http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/11/1101_041101_election_voting.html

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1680451,00.html

http://www.eff.org/issues/e-voting

By now you may have heard that voting is soon to undergo a huge change unless we make a move to stop the process. Have you heard of voting machines? Some think that this is the way we should go in all of our elections now. I disagree. I know, you expected me to be on board with this, but I cannot allow my geeky nature to control my beliefs on this one. You see, it is just too dangerous to trust our voting process to a machine. And it is not only the hardware that scares me. I also fear the software that would be translating our votes. I think some things are meant to be done manually.

So you may be wondering why I am not on board with e-voting since I am a self-proclaimed geek. Well, that is easy to answer. I believe that technology is riddled with problems. As soon as you solve one problem with technological advances, you create a whole new set of issues. It is exponential. For instance, man was tired of walking and depending on horse and buggies for transportation. A guy invented the car. Now, years later, we are trying to fix problems of smog caused by the car. There are many other examples, but I will spare you.

My first problem with e-voting machines is the issue that some have proposed that they be networked together. I am strongly opposed to this as anything that is connected by a network (whether or not the Internet is involved) is accessible from too many points for the purpose of sabotage. When you connect yourself to many other devices, all of those devices become potential enemies to your well-being. A hacker, or virus writer, could easily access the network and infect multiple machines if the physical security allowed. You have to keep in mind that network security also involves physical security.

My second problem with the e-voting machines is that the software might be buggy. Ok, the software WILL be buggy. All software has bugs. Every software company realizes that software is evolving and will never be perfect. You do the best you can and then you let customers help you document the bugs in your software and you continue to fix the issues as you work towards a better product. But you really never get to that perfect product because customer request feature that introduce new bugs into the equation.

My third problem, and the last that I will mention here is that they are hackable. What if I wrote code that would change all votes for Mike Huckabee to be changed to a vote for John Edwards. I could introduce that at a unsecure voting booth in a matter of seconds with a disk, usb drive, or cdrom. I am sure that these devices will have some type of reading device as they will have to be updated. All software requires updating to stay current. Once on the system it could replicate out to all the other voting terminals. Wow, that would be a huge problem.

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Filed under: Politics, Technology by Philip Williams