CSC 379:Week 5, Group 3

Internet Voting

Below is the content from the existing study guide on internet voting. Your assignment will be to update the study guide. Expand each section with more detailed and recent content and add at least one new section that provides a thorough overview of areas of ethical concern regarding internet voting. You may rename, move, and reformat content within the study guide as prudent. Include links to articles about instances of internet voting.

Note: Your new study guide does not need to follow the structure of the existing topic page.

Relevant Class Website Links

• Articles on Internet Voting

Study Guide

What is Internet Voting?

Internet voting is concerned with casting an electronic ballot via on-line in a secure way. Internet voting's aim is to take advantage of today's advancements of technology to increase the turnout of voters specially among young voters who spend a good amount of time on-line and are familiar with the Internet. Some other parties that may be benefited from Internet voting are soldiers that are oversees, and other citizens who may not have access to voting stand at the time of elections. Of course, those who do not have access to the internet will not be benefited by this approach, which can be an issue, as this section is mostly concentrated among the less privileged, and minorities.

Internet voting is not done with direct recording equipment (DRE). With DRE voting can only be performed at polling sites on election day. In this case users also use a computer to cast their votes, but the votes are stored on site ready for retrieval of the officials and it is not transmitted over the Internet.

Types of Internet Voting

Poll Site

This is the most basic way of Internet voting. This method consists of having traditional polling sites with computer voting machines that are connected to the Internet. In this case there will be election officials to authenticate the voters before ballots are cast.

Remote

Remote voting consists of casting votes over the Internet from remote. In this case the authentication would be made electronically using computer security technologies. Some suggest that this type of voting should not be attempted until user become comfortable with the poll site approach and until the proper procedures for voter authentication and secrecy are established.

Kiosk Voting

With Internet kiosk voting, a kiosk would be place at nontraditional sites such as mall for the convenience of the voters. This is sort of a mixture between both approaches above.

Related Articles

• 2006-07 Voting Assistance Guide
• CRS Report for Congress Received through the CRS Web
• Internet Voting News
• California Internet Voting Task Force

Advantages and disadvantages of Internet voting

Some of the advantages that are associated with internet voting are that more people will be able to participate since voting will become more accessible. Since Internet voting can be done from one's living room, it also eliminates much of the perceived hassle that limits voter turn-out at conventional polling places.

It will also be more cost effective than conventional methods; if everyone uses their own computers then less equipment will be needed to get voting done. Vote tally will also be nearly instantaneous.

Some of the disadvantages of Internet voting include security issues. Some are concerned that hackers may intercept, spoof, trace or alter votes cast from users' computers. In addition to potentially causing false election results, this could also violate a voter's right to keep his votes anonymous. Another concern is that of digital vandalism. It's likely that a Distributed Denial of Service attack may occur on the day of the elections, which would cause the voting system to go down and render it useless.

The other major disadvantage cited by opponents of Internet voting is that of the 'digital divide', which argues that people with lower incomes or less technical knowledge will have less chance of voting. Proponents of Internet voting offer the counter-argument that conventional polling centers will still be available for those without Internet access.

Government concerns and the future of Internet voting

Due to the growing interest in Internet voting, there have been many studies conducted on how secure internet voting would be if it were implemented. Although the Pentagon spent $22 million researching the viability of implementing an online voting system to afford Americans who live abroad an easy way to vote, the project was later scrapped because of security concerns. Despite this, proponents of online voting are still present in Washington and precedent for successful online systems in Canadian and Estonian government already exist, so the future of whether online voting will become a reality in the States remains uncertain.