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On Oct. 30, Florida Secretary of State Sandra Mortham and Division of Elections Director David Rancourt announced that in 1998, registered Florida voters living overseas will be allowed to vote over the Internet. Because of the precedent this will set, The Hotline spoke with Paul Craft, the Florida computer auditor in Rancourt's office who will oversee this effort. A partial transcript follows:

Hotline: What are the technical issues?

Craft: The issue is how to do a secure transaction on the Internet where the identity of the voter is verifiable and yet where the identity of the person casting the ballot cannot be determined at the point where the ballots are de-encrypted and tabulated. So the secrecy of the voter's ballot is maintained while the validity of a voter's vote can be readily determined. And that is a difficult issue. We have about four different schemes that we are looking at for doing this with different pros and cons.

Hotline: Can you briefly touch on those "schemes"?

Craft: One of them would be by email. Our favorite at the moment is a scheme that would allow a voter to come in through the Internet to a server in a given county and basically log in with an ID and password; establish a secure session with that server and vote basically from any computer anywhere that was hooked up to the Internet. This would allow you to walk into any public library that offers access to the Internet and sit down at a terminal and cast your vote. Security-wise that has more problems that are going to have to be solved before that becomes a reality. The really easy way to do it for overseas absentee ballots would be to establish secured sites on bases where you could put a secure router at that end, a secure router at this end and have a secure pipeline which is almost like having an in-house network. That would be fairly easy to do, but it wouldn't allow the flexibility for voters as would our favorite scheme. . . . We're at the point where we've decided to do this if it's possible. . . . We are not going to offer Internet voting if we can't establish security and accountability.

Hotline: What is your timetable?

Craft: We're going to speak to the counties in January, but the plan is to do it with a limited number of counties on a pilot project basis . . . for 1998. And the counties that would be involved would have to have their own Internet server and the technical staffing to feel comfortable with the decision to go forward with this and to understand what they were getting into. And there are, to my understanding, six or seven counties that are interested.

Hotline: What do you see as obstacles to making this valid? Do you feel you will have any problems convincing people to feel this is a safe, secure option for them?

Craft: That is one of the prerequisites to doing it. . . . You've got to sell it to both the people who are going to vote on it and the people whose races will depend on it for the outcome. If you can't explain it in such a way that you get public confidence, then you're probably not going to be able to sell it and it probably will not become reality. The whole voting system, I think, depends on public perception, and you've got to have the real security in the system, but you've also got to have the perception of that security. Otherwise, it doesn't really matter. . . . Now surprisingly, we've had almost no criticism of the concept. I was really anticipating when we announced it . . . that we were going to get a negative reaction from a number of people--that certainly we were going to get some phone calls from people asking us if we were nuts--perhaps some editorial criticism. But everyone has been very positive. All the phone calls have been people wanting to know how we're going to do it, and can they help and can they get involved and can their state do it and when can we vote on the Internet. So the reception to the concept has been just amazingly positive.

Hotline: So apparently there has not been any criticism from people who say Internet voting benefits turnout for some groups more than it does for others?

Craft: We have not had that complaint, but that has been one of our considerations at arriving at our favorite methodology. The methodology that we would like to see--if we can pull the software development together . . . would be a system that would let anyone vote on the Internet. You would go to your county supervisor of elections, let them know that you'd like to qualify for Internet voting. ... They would set an account up for you and then you could go to any computer [connected to] the Web and vote from there. . . . In Florida, I believe, you can pretty much go into any library and use the Internet for free.

Hotline: Have you met any resistance from candidates or anyone in office at this time?

Craft: We have not received any of that criticism. ... So far, in the comments that we've received and the comments that have appeared in the media, that has not been brought up.

Hotline: What is the timetable for getting the entire state ready for this?

Craft: I would like to think that if we have a successful pilot project in the fall of 1998 then I think the industry will be out there rallying very quickly to adopt the technology and market the systems. With success in 1998, this would be available to any county that wanted it in 2000.