We're sure that everyone agrees that our overseas service men and women should be able to vote and to vote in a timely enough fashion to have their votes counted in every election.

Fortunately, a January 2009 Pew Center report found that West Virginia was one of a minority of states with a system already set up to get those overseas votes back on time. So when we learned that the Legislature had passed a law for West Virginia to participate in a pilot program involving our troops and other overseas voters in Internet voting, we had to ask why.

Perhaps it is because of a mistaken understanding of the MOVE Act. The federal government passed the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act in October 2009. As described by the Overseas Vote Foundation, "The MOVE Act requires state election officials to provide online access to registration and ballot request forms, electronic options for blank ballot delivery, downloadable write-in ballots in case of late ballot arrival and voter status tracking services." It does NOT require, as some have said, electronic return of voted ballots.

The problem is that Internet voting can create concerns where none exist now. There are problems with all forms of voting. West Virginia had a pretty dismal history of stolen elections -- ballot boxes being dumped into the nearest stream and individual votes bought for a pint. The difference with electronic voting or voting over the Internet is that votes can be altered or stolen without leaving a trace of evidence. It is entirely possible we would never know. Thankfully, state law began some very serious regulation of elections in the 1990s. And many of us have worked hard to see that, even in this electronic age, we have a verifiable voting system in West Virginia. We are actually a model for the nation. Our service people serving overseas deserve nothing less than the security we cherish for our own votes.

Some will argue that because consumers routinely use the Internet to conduct bank business and make purchases it is secure enough for conducting elections. However, there are more checks and balances with commerce. There are multiple ways to verify that your credit card was charged the correct amount, but unfortunately, given the current state of the Internet, it's not possible to conduct verifiably accurate elections.

Proponents of Internet voting will argue that strong voter authentication or sophisticated cryptography can secure public online elections. They would do well to listen to the independent experts who warn that no amount of authentication and encryption, even those used by the military, can do this.

We are not computer experts, but we pay attention to those who are. The Computer Technologists' Statement on Internet Voting, a statement signed by 32 world-recognized outstanding computer security professionals from the best universities in the country, private industry and the U.S. Lawrence Livermore Laboratory says:

| "There must be a satisfactory way to prevent large-scale or selective disruption of vote transmission over the Internet. . . .

| There must be strong mechanisms to prevent undetected changes to votes, not only by outsiders but also by insiders such as equipment manufacturers, technicians, system administrators, and election officials who have legitimate access to election software and/or data.

| There must be reliable, unforgeable, unchangeable voter-verified records of votes that are at least as effective for auditing as paper ballots, without compromising ballot secrecy. Achieving such auditability with a secret ballot transmitted over the Internet but without paper is an unsolved problem.

| The entire system must be reliable and verifiable even though Internet-based attacks can be mounted by anyone, anywhere in the world . . . . The current Internet architecture makes such attacks difficult or impossible to trace back to their sources."

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in a recent lengthy report on overseas voting with detailed assessments, also expressed reservations about Internet voting.

Fortunately all experts feel that electronic transmission of blank ballots is acceptable, so blank ballots can be delivered speedily. The paper ballots can then be returned securely by regular post office mail, military mail, diplomatic pouch or more recently by special Fed Ex arrangement, arriving in West Virginia in plenty of time to be counted. That is what our service men and women deserve.

Archer is a member of West Virginia Citizen Action Group, and Haning is a member of Seneca2.