America’s Online Voting Fail

The Internet can’t be trusted with your vote. Since the 2000 election, experts have been arguing that it’s not yet possible to build a secure or truly democratic Internet-connected voting system. And recent hacks, including those of the Democratic National Committee’s e-mail system and voter databases in Arizona and Illinois, suggest that there’s significant interest in attacking digital political systems. Nevertheless, 32 states and the District of Columbia allow at least some absentee voters to return their completed ballots using poorly secured systems. Many election officials simply don’t have the technical understanding to distrust the makers of online voting tools. If they did, they’d realize that none of the current systems are truly democratic anyway, because they don’t preserve the anonymity of voters. While it’s theoretically possible to build a system that could be both secure and anonymous, its use would be beyond the grasp of most people. And that’s hardly very democratic.