Debate: Electronic Voting Essay examples

Getting to polling locations can be a hassle, especially for the disabled, the sick, and people without transportation. In addition, voting becomes even more difficult for

American citizens shall be able to make use of all technology available to digitally track their vote for the president of the United States.

“legal precision” about what is constituted a vote. In due course, the candidates, nor the

From a newspaper editorial: [The recent use of mail ballots in Oregon’s election of a U.S. senator has led some people to hail this as the wave of the future in our democratic republic].

Many people in America find it difficult to even get to the ballot box on election day. Some say that they can’t get off from work because they live paycheck to paycheck and they would have to work overtime to make up for the pay they didn’t gain that work day. This is a problem that seems to be leading to substandard representation of those at, near or below the poverty line. Suggestions have been made to potentially make election day a holiday so everyone can get off working to go through the long ballot lines and I believe this could potentially be the right step to take to ensure more people are adequate representation. To make election day even more efficient, it would probably be a good idea to have mail-in ballots for every state along with election day being a holiday.

I understand that in an ideal situation voting should be easily accessible for all and the while still is difficult to have people commit fraud. But you just can’t have it both ways realistically and if you can have it both ways it still hasn’t been presented yet, maybe in the near future sure but as it is at the moment that’s the dilemma. Like how Walsh said, “It’s all about political power—who has it, who wants it, who gets it (Kenneth T. Walsh).” It rings true on so many levels it truly all does come down to those three simple things it seems as though that’s what every politician is striving to achieve their end goal of

J.J Strossmayer who holds a P.H.D in law research found that empty and invalid ballot papers (defined as blank or spoiled votes) are one of the biggest problems of the countries that have a compulsory voting. During Brazil’s 1990 elections voter turnout was 76.57%, but 40% of the votes were deemed invalid. (Mackerras & Mcallister 1999) (Evidence: Statistics) In Ecuador’s 2006 elections 40% votes were

In this essay, I would like to discuss the major obstacles to voting, recent changes to overcome voting barriers and the political influence of changed rules. Low turnout in the U.S. reflects that there are obstacles for people to voting and changes to overcome these obstacles may also bring new problems to different social groups. I will elaborate on these aspects in the following parts.

Voters should be required to show IDs when voting in person, so that no one can vote twice. It is pretty self-explanatory. Fraud within the elections is all too common, and having to show an Identification is a necessary risk we have to take to ensure that the person who wins, is the person everyone actually voted for. Rarely do we hear of

In 2000 Riverside County California decided to spend 14 million dollars to make their voting system all electronic. This decision was made on the basis that in 1998 more than one million dollars was spent on paper ballots (in Riverside), but when only half of the county voted the extras had to be trashed. For local elections their new electronic system fetched a 99% approval rating from voters (Wired.com article). The only foreseeable downside to this technology is the start up price and with internet voting not likely due to security issues, this maybe the best solution.

Voter Authentication is the process of validating voter identity. The fact that the voter claims to be represented by a specific cards like voter id cards which does not necessarily mean that this is true. Actual voter can be identified by using secured mechanism in the system and then be granted rights and permissions to vote. The voter must provide evidence to prove his identity to the system. It is the process of ascertaining claimed user identity by verifying voter-provided evidence.[a]

But, as of today there is no solid way of knowing if someone is or is not trying to sneak in more than one ballot. “I don’t know if anybody knows how prevalent it is, because the only time you find out is when somebody gets caught.” (Guzman, 1) And the statistics of that happening is .00000013 percent or 26 out of every 197 million cases. Because there are multiple techniques that can and have been used time after time again. Although this is the case there has been some attempt to prevent it. Voter ID law are one example, but it is far from the perfect solution. First, it prevents only one type of voter’s fraud, voter impersonation. And, second, the voter’s ID laws has been ruled as discrimination; so the rule is not enforced everywhere and the public can vote without

The primary advantage of the mail ballot is that it requires little time and effort on the part of the voter. We think that also is a primary shortcoming of this process.

Besides that, there were complaints about the use of indelible ink in the 13th general Election. Oppositions and clean-polls activists reported that the ink could be easily washed off (Election ink under scrutiny in Malaysia, 2013). To avoid the issue of phantom voters and to reduce human error when checking the voter’s information during the election a new modern polling

A recount of votes in Maryland could only consist of re-reading the smartcards, even if the DRE recorded the vote improperly; there is no way to verify their accuracy. Avi Rubin (2004), a Computer Science Professor at Johns Hopkins University, notes on his weblog how he had many chances to manipulate the outcome at his voting poll. At one point, he held the entire precinct’s smartcards allowing him to swap them or damage them. This assumes the DRE recorded the votes properly, which cannot be determined without Diebold disclosing source code for the machines. After other groups across Maryland mirrored Avi’s findings, hundreds of people testified in front of the Maryland General Assembly demanding a vote-verified paper trail. At each hearing, security experts testified about security concerns and the need for open source software. This objection to current standards sparked legislation requiring a voter-verified paper trail in the last two legislative sessions. In spite of the bill passing the house and the senate without