Ancient traditions in a new era
Almost halfway through 2022 at the time of writing this & technology is progressing faster than ever.
From ordering food & groceries with a few clicks, all along to the genome editing - we can not overlook the role that technology has played on social, political and economical parts of many societies.
Hence, one might question that if we are having a progress on re-engineering our DNA, there is nothing left that is not already benefited from the use of technology. Because the living organisms is the most convoluted system to understand & make an impact.
Unfortunately, that is counterfactual. There are still some traditions that hasn’t changed much since ancient times. You may think it’s an education system, in which instance you won’t be wrong. But the agenda we will be examining is - elections. Periodical event that has an impact on the millions of people.
The Anatomy of the Voting System
How is the current voting process structured? You arrive at a polling place, walk into the private area, carefully checkbox your candidate, walk out of the private area and then slide it into the box. Then votes are counted & recounted physically by a counting agent if the process was conducted paper-based. (In 2020 elections, over 16 million Americans voted through paperless voting machines).
Main shortcomings of this voting process:
- Tedious & time consuming - people have to wait for days, sometimes for weeks to finalize the election results
- Vulnerable to internal fraud - votes can be easily falsified (especially in underdeveloped countries)
Technical security concerns of the paperless voting
USA’s distrust in paperless voting started in 2000’s election. During that time Congress passed the “Help America Vote Act“ (HAVA), which allocated $3.9 billion to acquire DRE voting machines. But the rise of the high-tech replacement for paper-based voting was brief & didn’t stay for long. All because of the problems which surfaced in 2002 - democrats claimed that technical errors of the DRE machines led to Bush’s victory.
Fast forward to 2020s, latest U.S. election raised an important question of why we still haven’t fully shifted to online voting. Every aspect of our life is digitalized - we can shop online, but not vote. Why? What are the implications? How can we solve it? Can we solve it?
Main thesis of cybersecurity experts of not shifting to fully online voting is - no system in the world is 100% “unhackable“. Every system has vulnerability. And if there is a slight chance that election results can be manipulated, we should de-risk & stick to the safest method of voting.