Governments across the world hope e-elections
will encourage more people to vote and leave less margin for error.
Mike Lucas, however, prefers to stick with the pencil and paper
method until electronic voting systems can be regarded as truly
secure.
With trials taking place across the country and the
vision of an electronic general election after 2006, e-voting is at
a critical stage in its development.
The government is putting plans forward - and trials are taking
place within the UK - to complement and, eventually, replace the
old-style "tick list" voting methods with electronic voting
systems.
The UK is not alone, legislation is being passed and elections
are being held across the globe advocating the use of this
technology. In the US, legislation has already been rolled out
with the Help America Vote act, and electronic voting systems were
used for the 2003 Governor of California elections, with 40% of
voters there casting their ballot online to elect Arnold
Schwarzenegger as the governor of the fifth largest economy in the
world.
However, before these systems become mainstream there need to be
guarantees about security levels to ensure e-voting cannot be
corrupted by hackers, ballot fixers and IT failures.
Despite being in use for significant Governor elections, some
reports (see
http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3169706.stm) from
the US have indicated that the source code for these e-voting
applications are poorly written, and that they don’t have the kinds
of controls in place usually expected for such a critical
system.
Reports have also shown that the smartcards used for
identification can, allegedly, be duplicated, allowing someone to
have multiple votes. These reports are worrying, and safeguards
must be put in place to address the concerns raised.
The security of these systems is all-important, doubts cannot
linger when e-voting goes live throughout the UK as this could have
a substantial impact on public confidence in all online systems,
including shopping and banking sites. If the systems are seen to
be fallible, our whole democratic system will be put into
jeopardy.
For e-voting to take off, the public needs to be assured that
the systems being used are watertight, and the government has to be
in a position to demonstrate that thorough testing and security
checks have been carried out.
With e-commerce worth £57bn to the UK economy in 2002, we cannot
afford for this to happen and e-voting systems must be as secure as
Fort Knox if technology is to help drive democracy forward rather
than backwards. Those of us who work in IT need to exert pressure
to make this happen, to ensure that public confidence in the online
applications and services we develop and manage is not
threatened.
What do you think?
Would you be confident of voting online?
Tell us in an e-mail >>
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Mike Lucas is regional technology manager
for Compuware, UK and Ireland.