It is election season in Seattle. There’s a ballot due by mail or drop box on February 14th. There will be another election in April.
And, then there is the electronic ballot process to elect a candidate for a seat on the King Conservation District board of supervisors.
The “voting portal” has opened.
You have until February 14th to vote in the race to elect Seat #3 on the board that leads the natural resources assistance agency created “to promote the sustainable use of natural resources through responsible stewardship.” It covers most of the county including Seattle.
The county moved the conservation district election online in 2020 in a process supported by a private service. Funded by the Department of Defense and selected for the Department of Homeland Security Executive Committee for Critical Voting Infrastructure, privately held Democracy Live says it is “the largest provider of cloud and tablet-based voting technologies in the U.S.”
You have until February 14th to cast your vote at kingcd.org.
And this is legal because Homeland Security says it’s o.k.? I missed news of the earlier elections. Maybe the flyers looked like junk mail.
Apart from dubious claims of cloud security, maybe we don’t need any online- only election, especially for an election that could easily be done in November.
Totally agree, and I won’t be participating. Cloud security has not advanced anywhere near the point where online voting is safe. (I realize this is a low-stakes election but it still sets a terrifying precedent.) Put this idea on the shelf for another 50 years or so, when major breaches hopefully won’t be a near-daily occurrence like they are now.
They look a lot like political flyers so it makes sense you may have missed it. Totally agree that this is a bad idea and we should lump this in with other regular elections. This looks like a local tech company may have greased the wheels of local government to get federal money for them to experiment on our democratic process. I don’t recall their being a vote on the decision to go online, like there was for the ranked-choice voting experiment we will be undergoing in Seattle, that seems like the correct approach to this big of a structural change to the voting process.
I do hope my scribble of a signature passes muster.
The comments below only keep this election in the dark. Whether the reason for not participating is iCloud security, homeland security, or that the mailer didn’t look as it should, the fact of the matter is without a change to the RCW, please contact your elected leaders, if you feel this passionate about it, this is where the election will remain. I’m also taken aback that it is a privilege to decide when you’re not going to vote as opposed to those of us who come from a history of not having been able to vote. I am a candidate in this election, but I am also a Precinct Committee Officer and my job is to keep neighbors engaged about issues and elections. I take this very seriously and I can only hope that others will see their right to vote as something the MUST carry out.