Online Voting: A Bright Future or Inevitable Disaster?
All Things Consider — By prgupta on February 21, 2012 at 2:00 pm
In light of the recent spam University of Michigan students received in their inboxes, it brought back to mind the question of just how secure the realm of the Internet truly is. In a world where we rely so heavily on the Internet and online applications, it is difficult for me to reconcile its extreme benefits and conveniences with its innumerable risks. It is important for me to remember, whether I’m making crucial online payments or posting trivial statuses, we are constantly at risk of fraud and theft.
I recently watched the PBS NewsHour special about online voting in the upcoming presidential race. Entitled “Internet Voting: Will Democracy or Hackers Win?,” this special addressed the debate on whether or not online voting is secure enough to become a reality relatively soon. The implementation of such a program would certainly be a convenience to the average citizen, but the program was also designed with a specific group in mind. According to this news story, deployed US military personnel generally have to submit their votes via fax machine, which is no more anonymous or secure than an online system. There is also no denying that the paper process is tedious, time-consuming, and wasteful.
This transformation, while still novel in the United States, is certainly not unprecedented. Actual online elections are held internationally all the time. Successful online municipal elections occurred in Markham, Canada during that nation’s rapid move to digital voting. Similarly, Mexico City just announced that it will be using online voting for overseas voters next year.
And yet, sometimes the old-fashioned way is truly the best way. A secure method with a proof of record, it may be the best method for a matter of such great importance and possible controversy. When the United States first tested out this potential system in D.C. in late 2010, University of Michigan Professor Alex Halderman and his group of graduate students were able to hack the system in a matter of days. They doctored each ballot, and went so far as to program the voting system to play Michigan’s fight song upon recording each vote. While a testament to the University of Michigan’s unparalleled sense of humor and talent, the ease with which this trial system was hacked is still telling and concerning.
This news special also raises issues of other aspects of our life that have recently made the shift to online systems. One that personally comes to mind is the recent online transfer of our medical records. In the lab where I do research, I am fortunate to have online access to our patients’ medical history. While convenient for me, this could be a point of concern for others.
In my opinion, there is a line that must be drawn for what information can and cannot be moved to the Internet, and this distinction is established by examining the level of privacy it should be awarded. The system of casting votes eventually determines the new leader of a city or even country. This is vitally important. In a parallel vein, medical records are a matter of the utmost privacy. Thus, at this point in time, the switch to an online voting system cannot be risked in my opinion. Is online voting in Presidential Races an exciting new development on the horizon? Undoubtedly. But before we coin it as a panacea, let us remember that such a large transformation has a long wait before anything change will come.
By: Preeta Gupta
(Photo courtesy of CASN)
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Tags: Election, elections, hacking, Internet, online voting, privacy, Security, voting
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2 Comments
Hello Preeta, I completely agree with Chris about your blog being a very balanced and logical perspective on the issue of online voting. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your blog and look forward to reading more blogs which have similar intellectual clarity as well as realistic analysis.
Preeta – this is a balanced post on a highly contentious subject. Elections are vitally important, especially at this time of national and international challenges. Given this as our starting point it’s important to remember that our current election systems are badly in need of repair. At present we’re losing 10M+ votes each election due to problems of voter registration, voter convenience, vote by mail, machine error, etc… 10M+ votes is unconscionable when margins of victory can measure 537 (as they did in the presidential election in Florida in 2000). These troubling problems were well documented in the immediate aftermath of 2000 and for the most part, despite spending billions of federal dollars through the Help America Vote Act, they persist.
Solutions to many of these problems exist but have not been implemented at scale. For those who believe that our democracy is a cornerstone to a well-functioning society this pace of change has been deeply frustrating.
It is in this context that we must weigh the value of internet voting. Concerns about privacy and security are entirely legitimate and must be fully addressed. Internet voting is a technical challenge of the first order and it will take considerable investments of time and money to overcome these substantial hurdles. But perhaps this is a task worth doing.
Given the right mix of innovation and determination we could create a secure internet voting system. Yet, at this time there are no major research efforts in this area, the climate has become so toxic and so barren of funding that few are willing to expend their energies on solving the internet voting problem. That’s unfortunate.
Restart Democracy is working to turn the tide – not as an unalloyed advocate for immediate internet voting, but as a proponent of a long term research project on the viability and value of secure internet voting. Reasoned and pragmatic perspectives like yours are surprisingly scarce and very refreshing.
Best,
Chris