A few of the articles we read for class focus on ideas like furthuring democracy through technology, and doing so bestly by incorporate a form of e-voting for the citizens of this country.
So I shall examine this possibility, and evaluate its potentiality.
Possible: Today's technology allows for its inception to be possible, however safety is still a concern. It would bring our society and our democracy much closer together by making voting something that is so easy, people won't have an excuse not to vote. With the typing of a few pieces of identifying information, and the clicking of a few buttons representing votes, this would be very easy and I would say probably 6 times more people either vote, or register to vote and then vote.
Implausible: Safety comes first! I'm not sure about you guys, but to me, that was always the most annoying statement ever. I always just wanted to GO! instead of sitting through some boring lecture on why always pointing the barrel down range is important, or why aiming bows at others is unethical and deadly. Regardless, online voting has many safety concerns. A number exist, but they lie primarily in the server that the government (or the government's privately chartered organization/company) will be running to host such elections. Any number of things could happen. The server could be hacked, and people's personal information could be stolen. Or, the voting results could be skewed and talleyed in favor of a different candidate. So, as you can see, the entire system would be at risk of violating people's legally guaranteed rights to privacy.
I read a newspaper article talking about a system that the government contracted out to have made and tested. One was made, and tested, however its flaws were in the coding, and the government had its personnel test it ahead of time, hence the reason the flaw was found. Even if the system was hugely successful and highly functional, it would have probably been at least two presidential elections before the system could have been implemented.
Guess what? "More than 30,000 Estonians have cast ballots this week in the world's first online parliamentary election, an electoral official has said." This happened today, March 2nd. Check it out!
http://mwcnews.net/content/view/12953/195/
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Online Voting: Possible or Implausible?
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2 comments:
Interesting things to think about. Will online voting ever be 100 percent secure? I dont know. There will always be flaws, but hey g.w. stole the election on paper ballots so it can be just as easily manipulated when voting isnt online
Yeah... Voting isn't secure no matter what form it takes. The prospect for corruption is always there. People are more comfortable with the traditional balloting because it leaves a paper trail. They have proposed electronic machines that produce a paper trail, but I think that is still suspect to much more manipulation than a normal punch ballot.
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