As a lover of technology, I love the fact the one of the greatest rights a human has, voting, could soon be fully electronic. The principles of electronic voting are simple…
- All votes can be tallied on individual machines within seconds, rather than hours or even days with the ballot papers.
- All votes can be sent to a central server where within another few seconds, a computer can tabulate the results.
- All votes are securely recorded on memory devices so any audit trails can be followed.
Now here’s the problems that I see…
Scenario 1 – Corruption
Mr X votes for Candidate A by pushing a button or touching the screen. The vote is logged and recorded. If the memory device that stores the vote corrupts, that vote is lost and Mr. X has lost his right to vote. His vote wont be counted. Now what if two thousand people use that same machine and the votes are corrupted, two thousand votes are lost which may actually lead to a completely different result.
Answer:This is a hard scenario to tackle. We can only rely on the manufacturers placing in backup devices and transmission sequences that ensures every single vote is counted. Time will only tell and thorough testing would have to take place, such as a mock election to give us a true picture.
Scenario 2 – Track My Vote
Mrs Y votes for the orange party. The underdogs, the yellow party, wins but doubt is thrown over the vote tallies. How can we trace everyone’s vote when voting is supposed to be a secret.
Answer:Trust! We all trust that corporations are keeping our data safe and secret. We all trust that the banks aren’t broadcasting our transactions to Mr & Mrs Busybody. We all trust that our ballot papers are counted and not ‘lost’, but throw in a computerised voting system and that distrust clouds our vision. We all see computers as great tools for business and personal use, but the majority of computer users don’t fully understand how that computer fetches our emails, access the word document or creates that pretty PowerPoint presentation. So how can Average Joe trust that a voting computer will accurately and securely tally his vote? We all have to believe the manufacturers specification of “There are many fail safes built in”. These fail safes may be backup storage that is rewritten every time a new vote is cast, transmission of individual votes so no storage takes place locally, uninteruptible power supplies. But what if all these failsafes fail. With paper ballots, we can see how many people turned out to vote, if a district ballot box is a few votes light then this can be traced to the electoral officer presiding in that district. Although the votes are secret, the numbers of voters arent. This principle can be applied to computer systems, but people will always have that worry that their name will be attached to their vote and if the vote for one of the publically despised parties, such as the BNP and their racists and hate filled policies, they could be criticised and fall subject to hatred. On a tangent, I fully support the campaigns to take down the BNP, however I also fully support a persons right to vote.
Scenario 3 – Bin Laden Stole my Vote
eTerrorism and malicious hackers may see the electronic voting system as a play ground to test their latest attacks and scripts. Nothing is 100% secure, as our British hacker, Gary McKinnon, proved when he infiltrated US government systems. So how can we trust that our vote will be transmitted and not tampered with. Remeber, attacks can also come from the inside. Whos to say a corrupt IT voting official wont change the results.
Answer: I havent got one. The way a voting system works is still a closely guarded secret. Are the votes held locally on the individual machines or are they transmitted each time someone votes? Who knows!
Electronic voting has many advantages, but, it has a fair few pitfalls too. Time will tell…hopefully.
