Electronic voting
Electronic voting machines have been controversial in the US for several reasons. But, it's not just here. A British organization called the Open Rights Group has published a critical report based on its observations of the use of electronic voting in the latest British elections. Students might also look for information about Nigeria's use of electronic voter registration and voting in its recent elections.The issues are serious ones and students ought to be able to evaluate the critiques. Questions such as
- Does electronic voting threaten democracy? legitimacy of elections?
- Are "paper trails" vital to the electoral process?
- Do these problems affect plurality elections more than proportional ones?
- Are there technological solutions to the problems or are the problems political?
- Is this a generational issue?
- Are the warnings and complaints coming from technology-phobic "Luddites?" (See also: Luddism: Neo-Luddites)
- Are the problems likely to be more severe in poorer countries than in well-off ones?
E-vote 'threat' to UK democracy
"British democracy could be undermined by moves to use electronic voting in elections, warns a report."The risks involved in swapping paper ballots for touch screens far outweigh any benefits they may have, says the Open Rights Group report.
"It based its conclusions on reports from observers who watched e-voting trials in May's local elections...
"The ORG's main objection was that e-voting was currently a "black box" system which stopped voters seeing how their votes were recorded or counted.
This, said the ORG, made oversight of elections "impossible" and left them open to "error and fraud"...
"The Group said it was a serious mistake to accept the conveniences of e-voting while ignoring how they might undermine confidence in voting as a whole..."
See also:
- Electronic Voting by Rebecca Mercuri, a computer security and voting specialist
- Electronic Voting (2) by Lori Faith Cranor of the Association for Computing Machinery
- E-Voting from the Electronic Frontier Foundation
- The Problem with Electronic Voting Machines by Bruce Schneier, founder of BT Counterpane, the "world's leading protector of networked information"
- Verified Voting: Mandatory Manual Audits of Voter-Verified Paper Records from a public interest lobbying group
- ELECTRONIC VOTING SYSTEM WILL MAKE VOTE MANIPULATION EASIER an editorial from NigeriaWorld
- A PowerPoint presentation, "E-Voting: Perils and Pormises," from the Open Rights Group
posted by Ken Wedding @ 7:31 AM
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