Submission to

The Joint Standing Committee Inquiry on Conduct of the 2016 Federal Election

“The potential application of new technology to voting, scrutiny and counting”

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adopted by more and more countries, especially as problems such as verifiability and auditability have been solved. Nevertheless, we don’t foresee that Internet voting will fully replace polling station voting in the near future.

3.2 Election Automation Maturity Model

After observing how elections are run in more than 70 countries and interacting with election commissions around the world, researchers at Electoralmaturity.org in cooperation with Smartmatic have developed the Election Automation Maturity Model. This model enables anyone to assess the benefits derived from varying levels of automation within an election.

Figure 3.2 Election Automation Maturity Model Some countries will advance from left to right and from the bottom up, as shown in Figure 3.2, following the curve. However, election commissions frequently take many steps at the same time.

Stage zero would be a purely manual election using no technology. Stage 1 is the minimum level of automation, where there is only automated monitoring of a manual election. The model proceeds all the way to Stage 8, where there is a combination of e-voting (using voting machines), I-voting (using the Internet), and the use of biometrics to authenticate voter eligibility and activate the voting session.

Date: October 27, 2016 The potential application of new technology to voting, scrutiny and counting Page 6 of 20 Version: 1.0 SMARTMATIC Confidential and Proprietary Information. All rights reserved. Unauthorized disclosure, copy or use is strictly prohibited. The further a country moves to the right in the election maturity model, the higher are the benefits, both for voters and election administrators.

Figure 3.3: Election Automation Benefits

3.3 Electronic (Polling Station) Voting Introduction of (offline) electronic voting machines in Australia will have a significant positive impact on resolving current issues of the paper based system without losing its advantages. One selects candidates on a purpose-built machine. Modern Voting Machines make it easier for voter and election administrations to handle complex ballots as used in Australia. Voter Verified Paper Ballots, printed by the equipment and placed in a ballot box, have become a global standard. It is a simple and easy to understand mechanism that helps to create the ultimate trust of any stakeholder, no matter how IT illiterate. Electronic Voting will have the following benefits:

Fast Results Official results (as opposed to preliminary ones based on quick counts or exit polls) can be obtained a few minutes after the polls close. A good example comes from the Figure 3.4: Electronic Voting Republic of the Philippines, where before automation it took 6 weeks to produce Machine official results, compared to less than 12 hours after the automated elections of 2010 (Alive et al. 2010).

Date: October 27, 2016 The potential application of new technology to voting, scrutiny and counting Page 7 of 20 Version: 1.0 SMARTMATIC Confidential and Proprietary Information. All rights reserved. Unauthorized disclosure, copy or use is strictly prohibited. Accuracy Computerized voting, counting, aggregating and tallying eliminate the introduction of errors that to a greater or lesser extent always affect results in a manual election. Studies of the University of California support this finding.

Accessibility and Turn-out The friendliness of the user interfaces—to which we are now accustomed via our phones and computers—can make voting more accessible. In automated elections, voters from all age groups consistently report that it is easier to vote electronically than with pen and paper. In addition, it has been widely demonstrated that it facilitates voting for those who are illiterate, because they can simply touch the face of their candidate or the color of their party with a finger. Voters with disabilities are lobbying governments for computer- based systems, because these systems allow them to vote and to do so unassisted, thanks to the use of audio voting and special controls that allow people with reduced motor skills to vote easily. So the technology would increase turn-out of people with disabilities, strengthening inclusivity and the democratic process.

Cost Reduction Even after taking into consideration the initial investment in technology, the cost per voter per election falls significantly. Smartmatic, the largest voting technology company in the world, has customers that have reduced the cost per voter per election by between 15 % and 50 %, through automating their elections.

Security The security of a paper-based, manual vote with a manual count is extremely low. Single copies of each vote make them easy to tamper with or destroy. Also, from voting to counting to final tally, and at every step in between, human error and tampering, not only with the votes, is easy and very common. The most vulnerable type of election is that which uses no technology at any stage. Well- designed, special-purpose systems eliminate the possibility of results tampering and eliminate fraud.

Privacy The sophistication of IT-based randomization algorithms guarantees that votes are never stored in sequence. This, combined with the accessibility features (see point on accessibility), creates the most robust privacy settings available, making sure each citizen’s vote is truly private and not susceptible to being influenced in any way.

Auditability One of the biggest issues with manual voting is that it leaves a very weak audit trail, with very little or no redundancy of data. A well-designed automated election, by contrast, produces multiple copies of every data point both in electronic and paper-based forms, creating a very rich audit trail that cannot be circumvented. This gives parties, election officials, candidates, accredited observers and even citizens the capability to verify that the results truly reflect the will of the voters. This is one of the strongest arguments in favor of good automated elections.

Integrity Modifying, misplacing or spoiling a paper ballot or election return is a common occurrence in manual elections. With a well-designed automated election system, the possibility of this happening is reduced to zero. Multiple digital and paper copies of each element are created, which ensures that data is never lost, modified or destroyed

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Australia has already gathered experience in Internet Voting for a limited group of the electorate on state level. Whilst the biggest implementation of Internet voting system in New South Wales, which was provided by one of our competitors, was criticized for exposed security vulnerability, it was widely considered a success. We believe that lessons can be learned from these experiences when further expanding Internet Voting.

3.4.1 Issues of Remote Voting Methods Unfortunately, current voting methods fall short in dealing with people who are unable to get to the polling station. Proxy, location and postal voting are the traditional de-facto methods for remote voting. However, those methods are inconvenient, insecure, lack privacy and do not guarantee that your vote is also being included in the election results.

The traditional remote voting methods exhibit a variety of shortcomings, which compromise the integrity of the electoral process. These are:

 Inaccurate, insecure and open for manipulation and coercion;  Inconvenient and hard to access for the voter. They require significant effort for the voter to effectively cast their ballot, having a negative influence on voter participation rates;  Time-consuming, not only in terms of distribution of the voting instruments, but also in return of the completed ballots;  Weak in terms of eligibility assurance and open to identity fraud and participation by ineligible voters;  Lacking in privacy, transparency and verifiability. Traditional methods offer no way for stakeholders to demonstrate that election protocols were followed, that fraud did not take place and the election proceeded freely and fairly.  Resource intensive, requiring significant logistical work and human resources.

3.4.2 Addressing Electoral Challenges Internet voting can effectively address shortcomings of traditional remote voting systems. Advantages of Electronic Polling Station Voting are in principle also applicable to Internet Voting. General public distrust in an online voting system have been recently addressed insofar as modern Internet Voting systems are now fully verifiable and auditable.

Date: October 27, 2016 The potential application of new technology to voting, scrutiny and counting Page 9 of 20 Version: 1.0 SMARTMATIC Confidential and Proprietary Information. All rights reserved. Unauthorized disclosure, copy or use is strictly prohibited. in the tally. tampering. Digital voter verification allows the voter to confirm the integrity and correctness of their cast vote.

Voters demand vote privacy. Our online voting system has been designed to ensure 100% voter privacy at every stage of the election process. At no stage can voter preferences ever be correlated with a voter’s identity.

Governments need Internet Voting is designed to support accessibility standards to better address the challenges of voters (including WAI/W3C) and to seamlessly integrate with accessibility with disabilities. peripherals (including screen readers/ audio-browsers and tactile devices) to embrace the requirements of voters with disabilities.

Traditional remote voting is difficult to audit Smartmatic’s Internet Voting is fully available for auditing by the – electoral transparency can be hard to electoral authorities or any approved third party authorities. prove. Internet Voting’s system components register all system transactions performed during the entire electoral process. System logs are cryptographically protected to ensure their integrity.

Traditional remote voting is expensive and Internet Voting offers a cost effective alternative to traditional resource intensive. remote voting methods. Internet Voting empowers Election Commissions to eliminate ballot (postal) printing, distribution and mail costs. Internet Voting delivers accurate, verifiable electronically tabulated election results straight after the close of the election. Count delays are eliminated and EMB’s are freed of the logistical constraints and human resource requirements, which exist in manual election counts.

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Smartmatic’s Election Projects

 Argentina (2006 and 2008) Electronic Voting pilots in two provinces  Brazil (2012 - 2016) Communication services for election returns transmission in 2012, 2014 and 2016. Testing services for over 500,000 electronic voting machines leading up to the 2012 elections.  Belgium (2012 and 2014) Externally audited electronic voting platform designed and built for all elections to take place in the country in the next 15 years.  Bulgaria (2014) Electronic Voting Pilots for the European Parliament Elections (May 25) and the General Parliament Elections (October 5)  Curacao (2007, 2008 and 2009) 3 island-wide elections.  Ecuador (2014) Binding pilot with about 1,000 voting machines.  Estonia (2004 – 2016) Nationwide Internet voting

 Italy (2017) Electronic voting for referendum in the province of Lombardy Figure A3: Obama voting  Mexico (2015 and 2016) Results consolidation on Smartmatic technology  Oman (December 2016) Nationwide automated voting  The Philippines (4 elections, three national, one regional in 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2008 respectively). For the 2016 General Elections, over 1.3 billion votes were cast on 100,000 vote counting machines, counted and tallied across an archipelago with over 7 thousand islands in with very challenging communications and logistical obstacles.  Sierra Leone, Bolivia, Zimbabwe, Haiti (2010 -2017) Nationwide biometric registration and/or authentication  Uganda (March 2016) Biometric Voter Verification Solution for the 2016 General Election  United States (2005-2008) Over 50 electoral events, in over 100 counties in 16 states plus the District of Columbia.  Venezuela (16 nationwide elections from 2004 to 2015). Over 120 million votes cast, counted and tallied and over 55 million voters biometrically identified/authenticated at polling places on Election Day in 4 elections since October 2012.

“After having monitored 92 elections in 38 countries, I can say that the [Smartmatic] voting system is the best the world…”

Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States, leader and founder of the Carter Center

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Although this level of security is astronomically high, it is not enough simply to provide mathematically perfect security. Why not? Because although it is true, people need to know it is true, and the mathematical explanation is just too technical for the general population to understand. It is for that reason that we created the citizens’ audit of paper trails: a simple, yet powerful method by which any concerned citizen can verify that the results of an election are indeed accurate and have not been tampered with.

The combination of perfect security with the awareness of that security created by the citizens’ audit is the reason why, after close to four billion votes cast and counted with our systems, and after multiple audits, including all citizens’ audits, we have never experienced a successful attempt to hack or tamper with our technology.

Moreover, despite thousands of ‘sore-loser’ candidates in many countries and well-funded movements trying to attack the election system for their own gain, not once has any election result ever been changed in any one of the elections conducted with Smartmatic systems, through which more than 50,000 public officers have been elected during the past 10 years, from hundreds of thousands of candidates.

Internet Voting Security & Transparency We believe that the absence of a comparable physical paper trail/ballot, which is understandable to any voter without any technical know-how whatsoever, and citizens’ audits is the main reason why Internet Voting hasn’t been implemented yet to a larger extent. Despite the fact that Internet Voting is far superior compared to traditional remote voting methods, not only from a security aspect and fact that modern systems have now become fully verifiable and auditable.

Observing Internet Voting Human observation plays large role in the trustworthiness of traditional paper-based voting methods. Internet voting is inherently unobservable by traditional means – it is impossible to determine the incorrect operation of a computer system solely by the observation of the procedure. Verifiable Internet voting schemes make it possible to assure the participants that the election has been performed correctly. Individually verifiable Internet voting schemes provide voters with tools to verify that their votes were cast as intended and correctly accepted by the voting system. Auditable voting schemes provide auditors with tools to verify that all accepted votes were tabulated correctly.

Auditing combined with individual verification by voters provides the observation functionality for Internet voting.

Voter Perspective Individually verifiable voting methods give means to a voter to verify that at least some of certain properties such as cast as intended, accepted as cast and tallied as recorded, hold on the vote cast by the voter.

An example of individually verifiable voting method was applied in Norway. This method takes advantage of two additional communication channels – pre-channel implemented by postal system and post-channel implemented by cell-phones. Before the election each voter receives a checklist of (candidate, return-code) pairs. Although the candidates are the same, return codes differ from voter to voter. Voter uses voting application to vote in the similar manner to Estonian Internet voting. After the vote has been received by the voting system, a SMS is sent to the voter with the return-code calculated from the encrypted vote. If the return-code is paired with the voter’s actual choice on the checklist, then the voter can be sure that the ballot was indeed accepted by the server and the voter’s choice was correctly encoded. If malicious software has modified the voter’s choice, the return-code shall indicate a different candidate and voter discovers the violation of his rights.

Date: October 27, 2016 The potential application of new technology to voting, scrutiny and counting Page 16 of 20 Version: 1.0 SMARTMATIC Confidential and Proprietary Information. All rights reserved. Unauthorized disclosure, copy or use is strictly prohibited. A more accessible way of individual verifiability is used in Estonia. Voters have access to smart- phone application that can be used to verify that the vote cast with the voting application was accepted as cast by the internet voting system and cast as intended by the voting application. A cryptographic receipt is displayed by the voting application in the form of QR code. The camera of smartphone is used to capture the receipt and the verification application can make an educated guess about the vote contents without actually decrypting the vote. This way voter can be sure that there was no manipulation of her vote inside her or his computer. The usage of the vote verification application is optional and does not require any materials distributed over the postal channel.

State of the art voting systems provide voters with tools of individual verifiability. Different approaches to verifiability have different cost, accessibility and level of assurance.

Public Perspective Auditable voting methods give the means to observers to verify that the voting result was tabulated correctly according to the contents of the ballot box. Together with cryptographic techniques to ensure that the ballot-secrecy is maintained, the auditability can give higher transparency than current traditional voting methods.

In state of the art voting systems all components that handle votes directly are capable of generating proofs for auditing. These proofs are based on cryptographic protocols and give high assurance that the election has not been tampered with. The auditor can use the data provided by the election system and published protocols / open source auditing tools. Without breaking the ballot secrecy auditor can answer the question whether the votes stored in the voting system were handled correctly or not.

Auditors can audit the following aspects of the election:

 All votes were digitally signed and the signatures verified correctly;  All stored votes were correctly sent to tabulation;  All encrypted votes were correctly decrypted in the tabulation.

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In May 2016 the country used an electronic voting system for the third consecutive time with a record turn-out of 82% - the ultimate reflection of the voter’s trust in their electoral system.

Besides the logistical challenges, The Philippines election officials have to address a particular challenge with large areas of the country not being under full security control of the government (Abu Sayyaf). Despite all these challenges the automated voting system delivered the expected results of accepted election outcome and political stability post- Election Day.

Venezuela

The Venezuelan example shows in an impressive manner how an electronic voting system can bring some sort of stability even in countries with a divided society and a widespread mistrust in the government and its independent institutions.

Technology is one of the most efficient and disruptive ways of overcoming corruption and human intervention. Venezuela ranks on place 161 of 174 in Transparency International’s corruption perception index. The fully automated, auditable voting system in the country guarantees however that the voting process is immune to any kind of manipulation through the people involved in the process. International organizations such as the Carter Centre8, European Union9, IDEA10 and many others11 have attested to the immunity against fraud of the voting process itself.

Despite its deep political divisions, the society and losing candidates have continuously accepted the outcome of past elections. Even the contentious political parties have full trust in the electronic voting system and published election results, despite frequently extremely close election results. Some impressive examples:

On 6 December 2015, the opposition won a two third “supermajority” by one seat margin. Only 85 votes made the difference in the constituency that the election commission announced last. Sitting president Maduro immediately recognized the results12. IDEA had said that ”if the strength of the Venezuelan electoral process lies in the automated voting and vote-counting system its greatest weakness lies in the lack of fairness of the conditions surrounding the electoral contest”13

8) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Dmt2 QioI 9) http://www.eods.eu/library/FR%20VENEZUELA%202005 en.pdf 10) http://www.idea.int/americas/upload/Presentacion-Informe-IDEA-UCAB-English.ppt, Slide 13 11) http://www.smartmatic.com/testimonials/ 12) http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/07/americas/venezuela-oelections/201 13) http://www.idea.int/americas/upload/Presentacion-Informe-IDEA-UCAB-English.ppt, Slide 13

Date: October 27, 2016 The potential application of new technology to voting, scrutiny and counting Page 19 of 20 Version: 1.0 SMARTMATIC Confidential and Proprietary Information. All rights reserved. Unauthorized disclosure, copy or use is strictly prohibited. In 2013 the opposition lost the first presidential election after Chavez’s death 49.1% vs. 50.6%. The losing candidate initially didn’t accept the outcome and demanded a 100% re-count of the Paper Audit trails, which later confirmed the electronic results and prompted the opposition to accept their narrow defeat.

In 2007 Hugo Chavez proposed constitutional changes, which would give him more powers. In the required referendum he lost by 49.35% vs. 50.65%. The New York Times wrote: “…. Almost immediately after the results were broadcast on state television, Mr. Chávez conceded defeat, describing the results as a “photo finish.” “I congratulate my adversaries for this victory,” he said. “For now, we could not do it.” Opposition leaders were ecstatic. “Tonight, Venezuela has won,” said Manuel Rosales ….”14

After using initially “only” electronic voting machines and electronic results transmission, Venezuela added in 2013 biometric voter authentication. As the election commission had no biometric data from its voters it started to enrich its database with biometric information from other sources such as passports. Only 60% of the voters had a fingerprint record in the system prior to the election. On Election Day voters with record would be biometrically authenticated. Voters without record would be biometrically registered on Election Day and today the biometric database is close to 100%.

The automated election system has earned praises from international observer missions such as the European Union, IDEA, Carter Centre, Organization of American States etc.

Estonia

The Estonian I-voting solution is the longest standing; most technologically advanced, and highly trusted Internet voting solution in existence. It has been used to support every binding, governmental election held since 2005. Such is the level of public trust in the system that during the last two elections, 31% of the participating voters chose to cast their ballot online. The 176,328 I-voters who used the system in the last elections, Parliament 2015, represent an increase of 25% since the Parliamentary elections in 2011.

14) http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/world/americas/03venezuela.html? r=0

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