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Kaspersky Says Lack of Digital Voting Will Be Democracy's Downfall
hapworth writes "Eugene Kaspersky, founder and CEO of cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab, has warned that one of the greatest cyber threats facing the world is the lack of effective online voting systems, claiming that unless young people can vote online they won't bother at all and the whole democratic system will collapse. Not everyone is buying that theory, however (and there's reason to suspect Kaspersky has a vested interest in online voting, which may need his firm's cybersecurity products). As producer James Lambie writes, 'Ultimately, the digital native's disenchantment with voting is based less on a lack of suitable technology and more on disillusionment with the craven and anemic political choices they are presented with.'"
People are jiggering electronic voting machines, online polls get stuffed more than a dimestore pornstar, contentious elections are par for the course every four years.
Seems like digital voting is eroding democracy more than anything else, Kapersky.
Good!
I’ve always hated this push to get people to go out and vote. That’s not what’s important. The message that should be going out is to educate yourself enough to make an actual decision, THEN vote! Going into a booth (or online) and selecting a random choice because MTV told you it’s your duty to vote is only going to make things worse.
If someone won’t vote unless they can do it in less than 10 seconds... their opinion is probably worth very little, and would rather not have it diluting the already thin pool.
In Australia getting to the polls on voting day is mandatory. You're fined otherwise. This really gets people to vote. Digital only leads to vulnerabilities.
Do you think the current crop of politicians WANT people to be engaged and empowered to pick their governments?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I say stop making excuses for and pandering to "young people". If they can't integrate with the "real world" IRL then they can just starve to death in their pathetic little digital corners. There are plenty of things in life that require one to get off one's own ass - voting is one of them.
The official stats seem to disagree, or at least suggest that there's more to consider than just age/membership in a wired generation.
Consider for instance the breakdown in voting participation over the last 4 presidential elections (.pdf warning) - voter participation of those between 18 and 34 (what I would consider to be the net generation) has increased, in many cases markedly. Consider for instance that 18 to 20 year olds in 1996 had a 31.2% rate, 2000 saw a 28.4, 2004 had a 41% and 2008 had 41%. Similarly 21 to 24 saw 33.4, 35.4, 42.5, and 46.6. Similarly overall participation has increased across the board - 50.3% in 2000 to 57.1 in 2008.
If anything one could argue that the rise of the internet has increased participation through the development of targeted demographic outreach like that popularly attributed to Obama's campaign success. Combine that with the ready stream of polarising online news, politicised communities, and use of social media and you've got a recipe for maximum outreach with minimum investment.
vote online = vote the bosses way at work or get fired.
That is may be a worst case but on line voteing opens up that kind of abuse.
VHS? you were lucky.
We were so poor our entire family lived in a brown paper bag in the middle of the road. All 58 of us. We used to eat coal for breakfast and work 28 hour days, as well as do a 50 mile delivery round every morning in bare feet because we couldnt afford shoes. But we were happy. I miss the good old days.
...digital voting will be democracy's downfall.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
This is from a company that is Russian, and by coincidence discovers the US might be at fault for Flame just as there is a tug-of-war between ICANN and a Russian/Chinese backed UN body for control of the Internet.
If anyone has any clue at all, electronic voting is just ripe for being hacked. Look at what the Black Box voting site reported, from monkeys hacking voting booths, to standard keys that fit any RV fitting the locks on the voting computer. Without a solid paper component, it is a heck of a lot easier to forge results in a way that is completely detectable. At least with hanging chads, someone somewhere had to hold up pieces of paper and say they were not usable. Just being electronic means that a country's elections can be completely compromised by a foreign body.
Hmm... I'm sure there are plenty of countries who don't like the US who would love to influence elections. Making voting electronic just means the hack will be untraceable. I'm sure advocating E-voting would help lots in this department.
Hell with e-voting. We need paper trails, as what was shown with the voting machine stories.
This sounds suspiciously like preliminary marketing buzz for a new Kaspersky Labs software venture: create perception of a problem so they can then leap in and solve it. As irredeemably cynical as I am about human motives, behavior, and so-called intelligence, even I don't believe that a lack of e-voting will be a significant deterrent to people voting. The proximal cause of most people not voting, as demonstrated time and time again, is disillusionment with the whole process and the mediocre - at best - results... "why bother when my vote doesn't count and I have no idea who the 'better man' actually is?"
I have voted in every election I could right up until the BC-STV vote of 2009 when it became really clear that the people enjoyed vote splitting. I did some research and realized that every single vote I had ever participated in the worst candidate won (in my opinion) because of the first past the post (FPTP) system and vote splitting. I'm fairly confident in my assertion because of how there were usually 2 strong liberal candidates vs 1 awful conservative candidate who would win in every election despite most people voting for liberal candidates. As such I am confident my vote has never counted, and will never count in the future. There is no longer a point in voting for me, it just seems to exacerbate the problem. If I can't vote for the candidate I want and instead have to vote "strategically" the system is broken, and I will have no part of it. Democracy needs to evolve to something better then what was invented before the horseless carriage. You know, we have instant communication now, right?
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
Which candidate promises to give me more tax money taken from other people?
a) BreadAndCircuses-crat
b) CircusesAndBread-lican
c) CrankyOldCoot-itarian (never happen)
Votes are bought and sold every day. How do you think the US deficit got as high as it has? Greek foreign debt? Spanish public debt? Voters, when offered a chance to tax anyone except themselves, do so.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
Voting isn't what's important. Having an informed opinion is.
There, fixed that for you. And exactly how do you propose that people get informed, when 90% of what they read and see and hear is mis-information?
Actually, the two are closely linked. As Duverger's Law tells us, the reason there are few choices is because our plurality voting system favors a two-party system. Because preferential systems like Instant Runoff and Condorcet work best with electronic ballots, suitable technology is almost a prerequisite for overcoming Lambie's "anemic political choices" problem.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Mod up please
Digital voting is voting that can be done with a gun to your head. It's voting that can be directly paid for. Much as I can't imagine having to do banking offline, I can't think of any good way to move voting online.
A very important factor in a democracy is the secret of the vote. If I can prove my vote was cast for a given option, then the gate is open for parties buying it â" Or punishing me for voting according to my will.
It will be through digital voting fraud that democracy will suffer its worst blows. There are two good reasons. Any group who cheats their way into power can close the door behind them and make it so that only they can cheat. The best you could hope for after that is a better cheater or a revolution; neither being that great for democracy. The second reason is that any group who cheats will probably be a combination of unpopular, slimeballs, and absolute disbelievers in democracy.
But the worst part of all this is that while wrapping themselves in a false blanket of having a mandate of the people the cheaters will have no worries about public opinion as that only matters if the public can say, vote you out of office. Normally it is when the government forgets that they are there at our pleasure that we kick the bums out; but post cheating they will just get worse and worse.
But if we could get viable digital voting we would be able to remove much of the power that we handed over to "representatives" in the days of the horse and buggy when the levers of government were so very far away.
The only digital voting that I would trust is where you make your selections and out pops a piece of paper with your choices. You can then check your paper to verify that the computer got it right. The final count would rest with the paper. But the advantage of the computer would be that it could allow much more complicated voting such as ordering candidates or voting on dozens of referendums or piece by piece on a budget while enforcing rules such as you can't vote for two people at once. This would then result in an instant tally seconds after the election ends but then people would count the paper ballots to verify the computer results with the paper ballots being the final authority.
The only hope is that when the first cheaters get caught that they are small in power (say a state) and that it sets an example for how not to trust electronic voting.
Not a new vector, I think every state in the USA allows mail in ballots. Any boss that could make you vote at work in a e system could today force you to request a absentee ballot, and turn it over.
You realize then you'll just get fired for not voting online in the boss' sight? Making voting even potentially visible to others has bad results, end of story.
Great Intellect...
Kaspersky Says Lack of Digital Voting Will Be Democracy's Downfall
Good thing the US is a Republic and not a democracy, then.
Why?
Vote buying.
Right now, if someone "buys" my vote, they have no idea if I actually followed through. Which means vote buying doesn't occur.
With online voting, they can watch over your shoulder and pay you after you've voted for their preferred candidate.
No need for expensive campaigns, just hand out cash to enough voters to get elected.
Electronic Voting cannot be democratic as it doesn't conform to the minimal standards.
So far nobody has proposed an electronic voting system which can be proven to not be manipulated by anybody. If you need a degree in math to understand how the security works, it may be suitable for an election in the maths department of an university, but it is not suitable for the general population.
The pen an paper system can be checked by everybody, not just specialists who might fear for their job if they became politically active.
The problem with online voting is not and never has been a technical challenge. That part is - in theory - easy to solve and workable protocols have been around for at least 20 years.
The problem that no software will ever solve is that online voting can not protect your vote against tampering. All the bad guy needs is to stand behind you when you put down your vote and shoot your family if it is not the one he likes. Something he can't easily do in poll booth.
Yes, the same problem exists with absentee votes, but they have always been a small enough number to not matter, plus there is the time delay you can use to inform authorities.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org