Should Washington voters worry about online voting?

Tuesday is the last day for voters in the King Conservation District to cast their ballots online. That includes more than a million voters in King County -- the largest election by smartphone in the entire country.

But since the election was announced, we had this little incident known as the Iowa caucuses that created more anxiety about voting and the Internet. Reporter Amy Radil spoke with KUOW’s Angela King about worried Washington state voters should be.

Amy Radil: They shouldn’t be worried because of Iowa. There they used an app to collect caucus counts. In Washington, people are voting at an online portal run by the county elections department. They're using their smart phone or computer to cast their ballot. But it's a different setup than in Iowa.

Angela King: So right now, voters in the King Conservation District are using an online portal. It's also being offered, though, to military and overseas voters in Pierce and Mason counties to cast ballots in the upcoming presidential primary. So are these efforts in the clear?

Radil: Cybersecurity experts were already raising big objections to this method of voting before Iowa happened. Jesse Rothstein co-founded the company Extra Hop here in Seattle. (Full disclosure, that company is a sponsor on KUOW.) He says these portals, for one thing, rely on publicly available information. Voters enter their name and date of birth and their signature. Rothstein says you could make it more secure by sending voters a code or something to log in with. But he and other experts are skeptical that these portals could be secured overall. You also have people voting with different kinds of smartphones. Some are more secure than others. But he's heard people make these arguments, like we bank online, why can't we vote online?

Here’s what he told me: “There actually is a great deal of banking fraud that the industry simply absorbs every year in order to conduct business. But I think any amount of voter or election fraud can potentially call into question the results of an election.”

King: What about the supporters of online voting? What do they make of these objections?

Radil: A major sponsor of these online efforts is a man named Bradley Tusk. He runs a venture capital fund that invests in startup companies facing political and regulatory challenges, as they put it. He has an organization called Tusk Philanthropies, and they paid for development of the online portal for the King Conservation District. Tusk says online elections are key to getting more voter participation. And he's trying to build a track record for these kinds of elections to get them used more widely. On the other side, we have Secretary of State Kim Wyman. She does not support these efforts because of security concerns. And right now, state law allows military and overseas voters to return ballots electronically. Wyman has proposed legislation to change that. She wants the state to use all paper ballots for the 2020 election cycle in particular.

King: So Wyman’s county partners don't agree with her. What's their position in Pierce County?

Radil: They're making online voting available to military and overseas voters in this presidential primary. So those voters will be able to enter their votes online. Pierce County Auditor Julie Anderson says this is a special population. Some of these military voters are in places where it would be very difficult to mail their ballots back. But she says if Secretary Wyman succeeds in getting the law changed, then they'll abide by that.