Some left the service. When they got online to vote, that's the only ballot they could get. All the ballots, in encrypted form, were returned by Monday night, she said. If online voting were commonplace, we might already have known the answer in Florida, said Jonathan Zittrain, head of Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. But he noted the potential for serious changes in the national political dialogue as a result.
Security is also of paramount concern.
The possibility of a 'hacktivist' altering the vote count, particularly in a close race like this one, concerns those looking at online voting. Nobody thought it would be this close. While she said she would be surprised if there were any problem with the online votes in Florida, she cited significant security hurdles to making an online vote work on a larger scale. The home PC would have to be made more secure, and users would have to know how to install what could be complicated software. We couldn't use standard browsers, and we would need a way to authenticate users, like passwords or encryption keys.