Can Electronic Voting be a Viable Option?
Can Electronic Voting be a Viable Option?
  • Reporter Won John
  • 승인 2022.02.26 21:17
  • 댓글 0
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▲An analog voting booth / Pixabay
▲An analog voting booth / Pixabay

 

While electronic vote counting machines have been part of our democratic system for decades, the implementation of an electronic voting system has yet to take place. The trust in analog stamp-and-paper voting has been accumulating over many years of voting and the public has reached a consensus that it is trustworthy enough to accurately count our votes.
However, electronic voting has yet to reach such a status, as security loopholes and general mistrust in internet technology have held it back. These doubts are within reason, as security vendor Panda Labs had reported in 2012 that an estimated 57% of South Korean computers were infected by some variant of malware, the highest percentage among OECD countries. Furthermore, attacks on analog voting systems would require vast amounts of resources to significantly alter the results and are virtually impossible to pull off without being caught. On the other hand, attacks on electronic voting systems over digital networks would be relatively cheap and be able to cause damage on a large scale.
Despite these drawbacks, electronic voting has clear benefits. Simplifying the voting process to a few simple clicks on a computer or mobile device would increase participation and allow for voting without spatial or temporal restrictions. Electronic voting would lower the need for physical voting places, vote counting, and movement logistics, streamlining the process as a whole while decreasing costs.
Meanwhile, blockchain technology is emerging as the key ingredient for a successful electronic voting system. A blockchain system would decentralize the validation of votes across numerous authorities and make it much more difficult for a malicious force to tamper with the results. Although this method still does not solve the problem of infected input terminals, further developments in technology could potentially open up an age of online voting in the comfort of one’s home.