E- Voting & Online Voting

1. E-Voting & Online Voting For: Prom 2010 From: Javier Hernandes & Nelson Amaya

2. Online Voting • Online votingisdifferentfrom E-Voting, because Online votingiswhereyou can actually vote fromthecommodity of yourhouse, and do nothavethenecesitytoactuallygoouttovoting centers tocastyour vote.

3. Social & EthicalIssues • For each issue I will be stating whether the issue is positive or negative (Also the challenges that online voting faces). • Increased accuracy – One of the main aims of online voting. Many people have concerns on whether counting the votes manually one by one is accurate. Online voting could possibly solve this problem. Positive • Increased participation – Another main aim of online voting is the fact that there will be more people partaking in the elections, since people won’t have to do a massive queue to vote; it’s much more faster to vote this way than with the typical manual method of voting. Positive

4. Lower costs of running of elections – Since machines do the work rather than people, the costs of running the elections are lower since you won’t have to spend as much money on staff as you used to. This money can be then better spent on benefits for society. E.G. A public hospital to improve health care or a public school to improve education. Clearly a positive issue. • Faster counting of the votes – The efficiency of vote counting is much faster than actually counting them manually. You would get the results faster and would decrease the amount of suspense people feel during the long wait people used to do. Clearly a positive issue.

5. Data Manipulation – There is a big concern on who has access to the information regarding the amount of votes each side has. Are they trustworthy? The ethical issue regarding corruption arises, because there could be dishonest people which could easily be deceived by a few thousand dollars. Not really positive or negative, it’s more of a challenge. • Bandwidth – Possibly tens of thousands of people, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people will be voting at the same time, plus other visitors which are not necessarily voting too. What if the website doesn’t have enough bandwidth to support all the people visiting it? The website will collapse and it’ll delay the final results. Challenge; if not approached in a sensible way it could become a negative issue.

6. Internet Security / Hackers – Clearly, if a professional malicious hacker gained access to an administrator account of the online-voting center, not only would it be humiliating for the government but it would create mass hysteria and anger among the general public. Also, it would delay the final results of the elections, ironically since faster presentation of the results is one of the aims of online voting. Negative – Challenge online voting faces. • Digital Gap – If paper-voting was completely eliminated, how would people without Internet access vote? Challenge andnegative issue.

7. Identity theft – How would people be identified? What if someone impersonated you and you lost the right to vote due to impersonation? You would feel pretty upset that you didn’t have your vote and there would be a certain degree of unfairness as some political parties could lose a significant amount of votes by these impersonators. Negative – Challenge online voting faces.

8. Stakeholders • The Government • Citizens of the country where online voting has been implemented. • Political parties • Other countries – they may want to take a look at how online voting works for neighbour countries and consider adopting this method for their future elections.

9. Real lifeExamples of Online Voting • In 2002 Estonia starteddeveloping online voting. In 2005 itwastested in someforsome local elections. In 2007 theyheldtheir general elections in an online way (Meaningpeoplehadthechoiceto vote in a ‘normal’ wayorto do an online vote). • 15% of thevoterscastedtheir votes usingthis online method. http://euinside.eu/en/faces/for-or-against-e-voting-the-example-of-estonia

10. California givestheircitizensthechoiceto vote online; it’s done by “votingby mail”, and peoplehavetoapply in a websitetobeableto do this. Thefollowingwebsiteistheofficialwebsitewherecitizensfrom California actuallygototofollowinstructions and tosendtheirapplications: http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_m.htm • “In March, www.election.comconducted the first binding online U.S. election in the Arizona Democratic primary.” http://www.pcworld.com/article/17514/evoting_steps_closer.html

11. E-Voting • Electronic Voting • It’s when people go to specialized voting kiosks where the vote it Directly recorded Electronically into a voting system

12. VotingProcess Vote going to a Counting Center Registration Count of votes of Counting centers Polling Day Result Declared Choosing a Candidate

13. Whyitwasintroduced? • Advancing means using technology, countries want to be up to date with technology and the want to enjoy the advanteges of this (see advantages ) and in some cases the advantages weigh more than the disadvantages

14. Issues • Electoral Fraud – this is to change the numer of votes, increasing the number of votes for the favored Candidate. Methods – Improper vote counting • Mechanical failures - Touch screens may cause to leave uncounted votes • Hackers – Some one can • Voting twice or more

15. Advantages • Accuracy increases – If every vote is recorded correctly there are not going to be errors meaning that is more accurate than voting in paper ballots • Faster Count of votes – Sometimes people become desperate to know who the winner is, E- Voting will give results faster and more reliable (assuming everything works correctly) • Less impact over the environment – No wasted of paper therefore there’s no contribution to deforestation and E-voting machines are Energy efficient so they reduce carbon emitions.

16. Can encourage people to vote – This is a new system and people may feel like trying it so people are going to be wanting to try it, therefore the result can be showing the reality of favouritism to one party. • Transparency of the parties and government is needed – this can lead to people being content with the government they have and to the idea of “Your vote counts”

17. Disadvantages • Technology isn’t too reliable – Technology can have imperfections leading to an erratic result that can affect the whole nation leading to an extra investment for re-elections • People don’t completely trust the new technology – This can create people to feel uncertain about the reliability of the final result • Fast count can lead to loss of time for media – This is because they are not going to have anything to cover anymore.

18. Obvious Security concerns – Like, “has there been complete and entire accuracy” taking back to the issue of a possible electoral fraud. • How can it be sure that some people are not voting more than once • How would people be sure if their vote was recorded correctly? • Digital Gap – People who’ve never used this may be afraid of how it may work.

19. Solutions • Until there’s no complete transparency (that can be achieved by a free software for everyone called an Open Source) the government should also be having as a second resource for reliabilty paper ballots too. • Try the software for E- Voting in insignificant trails to clear any imperfection. • Make people more aware of what this is and how it works with the purpose of eliminating a Digital Gap.

20. Where has itbeenused? • E - voting examples have taken place in USA in Florida in the 2000 Presidential Elections, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Venezuela. • Also see video.

21. Video • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UpFQY76wUY • A sample case to Clarify any misunderstandings