democracy. For these reasons Free Speech For People has asked Congress and several State Attorneys General to investigate Democracy Live and Voatz for potentially illegal false claims and deceptive marking. 

Read the letters here. 

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