The Hazards of E-voting Essay -- Democracy Voting Internet Essays

The Hazards of E-voting A country can only be effective when it runs efficiently, when the will ofthe people is transmittable through the corridors of power. It can only hit its zenith if the most important get of democracy, voting, is carried outflawlessly. Although flawlessness has never been achieved, men concur certainly time-tested to keep the voting system as efficient as possible, with the to the lowest degreepossible measurings of votes being lost or mis-counted. Human delusion is ofcourse, uncontrollable. This error combined with the partiality of allhumans, prompted the development of machines that would register, storeand count the ballots which were cast. electronic voting, or e-voting,soon found advocates and lots of electrical resistance. Many in the opposition thoughtof this idea as ephemeral, how could one entrust democracy to an continuous tense machine?A Diebold E-vote MachineAs the last election showed, e-voting has gained a strong foothold in the US.Twenty -eight out of the fifty states1 in the US used e-voting machines in somecounties. This accounts for slightly 30 share of U.S. voters on November 232.Nevada and Maryland3 used the machines in all counties. Do the advantages ofusing a machine, outweigh the potential hazards of using a device which canbe manipulated or hacked into?Grant Gross, from IDG News Services discusses the shortcomings.Voting security advocates have raised dozens of concerns about direct electronicrecording machines. Among the complaints about DREs Some of the back-end vote-counting tabulators can easily be hacked some wise(p) cards that provide accessto the machines can be faked and votes can be lost when machines crash, as computers sometimes do.4 The security come ons wi... ...ean Union has funded a 3.2 million euro, three-year pilot programto use e-voting in three local anaesthetic elections, one in France and the other two in Germanyand in Sweden. much than 1 million Estonians will be ready to vote v ia the cyberspace in 2006 local elections.Yet it appears that the people managing these systems do not witness the greatrisks involved with e-voting. It seems that the motives behind this exodus towards e-voting in Europe, is more semipolitical then technological. They are politicians wanting to look tech savvy.9Whether e-voting is the mode in which Americans will choose their leaders in thecoming years, is an issue that can only be decided by their increasing amount ofusage in coming years. References 1 and 2 The Industry threadbare 3,4, PC World5, 6 Washington Post 8 figurer Weekly.com9 MSNBC- The age of E-voting