Tom Scott is an English YouTuber, game show host and web developer. In those two YouTube videos (I recommend the second one) he is going to tell about e-voting.
1. Do you think the e-voting should be more popular in other countries?
2. Would your older family members be willing to vote that way?
3. What is frightening you the most in e-voting?
Comments
2. I think that some of them could use it, sometimes with the help of their children, but still it is easier to click something than to travel to the nearest election point. I would rather think that they might have objectives to a voting method since they for example don't understand the technology so much that they will not be sure if they voted correctly.
3. The fact that we have to trust something. Right now, when it comes to physical voting, we have a committee that consists of people from various backgrounds and political parties. This way it is hard to cheat because people from other parties watch what you are doing. If we had an electronic voting system, we would need to trust the software which counts it. For me it is probably impossible to say that software is legit - I simply wouldn't trust it. I am more of a person who would use blockchain for that because the votes are visible for everybody in the network and we could see what is happening and how did the voting go. This of course has a drawback: we lose anonymity because the source of the vote has to be somehow given to a person. Then, we would have to trust that the software which generates the keys for us, does not store these data and won't generate two key-pairs for a single person.
Answering your second question - I would say yes. They do not have any problems to adapt, and not afraid of learning some technology.
Preparing the electronic voting system is quite hard, especially the authentication system should be done in a reasonable way. How can we know if someone who has access to for example his/her family members ID cards and personal data cannot vote using all of this informations.
I am very lucky that both my parents and grandparents are quite fluent in technology. My father taught me a lot about computers so i dont worry at all and my grandparents can book a hotel stay, plan a travel itinerary, buy tickets or check information about what interests them without anyone's help. This kind of skill would allow you to vote on a government side in elections easly. However, I know that not all seniors have an obliging grandson who will show and patiently explain difficult IT issues.
Centralized network services give access and allow a selected group of people to control the entire process of operation. If we want to use a technology that would allow the authentication of results, blockchain technology should be used. Decentralized and resistant to hackers attacks, as long as it is well designed. The idea of internet voting is amazing and worth introducing. However, as today everyone has free access to check how the voting process takes place, the source code in case of a computer system counting votes should be visible to an ordinary citizen.
I think it might be used by some of them,
perhaps with the aid of their children, but it's still easier to press than to drive to the nearest electoral point.
The fact that we've got something to trust. Right now we have a committee that consists of individuals from diverse backgrounds and political parties when it comes to physical voting. It is impossible to cheat in this way because people from other parties watch what you do. If we had an electronic voting system, the program that counts it will need to be trusted. It's probably unlikely for me to say the program is true - I just wouldn't believe it.
It's generally a safe assumption that anything that happens over the internet is unsafe, and this is what security specialists repeat ad nauseam - the only safe computer is disconnected from any sort of network, and preferably not even on. Attacks on physical, traditional voting systems can and do happen, but a digital medium allows for a far greater scalability of attacks. As Tom correctly points out, even an individual can affect the entire electronic election if they get very lucky in their hacking attempt, while a lone wolf won't ever be able to overturn an entire physical, paper-ballot election. And this only becomes worse once we realize that groups of hackers, often working for governments, have done some terrifyingly large-scale things in the past while remaining small enough to be untraceable.
I don't think e-voting should proliferate anywhere. It's unfit for deployment and likely will never be, unless there's some large paradigm shift concerning either the internet, secure and audit-able programming, or democracy itself.
As for older folks, they obviously wouldn't do well with electronic voting today, but I think this is relatively speaking the smallest of issues with it. I imagine it would initially be deployed as a hybrid system to account for people unwilling or unable to vote online, and given enough time the oldest generation will eventually be us, people who've grown up on the internet, and then it won't be a problem at all.
1. Electronic voting is certainly a very convenient way to vote. You do not have to leave home. Especially during the coronavirus pandemic we currently have.
2. I think my older family members would not like to vote electronically because they are old school. In addition, they are concerned about fraud and sabotage. Hence, I prefer to go for the classic elections.
3. I think that only in electronic voting is there a high chance of falsifying the election results.
2. I don't think so, they're having a hard time using modern phones, e-voting is probably out of their reach.
3. Pretty much.. all of it? With e-voting the whole system has to be flawless, because after braking it, it's easy to influence the whole election, whereas with manual voting you can't do it at once or with a small group of people.
However, the video presented in your article has only proved to me that e-voting is a horrible idea. No system is 100% secure. Knowing how many cases of fraud happen every traditional election, I dread to think how many people would try to, and possibly succeed in exploiting the system.
As stated in that video - there is no perfect way to conduct a safe voting.
I also don't think that it would encourage my grandparents to vote - they never really cared about it, so I guess possibility to do it online wouldn't really change anything. I'm pretty sure it also appliesto other people who never participated in election.
As far as I know, e-voting has already been practiced in some CIS countries, but it was not a successful attempt.
I think the e-voting system in these countries is not well developed, and at the moment paper voting is predominant, because it is considered more transparent.
2. Would your older family members be willing to vote that way?
To be honest, I don't know, I never spoke to them about this.
3. What is frightening you the most in e-voting?
I think a small change or inaccuracy in the system can have huge consequences, even a tiny carelessness in its implementation can open the door to falsification.
My grandpa is 81 years old. He doesn’t allow to install internet in his home. My parents are 50 and 56 years old, they just discovered pages like Facebook or Instagram. I think e-voting could be hard for them. Also, there are many people who do not trust technology, so many people won't vote.
For me, the pen is mightier than the sword. Many people trust a pen and paper more than the screen. I think it is worth sticking to the paper voting. For myself, I also prefer paper voting.
I think this is our future. And it is a bad idea to avoid it. I think it is better to think how to make this e-voting safe and how to convince older generation to use it.
2. Would your older family members be willing to vote that way?
I am not sure if they will. However it really depends on the person.
3. What is frightening you the most in e-voting?
Nothing really. Because if we are talking about hacking the system and falsifying the vote, it really does happen with traditional paper voting.
I dont. The 3 arguments from the first video i think are still valid to this day.
2. Would your older family members be willing to vote that way?
I dont think so and also i dont think that many of my friends wouldnt vote that way too.
3. What is frightening you the most in e-voting?
a think that the system can fail anytime, and something can go wrong during its runtime.
2. I think yes, as they don’t like crowded social interactions such as voting. They would definitely prefer to stay home and vote remotely
3. Nothing, as I believe if someone wants to create a lie casual voting will not help in this situation. The one who has the power always sees and hears more than us. It’s almost a normal state of life.
I think that the e-voting should be a lot more popular in developed countries. First of all nowadays a lot of people don't really go voting. They are just too lazy to go to the voting place and that makes the whole democration useless. Democration doesn't exist without people voting. If everybody had an ability to vote wirelessly for example with their smartphones there would be much more votes.
2. Would your older family members be willing to vote that way?
I think that yes. Even my older family members know how to use smartphones and the Internet so it wouldn't trouble them.
3. What is frightening you the most in e-voting?
The most frightening thing about e-voting is high risk of somebody voting for another person what is very dangerous that votes might have been faked. There should be some good way of verifying people before implementing such a system.
I think that my older family members want to vote that way. In this case scenario they don't have to go anywhere and they are knowledgeable about Internet and technology. My grandpa can use smartphone and applications like Messenger or web browser so vote using Internet connection won't be problem for him.
The most frightening think in e-voting for me is that our government will be will develop service to e-voting. I see governments applications like mTożsamość or quarantine application and it isn't good applications. They have a lot of problems with working and I read that have problems with secure - in e-vote service secure is the most important think. On the other hand if any corporation develop this service it exist risk that they want to use it for your own goals.