“It’s unsafe and unsecure,” said C.Jay Coles of Verified Voting, an organization that focuses on election technology. “It could be a completely different ballot that shows up at the election office, marked completely differently than the voter intended. It’s not far off to think that could happen.”

But supporters of electronic voting say military members need a better way to participate in elections in order to avoid delays by the U.S. Postal Service. Georgia law requires ballots from military and overseas voters to be received at election offices within three days after Election Day; all other absentee voters must get their ballots in before polls close.

Sarah Streyder, who lives in England with her husband in the U.S. Space Force, used electronic voting to return her ballot to Washington state last year.

“You never know when mail delivery delays will happen. It’s not the voter’s fault,” said Streyder, executive director of Secure Families Initiative, an organization dedicated to civic engagement for military families. “For those of us who feel confident in the security of it, I want it to be a choice.”

Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia already allow electronic ballot return for some voters, typically those in the military, living overseas or with disabilities, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In Georgia, voters living overseas can receive blank ballots through the internet, but then they must print out ballots and return them through the mail.

Election directors want lawmakers to consider the potential benefits of electronic voting, said Travis Doss, president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials.

“We would like to start the conversation as a way to assist our overseas military and citizens,” Doss said. “I am concerned about security, but I think in this world of technology, there should be a way to do this.”

Doss, the election director in Richmond County, said he mailed a voter in England a ballot in late September, but postal delays kept it from being returned until over a week past Election Day. That ballot wasn’t counted.

Internet security experts say there’s no way with current technology to mitigate the danger of votes being changed while ballots are transmitted electronically.

A 2020 report by four federal agencies, including the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, categorized electronic voting as a “high risk” for voter confidentiality and integrity.

Unlike online banking, electronic votes can’t be verified because voters have a right to a secret ballot, and ballots can’t be linked to the person who cast them, said Susan Greenhalgh, senior adviser for election security for the group Free Speech for People.

“The problem is that as soon as a ballot is transmitted over the internet, it’s vulnerable,” Greenhalgh said. “Just because other states are doing it doesn’t mean it’s secure, reliable or trustworthy.”

During last fall’s election, there were 17,511 ballots cast by military and overseas voters in Georgia, about 0.3% of all votes, according to the secretary of state’s office. Election officials rejected 976 overseas ballots, most of them because they were returned too late to be counted.

The rejection rate for military and overseas voters — about 5.3% — was higher than the 1.4% rejection rate for all absentee voters.

An internet voting bill hasn’t yet been introduced at the General Assembly. The proposal could be considered during this year’s legislative session, which started Monday and lasts until early April.

Georgia election directors’ legislative priorities

Source: Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials