Like a lot of terrible ideas, voting over the Internet in federal elections is not without superficial appeal. That would explain why Elections Canada reportedly is moving us towards electronic or e-voting. E-voting certainly would make it easier to participate in the democratic process. Instead of schlepping to the polls, we could vote from the comfort of our homes simply by clicking a computer mouse or swiping a smart phone. We could vote while travelling anywhere outside the country with Internet access. Canadian astronauts could even vote from space if they happened to be in orbit on election day. … So what’s not to like about e-voting? Security, for starters.
Voting is too important to digitalize. The risk is that some clever Dick could find a way to rig the results without anyone ever knowing. Sure, elections as they are can be rigged, too, by stuffing ballot boxes, say, or by selective counting. This is all but impossible to pull off in secret, however, with partisan scrutineers and sworn-in poll workers, often our neighbours, auditing and reconciling as they do every step of the process. Preservation of the actual ballots until the matter is finally settled offers another level of security. Likewise the direct, physical chain from the returning officer to the ballot to the voter to the ballot box to the counting room and finally to the preserved ballots. Elections of any kind always can be rigged, but with the system as it is, at least we probably would know about it.
Full Article: Election e-voting has its advantages and disadvantages.