How Secure is E-Voting?

Controversy has always surrounded the election process, in the United States as well as in other nations around the planet. In many cases, the problems stemmed from illegal voting (too many ballots, dead people registered and voting and so on). In some cases, paper ballots were destroyed or not counted so that certain candidates would benefit from the results or be defeated by altered counts.

Only in recent years have elections been a subject of controversy because of electronic-voting systems. Many observers of the political scene still consider the 2000 election to have been a debacle and a catastrophe for the United States, for example. This trouble had its basis in punch-card voting systems.

Something New

To deal with this issue, we now turn almost exclusively to electronic voting procedures. Estimates show that a majority of votes are now cast by electronic voting systems. But just as we had problems and questions about paper ballots and punch-card voting, we have issues with electronic voting.

The major concern is with the integrity of the software programs used in these specialized computers. Articles have appeared in magazines and newspapers questioning whether the results are accurate, whether the computers have been tampered with and whether some candidates or parties might take steps to alter results knowingly.

New, Yes. But Better?

While many local officials and voters like the electronic systems because they are easy to use and the vote count is quick, the potential corruption remains a concern. Votes are recorded in the memory section of the machine, which is really a computer designed for a specific purpose. At the heart of the problem is the fact that the voter sees no paper/physical result of his or her vote.

Generally, there is no way to build a trail of evidence with paper reports or ballots. Some voters have reported that when they choose one name a vote is cast for another candidate. In other locations election officials reported a total number of votes that wasn’t even close to the number of actual votes cast.

Once machine reportedly cast a vote for a third candidate, even when the other two names were chosen during a pre-election test! This raises the question of whether we should leave a process as important as elections to the computer systems designed by a few suppliers. Equipment builders guard their manufacturing processes and computer programs very closely. This makes it almost impossible to determine whether electronic voting is to be trusted.

A select few people are allowed to study and inspect the equipment and its software. A few testing laboratories are contracted to test and verify the operation of these voting machines. But when third-party experts do get a chance to work with the software and the equipment they find serious security issues.

Lack of physical results and no recount process are two major problems with electronic voting. Whether E voting is reliable is still debatable. Many locations are sticking with the “old fashioned” paper ballots for now.