Insane?

BoingBoing reports on an “Insane plan to let military to vote using insecure email.” The plan affects military personnel from Missouri. Quoting an anonymous contributor:

Increasing voter turnout is always a good idea, but this is a dangerous way to go about it. E-mail is not secure. E-mail is not reliably from the person named on the “from” line. E-mail is subject to all kinds of tampering. Every week we learn about new ways to hack into computers, and spammers know all sorts of tricks for forging e-mail headers. A common Internet worm trick is to send emails from hacked computers, or to pretend to send emails from other computers.
An e-voting system like this is an invitation for fraud, and sure to be a point of contention when the votes are counted. With this election so close and Missouri one of the major swing states, Missouri is setting itself up to be this election’s Florida: the laughing stock of the nation.

If this were a matter of military personnel e-mailing votes from their Hotmail accounts to someone, I’d be inclined to agree, on the face of it. It’s remarkable both the contentiousness and seriousness of the debate over electronic voting systems, most of it driven by (a) the nagging feeling that their should be a way to do it electronically while maintaining a high degree of security and privacy, (b) the role that close races held in the 2000 presidential election and thus the margin of error that various voting methods provide, and (c) a convergence of technological geekiness and political vitriol.

Given that a huge percentage of military absentee ballots end up not getting counted because of snail-mail issues, doing something to make the voting process faster and more efficient for folks stationed overseas and in combat zones seems critical. Other proposals have been criticized for potential security issues. But the Missouri plan as described is not quite the debacle being charged (bolds mine).

Secretary of State Matt Blunt today announced that Missourians serving in designated combat locations overseas will have the option of having their ballots scanned and e-mailed to the United States Department of Defense (USDoD) who will in turn fax them to the military voter’s local election official.
In June, Blunt announced that Missouri voters serving in designated combat locations could fax their ballots directly to their local election officials if they wished. Blunt sought this change to state law in a comprehensive election reform bill he supported through the General Assembly in 2002. Missouri State Representative and Missouri National Guard Combat Engineer Jim Avery told Blunt’s office that while few units overseas had access to fax machines, most had access to computer equipment that could scan a paper ballot and enable the soldier to e-mail it back to the United States.
Blunt sought clarification from the USDoD and was informed by leaders in the department that the ballots would be transmitted over secure military lines and faxed directly to Missouri’s local election officials.

So, if I read this properly, the actual controlled forms, which are presumably serialized or otherwise identifiable in some fashion, are being scanned, those scans being send by internal, secure, military e-mail, and then faxed (as is legal) to the local election officials.

While I suppose that fraud could take place in such a system, as described it’s not substantially more likely than in normal paper absentee balloting. If the data is being transmitted over internal military circuits, that provides a high level of security. If the forms themselves are verifiable (“Absentee Ballot #9462345”), then duplicating votes is unlikely, and sending in a form by someone other than the voter is no less likely than with current absentee procedures, it seems to me (particularly since we’re talking about people who are already only able to vote absentee).

Am I missing something significant here? Because this really doesn’t seem all that “insane” to me.