Advancements in technology have already impacted the U.S. voting system, taking it from all paper to electronic ballots. Now that we live in a digital age, how close are we to online voting? There are currently four ways to vote in a U.S. election: paper ballots in person or by mail, direct recording electronic systems (DRE), ballot marking devices, and punch cards. Various companies have created phone apps and services to make it easy for people to register to vote, but actual voting in national elections cannot be done online. “Right now, any computer system on the planet can be hacked,” said Holmes Wilson, co-founder and co-director of Fight For The Future (FFTF). … In 1974, the first form of electronic voting, the Video Voter, was used in a U.S. government election and, although that method ended in 1980, its successor, the DRE voting machine, is used in many states, and it is the main method used in Texas. “The problem with these machines is that, to trust them, you had to believe that it was possible to build error-proof, tamper-proof computerized equipment, and as a computer scientist, I know that’s not possible,” said David Dill, professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford University and founder of Verified Voting. “We need to get rid of all paperless DRE’s in the U.S., and have improved auditing laws and procedures everywhere.”
Those who advocate for online voting believe the convenience of voting digitally will increase the voter population, but many express that the possibility of voter fraud and system hacking outweigh the convenience.
“Many of the best computer security specialists and cryptographers in the world have studied how to do secure voting over the Internet, and almost all have concluded that it is not possible to do,” Dill said. “The reason that people want Internet voting is because they want to make voting more convenient, hoping that more people will vote, but in the places it’s been tried, Internet voting has not consistently increased turnout. Efforts to improve the voter registration system would definitely make a difference in some places, and we’ve got to find a way to inform and motivate voters, but deploying technology that makes our elections untrustworthy is definitely not the right solution.”
Full Article: Modern technology’s effect on voting | UHCL The Signal.