John,

BREAKING: The Senate Committee on Armed Services has scrapped the portion of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would have promoted and funded dangerously insecure online voting for military and overseas voters.

The House of Representatives’ version of the NDAA included two well-intentioned, but extremely ill-considered funding streams that would have promoted and funded online voting for military and overseas voters. According to research from numerous federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland security, computer scientists, and national security experts, online voting remains unacceptably insecure and leaves voters’ personal data and vote preferences vulnerable to hacking.

FSFP worked with our contacts in Congress and our allies at Protect Democracy, Common Cause, U.S Vote Foundation, and Verified Voting to send a coalition letter to the Senate Committee on Armed Services in October. We urged the Senate to omit sections of the NDAA, as passed in the House of Representatives, that would fund online voting for absent uniformed service and overseas voters. 

We offered lawmakers other policy options to improve the voting process for service members overseas that don’t require us to resort to online voting. These include automatic voter registration for eligible members of the military, automatic mailing of ballots to registered military, expedited ballot return, enhanced ballot tracking, and extended deadlines for the return of military ballots.

The Senate Committee on Armed Services has acted in the best interest of our voters in the military and the integrity of our electoral system. Our service members deserve the highest standard of safe and verifiable voting. For the foreseeable future, internet voting cannot meet that standard and places military voters' votes — and the trustworthiness of elections themselves — at risk.

In solidarity,

Susan Greenhalgh
Senior Advisor on Election Security, Free Speech For People