Voting on the Internet
...ny problems waiting to happen with voting on the internet. In an article titled Voting on the Internet the absence of security on the internet was illustrated. The article talks about a recent accidental mass release of credit card numbers and other customer information. Business owners and customers thought the sites were safe, but the information was compromised at the willingness of a few good hackers (Weinstein). The article then states that “ The same kinds of security failures leading to private information disclosure or unauthorized modifications are possible in an internet voting environment” (Weinstein). There are computer viruses that can do anything to one’s computer. The government comprised a panel of computer security experts to review the program intended for use with voting on the internet. The system they wrote “has many security problems that leave it open to a variety of well-know cyber attacks, any of which could be catastrophic”(Schwartz). The article goes on to state that “such attacks could have a devastating effect on public confidence in elections”(Schwartz). It would not be hard to come up with a virus that counts votes or reports votes in a particular way? With computers counting votes there is no hard copy of how people really voted. Dr. Rebecca Mercuri says “voters have absolutely no control over votes cast once it leaves their computer. The voter cannot check whether the vote has been subverted on the way to being counted, and problems such as coercion, vote selling and impersonation will be impossible to detect”. In an article concerning Diebold, the company chosen for manufacturing e-voting machines the election systems principal engineer Ken Clark confirms the following: “Anyone using an off-the-shelf copy of Microsoft Access can freely open and alter the election tally database; in doing so they can also edit the audit log, thereby removing any evidence of their tampering; these security flaws have been in place for a considerable amount of time.” There will be no way to prove or recount votes. Kim Brace, of election data services, says that “every system has its drawbacks, and the biggest drawback with computer-based voting is the lack of a paper ballot that can be counted by hand if necessary” (Schwartz). There will be no way to prove anything! There is to much room for foul-play when voting on the internet. Applauding the group’s work of technologically advanced voting systems a security expert is quoted as saying “What I saw convinced me that no one should ever vote on this system” (Schwartz) “The bottom line”, David Wagner says, “is we feel the solution can’t be a system that introduces greater risks just to gain convenience” (nytimes.com) The third issue with voting on the internet is privacy and fairness. Abusive spouses could make sure that significant others, and children of age vote they way the abuser wants them to. There would be no way to tell or, any way to prevent this from happening. Department of Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz says internet voting was scrapped because they were not certain they could “assure the legitimacy of votes that would be cast” (Wolfowitz). “Internet voting presents far too many opportunities for hackers or terrorists to interfere with fair and accurate voting potentially in ways that are impossible to detect” (Wolfowitz). If fraud was committed in ways that were undetectable the results of that would be tremendous and irreversible. There are advantages and disadvantages that go along with voting by mail as well. In an article titled Vote by Mail some benefits of mail voting are listed. The article states that mail voting will be cost effective, it will be easier for election officials to conduct, and it will allow for a more accurate picture of eligible voters, by keeping voter lists up-to-date. There are many scenarios that will be positively effected by voting by mail. Terrell Brown states the advantages are for “the person who travels a lot due to their job, or who is on call a lot, for the person who works odd hours, who would likely be sleeping, for the person who has their children during the day, or for people who have other people’s children, or for the person who cannot stand to wait in line forever, or whose health prevents it”. All of these situations would be greatly helped by mail in ballots. Another positive situation mentioned was that voter ballots would be sent out weeks in advance (fairvote.org). This way people could study the ballots and make a careful informed decision without being pressured by time. I think this is a good idea in the fact that people could spend more time with their ballots, but at the same time it has negative effects. I for one, tend to lose things, and I am pretty sure that I am not the only one in America who does so. This creates a problem along with how easy it will be to sell ballots. I am sure someone will try it. So I also have disagree with voting by mail and agree with Michael Atherton who says “I’m not sure we should run our government the same way that we do warranty registration for washing machines.” There are just as many things that can go ...