These days, many people participate in electronic voting and Internet voting. We no longer vote with paper. However, every citizen in most other countries encounters security risks, which harm the future significantly. The Sookmyung Times introduces a lecture that deals with security problems in a digital democracy and potential drawbacks in the far future.
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From the way we cast votes to the way votes are counted, everything is controlled by computer technology. In Korea, people vote from their smart phones or laptops without heading to local polling place. The world seems quite convenient; we no longer need manual labour anymore. All electronic devices provide ways to count or navigate the voting system from start to finish. Are these electronic voting and Internet voting systems safe? When we think of electronics, the first thing that comes to mind is ‘security problems.’ Since electronics cannot be completely protected from hacking, we should know their drawbacks.
Research has shown that a computerized voting system raises security risks from voting machine viruses that can secretly change votes. It is also possible that hackers could steal votes and influence an election. This lecture provides information on how electronic voting and computer voting technologies work, why they are being introduced, and what problems they aim to solve. Also, it talks about computer and internet risks that the systems face as well as serious vulnerabilities that people encounter using infected electronics. Moreover, the lecture provides descriptive facts detailing how we should act when faced with digital security problems in the voting system. Commonly used safeguard, check, and balance should be introduced and criticized to ensure they adequately protect against security drawbacks. These would insure votes are correctly reflected in elections.
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The lecture begins with reference information about computer science and technology. Since the electronic voting system contains much information related to computer systems, the lecture provides optional material detailing with computer science background. We need this opportunity to learn directly about how digital security problems affect democracy and our lives. Is convenience merely good in the long run? Digital systems have always been connected to side effects that harm in terms of security. The way to act upon this problem is to get knowledgeable by learning from this lecture.
