Some individual counties have experimented with allowing online voting for overseas citizens, and the Pentagon considered its own system in 2004, before abandoning it because of security issues. But Arizona was the first to offer internet voting, in a national election, to all its overseas military and civilian families through a central website. Election officials demonstrated their system at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference here Thursday, and they seemed pretty confident that it was secure.
 
“It’s run over a secured system using industry standard encryption,” said state CIO Craig Stender. “We had many users from over 50 countries using the system in that election.”
 
Voting rights activists are alarmed over the growing acceptance of internet-enabled voting — several states are considering legislation to allow systems like Arizona’s, and Hawaii recent ran municipal elections online, though participation was dismal. “There is a big push ongoing to encourage states to introduce internet voting for military and civilians living abroad,” said computer scientist and e-voting expert Barbara Simons in a recent e-mail. “Democrats Abroad allowed people to vote in their 2008 primary using an unbelievably insecure system … Much of these efforts are occurring under the radar, because national news does not cover a lot about what is happening at the state level regarding voting.”