Electronic Voting Research Paper
Electronic Voting
Introduction
Voting is the main way for citizens to translate their preferences to seats in legislature. Therefore, it is critical and extremely important for a democratic republican country like the United States to have a well organized voting system. The history of voting could be traced back to the 17th century colonial days when shouting and the show of hands would be an indication of casting votes. This method often led to chaos, fraud, repeat votes or over voting of election candidates. To reduce such loopholes, it was soon replaced by paper ballots in the 1770’s then electronic voting in the 1890’s. The change in the voting system over time emphasized certain criteria that a “good” voting system must accomplish. It must provide fast results. The anonymity of voters must be preserved in order to protect voters from malevolent candidates. Regardless of age, sex, infirmity or disability, a good voting system must be simple and usable. Electronic voting (e-voting) fulfills those requirements. Such benefits are followed by flaws and weaknesses that expose the system to threats and technical difficulties, ranging from system failure to altering results by hacking. The following background and arguing facts will expose the pros and cons of electronic voting in its developmental stage and whether it is trustworthy for measuring vote count.
Background
Electronic voting system refers to the use of electronic means for casting votes and counting votes. So, what are electronic voting machines? Electronic voting technology includes punched cards, optical scan voting systems, and specialized voting kiosks, for example, direct-recording electronic voting systems, or DRE. The transmission of ballots and votes can be done via telephones, private computer networks, or the Internet. People have many accesses to e-voting. In general, there are two main ways. They could use the voting machines at the polling stations or they could vote through remote
Introduction
Voting is the main way for citizens to translate their preferences to seats in legislature. Therefore, it is critical and extremely important for a democratic republican country like the United States to have a well organized voting system. The history of voting could be traced back to the 17th century colonial days when shouting and the show of hands would be an indication of casting votes. This method often led to chaos, fraud, repeat votes or over voting of election candidates. To reduce such loopholes, it was soon replaced by paper ballots in the 1770’s then electronic voting in the 1890’s. The change in the voting system over time emphasized certain criteria that a “good” voting system must accomplish. It must provide fast results. The anonymity of voters must be preserved in order to protect voters from malevolent candidates. Regardless of age, sex, infirmity or disability, a good voting system must be simple and usable. Electronic voting (e-voting) fulfills those requirements. Such benefits are followed by flaws and weaknesses that expose the system to threats and technical difficulties, ranging from system failure to altering results by hacking. The following background and arguing facts will expose the pros and cons of electronic voting in its developmental stage and whether it is trustworthy for measuring vote count.
Background
Electronic voting system refers to the use of electronic means for casting votes and counting votes. So, what are electronic voting machines? Electronic voting technology includes punched cards, optical scan voting systems, and specialized voting kiosks, for example, direct-recording electronic voting systems, or DRE. The transmission of ballots and votes can be done via telephones, private computer networks, or the Internet. People have many accesses to e-voting. In general, there are two main ways. They could use the voting machines at the polling stations or they could vote through remote
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