

From a new post at Swissinfo, a news outlet produced by the Swiss public broadcasting association:

A second error in the Swiss Post planned e-voting system has been discovered as the public intrusion test phase comes to an end. The Federal Chancellery announced the need for action and confirmed a review of the e-voting certification and approval process.

The same computer experts who discovered a critical error in the source code of Swiss Post’s new e-voting system earlier this month announced they discovered a further security gap. It was identified as part of the public intrusion test that has been running since February 25, during which the e-voting source code was released.

The bug affects universal verifiability – the same area of the system as the first error. However, in this case the error would not make it possible for arbitrary manipulation of any possible votes to go unnoticed, according to the Federal Chancellery. That said, votes could be made invalid without being discovered by the mathematical evidence.

Read the full article at Swissinfo and leave your comments below. Even though the technology may be impressive, regular Democracy Chronicles readers might be sceptical. Using voting machines in any way is questionable in regard to security and can have a negative impact in voter confidence in election outcomes. Paper ballots are just more secure by nature and all computers have vulnerabilities. Be sure to also check out the Democracy Chronicles Election Technology section and our articles on Technology Dissidents, the Internet and Democracy or Voting Machines.