E-voting …and why it’s good.

Hand Ballots They are the only historically viable choice for voting. They’re small pieces of paper on which voters can fill in or select their representative. However, there are some downsides to hand ballots…

Why hand ballots are bad… Problems with hanging chads and butterfly ballots An MIT study known as the “voter technology project”, concluded that up to 6 million votes were lost in 2000 election 2 million due to poor ballot design 3 million due to outdated registration rolls 1 million due to polling place operations

…more reasons they’re bad Can be lost, changed, misread and added to Counting machine can be manipulated by polling employees (paper hacking attacks) Not user friendly Especially for the seeing impaired

E-Voting A voting technique that takes advantage of computer science and technology through the use of Direct Recording Electronic Terminals.

Direct Recording Electronic Terminals These mechanized terminals use computer software that is activated by the voter to record votes and to save selections in a removable memory component.

Computer Science and E-Voting Cryptography is the mathematical study of information and especially its transmission from place to place All modules are issued their own private keys Modules digitally (using RSA) sign all of their transmissions so that their data transmissions are protected against wiretapping All transmissions are maintained with a secure sockets layer, the most reliable approach for sending info today, protecting the data itself from being read. Same technology used in ATM’s and E-Commerce People are comfortable divulging extremely personal information over the internet, why not trust e-voting?!

Advantages of E-Voting Ballots can be counted instantly Recounts are fast and easy Prevents ballot errors and confusion Detects voter error Possible to display more information about candidates Photos Stance on major issues

Security Measures Number of votes Voter identification In current methods, poll workers can personally insert extra votes into ballot boxes In e-voting, tampering could easily be identified if it created a discrepancy between number of registered voters and number of votes cast Voter identification In current methods, all that is needed is a photo ID In e-voting, could use 10-digit PIN numbers, one time passwords, or fingerprint/retinal scans

Paper Trails Currently, hand ballots provide physical evidence of the vote cast In e-voting, Direct Recording Electronic Terminals can print copies of the vote cast

Security and Validity Encryption prevents others from seeing or tampering with the vote Voters could be given a secret code by which they could verify that their vote had been counted correctly