Low Skill, High Impact Attacks that Could Derail Internet Voting

Local election administrator John Odum argues that large-scale internet voting will never earn the public trust needed for a credible election. He points to a 2024 survey in which only 36% of respondents had confidence in votes cast over the internet, and he contends that attacks aimed at confidence deserve as much attention as attacks that alter ballots.

He then walks through inexpensive options a moderately skilled adversary could use. These include defacing county election websites, publishing voter-history data to create false claims, phishing for content management system credentials, and distributing malicious voting apps or browser extensions. He also covers low-cost denial-of-service stressors that can take down a single county site and generate headlines. The most concerning case, in his view, is vote by phone. Using New Hampshire as an example, he estimates how many voters could be misdirected from purchased mobile contact lists, and he notes that a race decided by a tiny margin could be swung without changing any votes.

He closes by saying decentralization, usually seen as the strength of the American system, becomes an exposure when every jurisdiction runs its own online channel. The Q&A covered legislator education, the risk of a slippery slope toward wider online voting, and postage for absentee voters as an alternative. He presented the talk as a warning rather than a how-to, and offered no clear fix.