South Korea: Democracy can be hacked | Kang Hyun-kyung/Korea Times
The Colorado secretary of state announced in September last year that the U.S. state would remove QR codes from ballots to prevent possible election meddling by outsiders. “I am proud that Colorado continues to lead the nation in election cybersecurity,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in a press release on Sept. 16. One of her duties is ensuring the integrity of elections. “Voters should have the utmost confidence that their vote will count. Removing QR codes from ballots will enable voters to see for themselves that their ballots are correct and helps guard against cyber meddling,” Griswold went on to say. Once QR code-less ballots are introduced, votes will be tabulated using marked ovals on the ballot. In South Korea, QR codes have been at the center of a controversy following the April 15 National Assembly elections in which 300 lawmakers were elected and the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) clinched a landslide victory. The two-dimensional bar codes were used twice over the course of the election; once on ballots for early and postal voting and again on voter-completed tabulation sheets printed from counting machines. About a month has passed since the elections but some people, still scratching their heads over the results, have raised suspicions about the tabulation.