SEATTLE—With just two weeks to go until the November 5 General Elections, some Washington voters are beginning to challenge the validity of overseas ballots and the online voting portal used in Washington state, Democracy Live’s OmniBallot.
Democracy Live’s OmniBallot is a web-based elections portal designed to allow remote, overseas, deployed military, or disabled voters an accessible solution to voting. It has been deployed in thousands of U.S. elections and even the U.S. military for a few years. Since 2008, OmniBallot has served over 20 million users in over 5,000 elections, its website states.
On Sunday, October 20, a X user posted a video showing how easy it was to create and print an official ballot in King County, where she lives, for a fake voter. That video has since gained roughly 160 thousand views in just one day.
In the video, user EricaPNW first tries to type in a fake name to the Democracy Live OmniBallot portal but was told there was no voter registered in its database. She then searches for a ballot by address, giving the address of a known homeless services center located in Seattle.
After entering the address, the X user was then asked to give her name to which she, again, put in the name of a fake voter. She was then asked if she was an overseas voter or service member, she clicked no, made her voting selections—e.g. initiatives, president, governor, etc.—and generated an official filled in ballot using a fake voter’s name and a random address.
King County Elections Chief of Staff Kendall Hodson informed the Lynnwood Times that just because a voter can generate and print a ballot, doesn’t mean it will be counted.
“Whether you put in a real person’s name, or a fake person’s name, the first thing our team does is find out whether that’s a registered, eligible voter, and whether or not that person has already returned a ballot,” King County Elections Chief of Staff Kendall Hodson told the Lynnwood Times. “If they are a registered voter and have not already returned a ballot what will also happen is we have the signature verified. Every single ballot, whether online or mail, will have an actual human being look at the signature and compare it to the one we have on file for that voter in their voter registration record.”
If anything looks out of the ordinary, Hodson added, then the voter is sent a letter stating the ballot will not be counted until the issue has been resolved.
To assure voters don’t vote more than once, the system at the King County Elections center in Renton is set up to not accept duplicate ballots.
King County elections has partnered with Democracy Live for a number of years, Hodson told the Lynnwood Times, to offer voters on election day a replacement ballot if they are unable to get into a voting center, or to provide a ballot for those who have unreliable mail service, or have a disability.
“[Democracy Live] is really important to a lot of our voters, and it’s been used for many years,” added Hodson.
EricaPNW was not the first social media user to criticize the state’s electronic voting system and the ease of generating an official ballot using a fake voter name.
In November of 2022 a Facebook page under the title Wake Up Wa State—whose posts historically lean conservative—posted a similar video of an unidentified man filling out a digital ballot. The video alleged he was able to cast the vote after the ballot was generating but USA Today fact checked that to be false and the video has since been removed from Facebook for spreading “false information.”
USA Today’s November 8, 2022, fact check, confirmed that one could indeed generate an official ballot to be printed and carried into a voting center, but the website did not allow a user to digitally submit said ballot. Upon being delivered to a voting center, the ballot undergoes a strict verification process similar to what Hodson explained.
According to WAC 424-235-020, regarding voter registration in Washington State, a service or overseas voter does not have to be registered in order to request a ballot and may request a ballot and register after the registration deadlines highlighted in RCW 29A.08.140 have passed.
Since September, Republicans groups have filed lawsuits in the swing states of Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania (all states that have similar overseas voting laws) that challenge the validity of overseas ballots mailed in by U.S. citizens living abroad or members of the military, NPR reported on Sunday.
These groups, made up by Republican members of the House of Representatives who also voted against certifying the state’s electoral votes in 2020, argued in court against the swing states’ laws allowing overseas voters to register without providing identification documents.
In the case an overseas voter decides to register to vote and opts out of providing identification, under these laws, they will be issued a unique ID number and the decision to count their ballot will then fall to the state, upon determining if the information provided is sufficient.
U.S. voters living overseas who are in active duty military have the right to vote under the 1986 The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.
The Federal Voter Assistance Program and the Association of Americans Resident Overseas estimate there are anywhere from 4.4 million and 5.3 million American citizens living overseas.
On the other hand, and separate to overseas voting concerns, there has been concerns raised about Democracy Live’s vulnerability to hackers, however.
A security analyses conducted by Michael A. Specter and Alex Halderman, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2020, found that Democracy Live’s OmniBallot could potentially be subject to voter manipulation by malware on the voter’s device.
In that analysis, the two reverse-engineered the client-side portion of OmniBallot to detail its operation and analyze its security. They also found that OmniBallot in 2020 appeared to have no privacy policy despite receiving sensitive information including the voter’s identity, ballot selections, and browser fingerprints that could be used for targeted political ads or misinformation campaigns.
Lastly the analysis concluded that OmniBallots electronic voting was vulnerable to attackers who could potentially alter voters’ decisions without detection.
On October 15, Matt Hawkins who is running for State Auditor as a Republican, also criticized OmniBallot stating:
“In our 2024 Primary election, we learned about the use of the Omni Ballot App to cure ballot signatures in at least King County. By the time the primary was over, 2,000+ ballot signatures were cured using Omni Ballot. Sue Kuehl Pederson fell into third position by 52 ballots, forcing a recount. The use of this App was not only wrong, but it may have been illegal, and it infringed on the rights of the voters of Washington State. Left unchecked, this single App has the potential of undermining the votes in the upcoming General Election for ALL of Washington voters.”
According to the Democracy Live website, as of 2024, “OmniBallot has been tested by the University of Washington and Colorado-based BlindIT to meet WCAG 2.2 accessibility standards.”
The company attests that OmniBallot is secure and has independently been tested by a pool of 1,500 cybersecurity researchers. The portal is monitored 24/7, has Full SOC 2 Type II and Full ISO 27001 certifications, is a federally-approved by an independent test lab (SLI) to meet Best Practices for elections technologies, and is certified by every State that requires certification for electronic ballot transmission.
Author: Kienan Briscoe
5 Responses
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the video showing how remarkably easy it was for people to falsify a vote and this really appears to be a fraudulent voting system and should be shut down. Analysis was done to show that it was open to hackers. And to hear that somehow they just don’t let fraudulent votes through wins no confidence from me whatsoever.
WHAT A CROCK OF CRAP!!! They need to be SHUT DOWN!!!
I’m not seeing a concern. Ballots are printed in bulk by printing companies and are delivered in any number of ways. Printing or picking up a replacement ballot is easy, but has nothing to do with verification. Anyone can request another ballot and could take it to a print shop and run hundreds. This has always been possible and the security has always accounted for this. The controls are in the backend when the ballot is received by the county, then printed, and sent through the verification process, just like any mailed in ballot.
How the ballot gets delivered is meaningless and not a problem. This is only a sensational headline during a highly charged time.
To add a bit more…
The voting systems are extremely tested, controlled, and certified. The risk of altering the vote, or the ‘hack’ is not at the system level, it is taking place at the voter level. The hack is happening with the uncontrolled information that voters are receiving to determine how to vote. There is no accountability or verification of the information distributed by un-authenticated presenters.
If you want to see more, watch this documentary: The Great Hack
https://www.netflix.com/us/title/80117542?s=i&trkid=258593161&vlang=en
In addition, EricaPNW is not just a social media user but ONLY spreads questionable info on election integrity.
Of course, lynnwood times would not address that. This entire article is just more of the same political garbage.
Verification works and there is no reason to doubt Washington state election integrity.
In a state where 30% of covid relief funds were misappropriated under fradulent identities, it is easy to say everything is secure… State needs to work extra hard to provide data that what happened in last election for these types of ballots. how many were posted, how many got rejected etc. How many people were prosecuted for fradulent voting? State needs to be strict on these to maintain confidence.