Technology Makes Remote Voting Less Risky than Paper
Enclosed is a guest article writted by Eugene Morozov and Susan Eustis.
Movements that tend to label internet voting as a risky method of casting election ballots proliferate. It is significant to look at the current state of remote voting solutions that exist today. New systems address the need to implement voting systems that provide indisputable election results.
Certain risks inevitably remain no matter what voting system solution is used: DDOS and other infrastructure attacks by malicious state actors are always a concern. While these kinds of attacks are possible, they represent low probability events as the US security agencies typically are up to the task of prevention. The alternative for voters without internet access to voting the ‘old way’, i.e., going to the nearest polling station and vote there in person remains an option.
Onto the technology arguments: rogue comments have actually been addressed by the current American voting technology companies.
Malware on personal devices can be disabled by the use of ““checksums” - values that represent the number of bits in a transmission message and used by IT professionals to detect high-level errors within data transmissions via running a “cryptographic hash function”, immediately prior to voting
Malicious attacks on code can be avoided by using open-source code, sufficiently decentralized networks, and the implementation of consensus protocols
Replacing ballot images with fakes is eliminated by using DLT and its immutable records capabilities allowing each voter to observe/verify the election results
Theft of authentication credentials - mitigated by effectively educating voters on safe use of technology and using analog/’old way” voting only as an alternative
Switches of results in transit – again, DLT remedies this by its inherent immutability
In addition, recent advances in science now allow for the utilization of “zero knowledge proofs” - a technology that allows the proof of truth of a vote without sharing the contents or revealing how the truth was discovered. This ability makes remote elections immeasurably safer and more secure than going in person at the polling station, where intimidation or coercion is possible. It also massively reduces the claims of election fraud that was witnessed in previous election cycles leading to the polarization of our society capped with the events of January 2020.
In conclusion, employing the latest voting technology will make our elections immeasurably more safe and more secure than the ‘old way’. Perhaps America can remain the world’s technology leader and proudly conduct its own elections using 21st century technology rather than the one designed by Aristotle followed by the Romans 2000 years ago.
Remote indisputable voting makes it the acceptable and preferred method of expressing a democratic choice.
This day has arrived.
Respectfully,
Eugene Morozov, CPA, MS.
CEO, Devoteusa.com
DEVOTE is a US technology company that has created a decentralized election voting system using blockchain technology employing the Ethereum blockchain and smart contracts written in Solidity programming language.