Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), a leading voice in the chamber on cybersecurity, issued a letter to Defense Secretary Mark Esper and General Paul Nakasone, the head of the NSA and USCYBER, asking the Defense Department to audit Voatz, the mobile-voting app that’s been used to collect ballots from deployed military members from a growing number of states since last year. He is “very concerned” that Voatz’s developers have not sufficiently protected the app against threats of hacking from foreign adversaries.
Developed by a Massachusetts software firm specializing in blockchain encryption, Voatz was first used to cast ballots in public elections last year, when 144 overseas West Virginians used it. Since then, it has also been tested by the City of Denver; Utah County, Utah; and two counties in Wyden’s home state. But the use of a mobile app to collect votes has been heavily criticized by election-security advocates, who say no piece of software can match the reliability and auditability of paper ballots.