The Challenges Of Online Voting System In The US

Introduction

For decades, United States voter turnout has lagged behind the majority of developed countries in the world, and although there have been indications of increasing voter participation, just 56% of eligible American voters cast their ballots in the 2016 Presidential election. The root causes of this lackluster participation go beyond political apathy, however. The United States has a long history of voter suppression that has been in place since the Civil War with methods such as gerrymandering and voter ID laws. The American voting system is deeply flawed, meaning that there are many ways to improve the process and increase participation. If implemented properly, online voting has the potential to ignite a complete overhaul of the American voting system as it exists today.

The 2016 presidential elections revealed that the current election system is anything but impervious to hacking, and close examinations of various local systems have shown that inaccuracies and errors are rampant in the way that the United States currently runs its elections. The country needs a dramatic and revolutionary change to the way that democracy functions, and if the country is able to institute a process such as online voting, the American people will be more willing to demand transparency and equality in the systems of democracy that govern the United States. Although there is still much work to be done before online voting is ready to implement on a large scale, the existing American election system is fundamentally broken, and the establishment of a reliable online voting system could provide the country with a truly fair and democratic voting system. This document aims to provide an ethical framework for the development of an online voting system that is targeted at developers, security experts, and government representatives with the power to institute such a technology on a national scale. In it, we will outline the most important principles that should guide the development, piloting, and implementation of an online voting system in America.

Core Values

Privacy and Security

The most difficult hurdle in developing an online voting system is the potential for hacking. The majority of security experts are adamant in their opposition to any online voting system due to such a system’s susceptibility to hacking. Pilot online voting programs in the U. S. have all been complete failures. The pilot system in Washington D. C. was hacked just 48 hours after going live. In fact, the only country in the world to utilize online voting on a large scale is the small northern European country of Estonia, which has offered online voting to its citizens for both parliamentary and municipal elections since 2005. Mike Summers, director of Estonia’s online voting system under the London-based company Smartmatic, notes that there are three stages to online voting that each present their own security risks:

a) “Registering and authenticating voters”

Estonia’s system is centered around the country’s voter registration process, which uses electronic IDs that provide citizens access to all government e-services. The chips in the cards carry files embedded using 2048-bit public key encryption. This encryption means that the card can be used as definitive proof of ID electronically. The country’s online voting system builds a voter profile using data stored in a central database and separately in the person’s mobile or electronic IDs. Before Estonians can cast a vote, the system checks that the biographic and biometric data on the card or device matches all of the information in the voter profile stored by the government.

b) “Securely transmitting votes virtually and protecting them once cast”

Estonia uses public-key encryption to securely handle ballots. Voters encrypt their ballots with a public key by entering a PIN after they vote, allowing them to sign their ballots with a unique digital signature. This is done through a double envelope scheme, where the inner envelope encrypts each selected candidates’ name. The outer envelope, with the voter’s digital signature, ensures that the vote was indeed cast by an eligible citizen. The ballots remain encrypted until the election has closed, after which time the system opens the “outer envelope” to reveal the encrypted votes, which it then shuffles through a mixnet. The votes are decrypted on a dedicated server that is physically isolated from all networks. The election private key is the only way to decrypt these votes, and for security, is divided into pieces that are put into PIN-protected tokens such as secure USB devices. Each member of the board enters their PIN used to unlock their token, and each piece of the election private key is reassembled into one piece for final decryption. An online voting system in America would also need to take extreme care in protecting in the information of the voters resulted by this system. A leak of the voting data with identifying information would violate the privacy of the voters and introduce other risks.

c) “Verifying that votes have been correctly cast”

In order to ensure that each citizen’s choices are accurately represented by their vote, an online voting system in America should allow for multiple votes to be cast by the citizen, with the most recent ballot superseding any previous ones. In Estonia, online ballots can be overridden by filling out a paper ballot in person, which further helps to prevent against voter coercion. Estonia’s system also allows voters to check their submitted ballots to ensure that everything has been stored correctly. Despite these safeguards and Estonia’s insistence that the system is “unhackable”, researchers at the University of Michigan successfully exploited not one but two vulnerabilities in their replication of the Estonian system.

Accessibility

The online voting system needs to be easy for everyone to use, and should be available on phones as well as the internet. It is important to note that this system should not be developed as a complete replacement of traditional voting. In-person ballot voting needs to remain in place to provide an alternative to the online system. Font size, color schemes, and general app usability should ensure that the elderly and disabled are able to easily interact with the system. During development of the system, our code mandates that a specific team be dedicated to app design, with an emphasis on creating an app that is ADA compliant and that passes accessibility testing for various population demographics.

Education

Any online voting system should have information about the candidates and their ideas, party platforms, and what different positions entail. Most Americans go into the ballot box without being fully educated on the issues and candidates, and any online system should seek to rectify this while remaining as neutral as possible. If an online voting system is designed with voter education in mind, it will make American democracy stronger because voters will more easily be able to make informed decisions. The information provided needs to be complete, impartial, and available for every candidate.