Reading 08 - Electronic Voting

For months, coincidentally just as it appeared as he was losing, Donald "The Cheeto" Trump has been questioning the validity of the upcoming election. That said, voter fraud is a real concern in this country. According to a Department of Justice Study, as many as 40 cases of voter appeared out of the 197 million votes cast in federal elections between 2002 and 2004. This number becomes quite significant, almost a 20% of all votes cast, if you multiply it by one million.

For real, though, the primary concern over E-voting is twofold: the lack of a paper-trail and the potential for external agents to modify the results of the election. While the majority of these voting machines do leave a trail that can be analyzed, there are a few that are completely paperless. Additionally, as these are machines that run on software, there is always the potential for hacking. If one knows the details of the code the machine is running, it could be possible to find a way to access and make changes to the voting records.

But, despite these concerns, I have full confidence that the results, whatever they are, of the upcoming election will reflect the true will of the American public. My father works for the Justice Department as the Director of the Election Crimes division. He has literally written the book on election crimes in this country. Right now, he has told me, the Justice Department is entirely more worried about the very real cases of voter suppression occurring across the country due to Donald Trump's scare tactics and his recruitment of hostile poll watchers. The incidence of election fraud in this country is incredibly low. So low, that based on National Weather Service Data, you are more likely to be struck by lightning this year than for your vote to not be counted.

I'm not saying that our voting system is perfect, however. There are many ways in which our system could be improved. The first of which is through wide-spread investment in updating our voting systems. It is completely unacceptable that many districts across the country are using voting machines that are over 20 years old. At this point, though, the outdated software can be seen as a feature. There are so few people that still know how these systems work that it is becoming increasingly difficult to hack them.

I think that developing a voting system is fundamentally different than developing a normal application. Although there are data security concerns for both types of applications that developers must take into account. The severity of the former being hacked is much greater. If our national elections are compromised, and the public's trust in our voting system is lost, our Democracy is severely weakened.

I don't think we should ever have 100% trust in electronic systems. No matter how secure we make our online applications, there will always be people attempting to break into them. This is because of the great potential for gain if these systems are unlocked. This is the example I give to my friends whenever this topic is raised: We trust bridges. Bridges are built to be secure and last, even in many severe conditions. But, there generally aren't people trying to constantly knock the bridge down. If this was the case, I don't think anyone would trust our bridges. It's pretty much the same for our online applications. We may put in layers and layers of security. But, given enough time and effort, there will always be those who are able to gain some amount of information.