SPOKANE, Wash. — Spokane County voters won’t be casting ballots using their cell phone any time soon despite voters in other part of the state doing exactly that.
It's Seattle's newest option for the ways that you can vote. You'd press a button and be able to vote from your mobile device.
Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton said Spokane voters won’t be using this way to vote simply because of cyber security.
"There are so many issues happening with attacks and hacks and distortions and interceptions of data that we just cannot take the risk of having a large-scale voting process," Dalton said.
Mobile voting has been something both state and county leaders have been talking about for years. But the discussion keeps coming back to making sure nothing gets in the way of a voter's selection and the elections office.
"We really like the concept, but it comes back to the issue of how do we make a process happen and make it secure," Dalton said.
She said hacking scares are too common to trust the voting process with a system that uses internet, email or cell services.
"We cannot guarantee that whatever file or packet is received by us is what was actually sent by the voter," she said.
Leaders are hoping that web security systems will become secure enough to support voting by phone. Seattle isn't using the new method for all of its elections, just for a small Board of Supervisors election.