7 years ago
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Will the US elections be hacked? It's doubtful, but machines could be 'rigged'
It’s been a topic of debate ever since hackers – presumably working for Russia – stole thousands of private emails from the Democratic National Committee and leaked them on the net. Could a nation state or other adversary hack our elections and determine the next president of the United States? The answer depends on how they try to go about it, says Avi Rubin, computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University and technical director of the university’s Information Security Institute.
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https://www.theguardian.com
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It's happened before with the Diebold systems. The exit polls were way off from the results in the democratic primary in the US which means it could have happened already.
There is not one single, valid reason to use computers for elections, but there are many reasons why we should not. We know for a fact that they have been manipulated. Unless and until that mathematician from Kansas gets to examine the records she requested I will never trust them. The fact that our government won't allow records that have obviously been manipulated to be examined, that should give us all pause regarding this topic. If you trust politicians, you get what you deserve.
I can think of a single, valid reason to use computers for elections: accuracy. Computers do counting faster and more accurately than any human, barring problems like software failure or criminal interference.
I can think of another valid reason to use computers for elections: convenience. If we can find a way to enable secure voting online then it would make it much, much easier for anyone with access to a computer to participate in local, regional and national elections. With Internet access so ubiquitous it would reverse the trend of disenfranchisement. There are still demographics that would have to rely on the old, analog methods of voting but it would encourage greater participation in general which is a good thing.
All methods of voting have their errors and they're all prone to manipulation by unscrupulous parties. Whether we do it digitally or old school we need to maintain rigorous oversight and remain vigilant against people trying to rig them. We have the capability, what we lack is the will. There's too much apathy, leading people to conclude that it really doesn't matter.
Those are not valid reasons to change. Humans have been counting votes for thousands of years and doing a fine job. We don't need them counted faster; we have the results within a few hours counting by hand. The convenience of the computer is just that- a convenience. As much as you would like to think the Internet and computers are ubiquitous, there are enough people without either for it to be a concern. As long as hacking is not only a possibility, but a known issue, computer/internet voting should be banned. When a statistician shows proof of foul play, but the government refuses to release the records to be examined, there is a problem. A big problem. My fellow Americans don't seem to realize it is happening, or they don't care. Either way, with manual voting and counting it's a moot point.
It's far easier to maintain rigorous oversight with manual voting than computer voting. In fact, I will take that a step further and say that with our current technology, maintaining rigorous oversight over computerized voting is impossible. So, again, it should be banned.
You might want to address the arguments I actually made. I didn't argue that speed is important, I argued that accuracy is. Computer tallying is far more accurate than human tallying. Yes, people have been doing it for thousands of years but that doesn't mean we haven't looked for tools to improve our accuracy at recording and counting.
And yes, computers and the Internet are ubiquitous. They're everywhere. I acknowledged that there isn't 100% penetration but a lot of the people who don't currently vote have computers with Internet access, and a secure means of voting would increase participation which is no small concern. Democracy works best when people get involved, and the US has some of the lowest participation rates in the democratic world.
Yes, there are pitfalls involved with the technology, but they're neither unique to computers nor insurmountable. Elections have been rigged since humans first thought to put things to a vote. It's a matter of understanding the risks and doing what we can to mitigate them. Change is going to happen whether you like it or not, so we may as well do our best to recognize what risks are involved and start dealing with it sooner rather than later.