Voting+and+elections+-+song

Song Yun 12C ** ITGS Area of Impact  ** ** Politics and Government  **

Electronic voting and Elections
** What is E-voting and Elections? **  Aside from normal voting circumstances with pen and paper, new methods of voting have been established electronically where votes can be cast and counted in front of a computer. This allows for a more accessible system for voters and provides a faster voting ballot count. ** What are the IT systems? ** **  IT System 1: Direct Recording Electronic Systems (DRE)  ** Recent uses of electronic voting had been undergone through the use of DRE’s. These systems are computers, which have the ballots listed on a monitor where the voter can then cast a vote. The IT systems of the DRE relate to the main concept of how voter scan cast a vote with the system and how the ballots are then collected. First, the casting is achieved through the voter interacting with the user interface normally consisting of buttons or a touch screen. Concerning with touchscreens for example, they are typically known as a display that can detect pressure from an object at a given point. Although there are many types of technologies to make a touch screen, the result is initially the same where the pressure applied to the screen causes a counter reaction to occur from the computer. Thus what can happen is that the ballots can become touch sensitive so that touching a check box can tick or fill in the desired candidate they wish to vote. Now that the voter was able to cast a vote, the voting data is then stored on an external memory device to then be brought to a centralized location for counting. Normally, election officials physically take these storage devices for security reasons. However, another system that had been taken into consideration was a network-based system of modem-to-modem lines where data can be transferred electronically. A network, being two or more computers connected with each other, can be thought as an alternative since all data can then be transferred to the centralized location at a faster time. However, assuming that all DRE’s are placed in a single Polling Station for each country, government officials must consider several obstacles including making a Local Area Network connection for each. In addition, several security measures may have to be implemented, by putting security cameras in the station or increasing security personnel. Then the data can be simply transmitted to a central server that can tabulate the votes ** IT System 2: Voting on the Internet  ** Voting over the Internet is another way for voter to cast their votes electronically. According to “HowStuffWorks” the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) launched a test in 2000 attempting to cast votes over the Internet. The system worked similar to a network where volunteers from different countries in America, had been given a CD containing an add-on to their browser, enabling them to cast the vote on a ballot. The ballots were then transmitted to the server of the FVAP in encrypted form in which the server itself remained in a safe location for security measures. What happened now was that election officials who are responsible for tabulating the votes had been connected to the FVAP server as well so that they were able to decrypt the given voter information and print the votes for the tabulation process. It is clear that this method is very similar to the DRE’s, the difference being that it can be targeted at a greater range of voters since the Internet is basically a very large network connected around the world. This could eliminate state or country poll stations so that voters are able to cast a vote at home or any other location that has access to the Internet. This greatly improves the accessibility of voting such as for disabled people that are unable to physically go to a polling station for medical reasons and for people who live too far away from the nearest polling station available. ** The Social and Ethical Issues  ** ** Security  ** There is a security issue concerning the use of e voting, which is mainly related to voter fraud. A fraud is defined as an act of creating a deception or misinterpretation of something to damage other individuals. A voting fraud thus happens when ballot counts can be manipulated so that another candidate could therefore win the election. When voting on the Internet for example, it will be very difficult for election officials to monitor voting activity because the Internet can span through several countries and can thus lack the appropriate rigour for enforcing security measures. A very extreme example could be that a Trojan horse could disguise itself as a fake ballot so that voters can be tricked into voting on the fake ballot. The hacker can then collect the votes and change them to their liking, manipulating the elections. For DRE’s, the principles are the same in which hackers can breach the LAN of the DRE polling station and then retrieve the voter data. Ultimately, if e voting does use the Internet as a method, or any type of network, hackers are simply given the opportunity to steal information and thus can cause several issues. = Economic  = It is also an economic issue considering the costs for producing DRE’s machines in several countries. Multiple machines must be made per country so that voters are able to cast a vote with little time consumption. In addition, setting up a network increases costs due to the need of several routers needing to be installed and of course by hiring technically experienced personnel that can manage the network when in the need of maintenance. In reality, technical issues in cases with voting should be minimal as there can be a risk of losing voter data, that may induce widespread criticism concerning the reliability of e voting as well. The government mainly pays these costs. ** Privacy  ** It is also a privacy issue relating to voting on the Internet, because if a hacker does indeed manage to hack into somebody’s computer than he or she can also check personal information in the process by trailing back to the IP address of the computer. This can be a serious issue because security measures done by election officials will not go as far as to monitor each voters activity at home, and this relates back to the lack of rigour in the system. Officials actually monitoring voters at home are ironically also causing a privacy issue. This new system also eliminates the so-called secret ballot system, in which votes are done in secret without any interference from other individuals that may influence the voters’ choice. This is because booths have now become obsolete due to the fact that there are methods of retrieving the data, which can be done from another location.

Conclusion
E-voting proves to be an improved method of casting and collecting votes. Although the system has some issues as mentioned above, it also eliminates or rather reduces the impact of other issues like equality of access and integrity. But in my opinion, this system ultimately leaves voting to be very openly vulnerable to security breaches due to the primary use of the Internet and network connections, which are known for malware threats. ** Bibliography:  ** [] [] [] [] []