Electronic Voting

Over the years, we’ve seen more and more services start to take advantage of the online realm. Shopping, work, school, and even elections. Yes, elections. Some states over the past couple of years have allowed voters to cast their ballots from the comfort of their homes on their smartphones or laptop. In many people’s eyes, this is a very risky move, but that may not be the case. Electronic voting should be allowed in all states and elections because it would allow people with disabilities to still be able to participate, poll numbers would go up, and the speed at which ballots are counted would increase.

So far, electronic voting has slowly been on the rise, one of the reasons being to accommodate those with disabilities. According to Jane Buchanan of Human Rights Watch, there are around 38.3 million Americans with disabilities who are eligible to vote (2020). However, due to the obstacles of mail-in ballots mixed with the current pandemic, many of them are unable to do so. So, to combat this problem states like Colorado, Nevada, West Virginia, and North Carolina have provided alternative options like electronic voting, and the results are as you’d expect. To be able to cast your vote without worrying about mobility or unaccommodating paper ballots is a huge benefit to those with disabilities, and more and more people who were previously never able to participate in elections have begun to do so.

This leads us to our next main focus: poll numbers. One of the most common talks of every presidential election is voter turnout, and many believe based on the evidence we have right now that having an online voting option would increase this. According to research done by a University of Chicago scholar, “the ability to vote with a mobile device increased turnout by three to five percentage points in the 2018 federal election in West Virginia” (Stone, 2019). West Virginia was the first state to offer an online voting alternative, and based on these results it isn’t unlikely that on a national level voter turnout could increase even more. People overseas would be able to participate, as well as anyone who just isn’t able to find time to go to a voting spot. It is simply more convenient to cast a ballot from wherever you want.

A benefit many may not think of with the topic of electronic voting is the speed at which ballots are counted. Since everything is over the internet with this method, counting would be much faster and more accurate. The method in which paper ballots are counted is called optical scanning, and several errors can occur during it. A black or white streak on the ballot can cause it to register that vote for every candidate or no vote at all (Electronic voting in the United States, 2022). These types of problems aren’t apparent in electronic voting. The system would only allow voters to select one option at a time, and the ballot would be tracked and counted faster than with optical scanning. Another added benefit is that voting agencies wouldn’t lose money on paying people to help operate the optical scanners.

Now, all these points seem great but there is still opposition to the change to electronic voting. The biggest and most important claim they make is towards voting security. With an electronic voting system, there are many points of vulnerability like in the device of the voter, the app in which they use, the connection to the databases, and the counting in the databases. All of these are subject to hackers and malware, so developers have been continuously working on making things as secure as possible. The only sound answer to all these problems is to implement what is known as a centralized digital identity system. What this does is allows enterprises to protect data and control authentication and access to certain systems. The country of Estonia, a tech-savvy nation, implemented this and has held its elections online since 2005 (Geller, 2020).

While the idea of electronic voting is definitely a nice one, there are still realities we have to face. For the U.S., the process is still taking baby steps forward and has many issues involving security that need to be figured out. Anything on the internet is going to be vulnerable one way or another, so the best thing we can do right now continues to be experimenting with online voting on a small scale, fixing the issues that arise. One day, hopefully, every U.S. citizen regardless of where they are or whatever obstacles lie in their way will be able to cast their vote and make their voices heard.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/10/22/people-disabilities-voices-should-be-heard-us-elections

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_the_United_States#Errors_in_optical_scans

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/08/online-voting-304013 https://news.uchicago.edu/story/voting-mobile-devices-increases-election-turnout

In the 2016 Presidential Election, 46% of the United States voting-age population failed to cast a vote, per PewResearch.org (2020). This is representative of a large problem in the United States – a small number of people cast ballots. A potential solution to this problem was created: electronic voting. Electronic voting is the ability to cast a ballot online or by some internet-based platform, in order to make sure that casting a ballot is easier and less out-of-the-way for Americans. However, the idea has a couple of big problems. Electronic voting is a bad solution to low voter turnout due to its inherent classist undertones, difficulty in voting, and lack of ballot safety.

Online voting, by its very nature, is classist. According to a research report conducted by USC student Harmony Rhoades, “one-third [of homeless people] reported no past three-month internet use” (2017). This showcases one of the major flaws with online voting – the poor, by virtue of their poorness, cannot use digital devices to vote. Sadly, technology such as phones or tablets is expensive. Moreover, an internet or mobile data subscription is even more expensive.

Some might claim that this isn’t a true problem – that the poor could use facilities provided by local libraries to vote. To this claim, I ask, by what means will a majority of the poor get to the libraries? A price tag that is greater than any phone or mobile subscription is a vehicle to be able to get to libraries, and many libraries aren’t located nearby homeless shelters. I can only speak to my experiences in Springfield, Massachusetts, but there is no homeless shelter located nearby (within walking distance, which I define as 5 miles) the city's three main, public libraries. That’s not even thinking about awful weather conditions in certain areas of the country when ballots are cast in November. This is to say, online voting is very classist and undermines the idea that, in a true Democracy that the United States strives for, every citizen has a right to vote.

Another massive problem that comes as a result of electronic voting is a newfound difficulty in voting. This new system is bound to confuse many — especially those who have previously voted, the homeless (who, as a result of no access to the internet, may be confused by its layout), and the elderly, who might not understand the technology as well as others. This confusion could lead to many casting a vote for the wrong person, which could lead to disastrous results. Moreover, software glitches would be an awful side effect of online voting. As told by VerifiedVoting.org, a website dedicated to ensuring voting security, “Nobody knows how to write bug-free software.” They proceed to recount three events where software glitches caused ballots to not be counted, most influentially in Carteret County, North Carolina in 2004 where slightly more than 4,000 ballots were lost and never recovered (n.d.). Once more, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit digital safety and civil rights organization, “Touchscreen voting machines, counting machines, and other electronic devices involved in elections are subject to hacking” (n.d). If these software glitches happened to in-house ballot-counting machines, what reason would we have to believe that it wouldn’t happen to a completely electronic voting system?

This provides a good transition into my next point, the fact that ballots are not secure when voting virtually. According to Douglas Jones, a Computer Science professor at the University of Iowa, ‘Although the technology used in voting continues to evolve, it remains vulnerable to both malicious and unintentional errors” (Bushwick, 2020). This is to say, the ballots cast are NOT safe and secure. Worry of malicious hacking, or, as previously mentioned, simple software glitches undermine the ideals of Democracy.

To build off my last point, safer solutions to low voter turnout already exist – especially mail-in voting, which played a massive part in the 2020 Presidential Election. According to Engin Kirda, a professor of Computer Science at Northeastern University, “The mail-in voting system is far more secure than any electronic ballot system could be” (Arntsen, 2020). I think that mail-in voting fills the role that electronic voting attempts to fill, with more safety in mind.

To summarize, low voter turnout is a massive problem in the United States. A proposed solution, electronic voting, is a bad solution to low voter turnout due to its inherent classist undertones, difficulty in voting, and lack of ballot safety. Moreover, alternatives such as mail-in voting are safer than electronic voting, leaving a massive question: Why would we want electronic voting?

Works Cited

Arntsen, E. (2021, January 25). Here’s why electronic voting won’t happen anytime soon. News @ Northeastern. Retrieved January 29, 2022, from

https://news.northeastern.edu/2020/10/30/forget-voter-fraud-misinformation-attacks-are-the-biggest-threat-to-the-2020-election/

Bushwick, S. (2020, November 3). An Expert on Voting Machines Explains How They Work. Scientific American. Retrieved January 29, 2022, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/an-expert-on-voting-machines-explains-how-they-work/

DeSilver, D. (2021, May 28). In past elections, U.S. trailed most developed countries in voter turnout. Pew Research Center. Retrieved January 29, 2022, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/03/in-past-elections-u-s-trailed-most-developed-countries-in-voter-turnout/

Election Security. (n.d.). Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved January 29, 2022, from https://www.eff.org/issues/e-voting

Verified Voting. (n.d.). Summary of the Problem with Electronic Voting. Verified Voting. Retrieved January 29, 2022, from

https://verifiedvoting.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/revised_summary31.pdf