E-voting

Bringing the voting process to the technology age

Overview

• Using technology to aid in the voting process

• Can be using electronic machines in polling places, or Internet based

• There are several positives and negatives

First things first..

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Electronic Voting Survey

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Time for a skit.

Some positives

• Philosophically speaking, e-voting is an amazing opportunity to help achieve a true democracy

• In the past, democracy was almost every person voting for almost every issue

• Distance made this impossible

• E-voting can help to achieve a similar turnout

Quicker Times

• No more long lines to vote

• If voting can be done on a computer, it can be done quicker and easier, and within the comfort of your own home

More accessible

• Because it can be done from any computer, voting easier

• People with disabilities can vote much easier

• Overseas citizens and servicemen will have an easier time as well

More constraints on interface

• Some people cannot follow simple instructions

• Computer can be made to accept only one type of input (whether radio button, etc.)

• No more underlining instead of circling, or hanging chads

Less human error

• In terms of not following directions

• Also, in terms of counting the votes

• Computerization is faster, more efficient, and, if implemented correctly, less prone to normal errors

Are there any problems to evoting?

Problems with evoting

• Computers can lose data

• People can make computers lose or change data, result: voter fraud

• Depending on the system, no “paper trail”

• Possible loss of voter privacy

• Digital divide– discriminates against those who do not have Internet access

Hack an election?

• Man of the Year

How can you hack an election?

• If they are on-site digital voting machines, pretty easily

• One Minute Hack

• One way around this is to put no tampering tape on machines

• All someone has to do then is cut the tape, and all those votes are discounted

Hacking Internet voting

• Lots of ways

• Once the information is sent, it is probably safe (using Internet encryption)

• Problem: You can change information BEFORE it is sent.

Virus

• Hacker puts malicious code onto person’s pc

• Intercepts information before it is sent out

• If hacker is smart, can change the vote to whomever he wants, or make it not vote

• Vote confirmation would solve this problem

• Privacy vs. Security (we’ll talk later)

Rogue agent• Hacking gets better as the publicity gets

better (for the most part)• Election would be HUGE publicity• “sitting duck”• One rogue programmer may be able to

implant a virus – they could work for any of many companies

• Winzip, adobe acrobat, etc.• Slightly unlikely, but possible

DDOS attack

• DDOS: Distributed Denial of Service

• Election servers attacked, forced to go down

• Large number of people wouldn’t vote in the election

• Happened in Canada, had to extend

• Remember registering for classes?

Phishing

• People are stupid

• Someone could send out an email “reminding” people to vote or register, and giving them a link to a fake site

• After getting all of their voting information, the hacker would have multiple votes at his/her disposal

Selling of votes

• A smaller problem, but one that is similar to basketball tickets

• Someone doesn’t care enough about election, so gives their vote to someone else

• End up with one person having multiple votes

• Too easy to vote

Digital divide

• By making voting online, you are making it easier for only one segment of society to vote

• Since you are not making it easier for others to vote, their vote would effectively be diminished

So what would it take to make e-voting plausible?

• Confirmation that the person voting is who they say they are

• Confirmation of each person’s vote

• The system needs to know the person is correct, and the person needs to know the vote is correct

Problem: Privacy vs. Security

• In order to confirm a vote, the voting system must store, somehow, who voted for whom.

• This goes against our System – you don’t need to say who voted for who.

• By keeping this information, it brings up the question: What’s more important, privacy or security of votes?

Thoughts?

Summary

• E voting is a good idea

• It allows more people to vote, bringing us closer to democracy

• If it was safe, it would be a great supplement to normal voting

• There are still many issues that need to be resolved