E-voting is now being considered for implementation in a number of nations throughout the world, with the intention of enhancing a number of facets associated with the voting process. Electronic voting is often seen as a technology that may help advance democracy, develop faith in electoral administration, lend legitimacy to election outcomes, and overall increase the efficiency of the political process.
Because of the fast rate at which technology is advancing, election managers, observers, international organizations, suppliers, and standards bodies are regularly changing the procedures and approaches they use.
E-voting solutions, when properly implemented, have the potential to eradicate certain common possibilities of fraud, speed up the processing of results, increase availability, and make voting more convenient for citizens. In some instances, when used over a series of electoral events, the cost of elections or referendums may even be reduced over the long term.
Unfortunately, not all initiatives using electronic voting are successful in living up to such lofty expectations. The technology that is currently being used for electronic voting is not without its issues. In some instances, there have been legislative and technological hurdles, while in others, there has been skepticism about or resistance to the implementation of new voting technology.
Electronic voting has its own unique and significant set of issues, many of which are connected to the intricacy of electronic systems and processes. There is a lack of transparency in many of the options for electronic voting, both for voters and for election officials.
The majority of electronic voting systems are only completely understood by a limited number of voting system professionals, and the integrity of the voting process is primarily dependent on a small handful of system operators as opposed to hundreds of poll workers. The implementation of electronic voting, particularly if it has not been meticulously planned and constructed, has the potential to erode voters’ faith in the whole political process.
As a result, it is essential to allow sufficient time and resources to ponder the possibility of its implementation and investigate the outcomes of elections conducted using electronic voting systems in the past.
A Failure to Maintain Transparency:
Voting online might also lack transparency, which is another drawback of using this method. Voters are able to see the counting of their votes under the conventional paper-based voting system. On the other hand, voting online involves a totally computerized procedure, making it more difficult to validate the final tally.
It is very necessary to search for an online voting system that has characteristics that promote openness. For instance, some systems provide voters with a real-time election results website where they may see the progress of the tally as it is being compiled.
Our voting system includes auditing of elections, which means that votes cast using our system may be checked for accuracy after they have been counted. In addition, we provide independent verification, in which a neutral, third-party accountant checks to see that the voting process is carried out in a fair manner.
Concerning the Safety of Electronic Voting Systems:
Because there is always the possibility that hackers may try to tamper with the results, one of the major drawbacks associated with using voting systems that are conducted online is that they are not as secure as conventional voting systems that are conducted using paper-based methods.
You should seek a solution that protects the data by encrypting it if you want to increase the security of the elections. It is essential that the system be evaluated by a team of impartial security professionals.
For instance, you may protect your online voting system by using 256-bit encryption, which is the same degree of protection as is provided by big banks. In addition, we do not disclose any information on users or voters, which ensures that your elections are kept private and secure.
Poor Infrastructure:
The whole infrastructure associated with electronic voting is also not compatible. The factors like temperature, humidity, and communication are affecting the process. In most areas, the supply of electricity is also not sufficient.
Implementation and maintenance cost:
High costs are incurred in both the acquiring and the selling of software as well as the upkeep of electronic voting devices. Also, the cost is acquired in the training of the staff to use the system efficiently.
Exposure to the risk of hacking:
In general, election vendors and jurisdictions say that they do not transfer election results from precincts over the internet. However, they may do it using a direct modem connection or a Virtual Private Network (VPN).
However, even this strategy might be vulnerable to attacks launched through the internet, particularly in the event that the level of encryption and authentication is insufficient. This is due to the fact that telephone transmission networks are becoming more and more linked to the internet, as well as the fact that computers to which the receiving server may be connected, such as via a local area network (LAN), may itself have internet connections.
Programming of potentially harmful software:
Programming that is intended to do harm to a computer is known as malicious software. Programming and coding are the fundamental building blocks of any computer software. A computer programmer who knows software’s source code would be able to modify any of these programmers and make them behave differently.
It is almost hard to test electronic voting systems for security flaws, particularly if the flaws were purposefully included and camouflaged. If malicious code is installed by programmers into commercial software, which can then be activated by cryptic combinations of instructions and keystrokes entered on a computer keyboard, then the outcome of an election might be entirely altered.
Conclusion:
At this point in time, electronic voting is not a suitable alternative for voting on paper ballots. Electronic voting has a number of advantages as well as a number of drawbacks, the latter of which are now too significant for it to replace paper voting. On the other hand, after these issues have been resolved, maybe in the future, we will all be able to vote while wearing our jammies.
Author’s Bio:
Prior to his famous writing career, Zack was a tech-freak and got his degree from a renowned university in the USA. Zack received an award for best robot prototype in high school. Later, he merged his tech passion with his writing skills and began writing for different tech blogs.