Online Voting Systems

It is crucial to understand what problems are currently being observed in areas where Internet voting is currently used, and what other issues may arise when switching to this voting method, in order to understand whether the Internet will be used in the future to cast votes, which decide the fate of the entire country. There are disputes in the world about the practical conduct of Internet elections and their security for the secrecy of the will of citizens and the possible results obtained as a result of such elections, the results have been obtained. That is, there are essentially two main sectors, if satisfied, that successful online elections can be held, namely the anonymity of the vote and the trust in the system by individuals. One of the most serious problems for today's democracy and elections is fraud. If in the polling stations, there is control over the actions of people and it is possible to secure elections from falsifications, then by switching to an online voting system, these falsifications will become more common. Since the system will naturally be located in a computer, it will not be problematic to hack the system, and also the same hackers can be financed by major powers in order to lure victory to their side. If something exists on the Internet, then people start peeking for ways to hack it.

As for the voting that decides which party will become the leader, or who will be the president, this system should be as secure as possible, more than any other system currently in existence, no matter in what area. The current non-online voting system can provide all the prerequisites for successful elections, namely, elections must be held in such a way that if someone does not believe in the results, and does not believe in the transparency of the elections, as well as in the accurate counting of votes, then there will be an approach to verify to them the opposite, by recounting the votes, and not by forcing a re-vote because in the second case there is a huge risk of getting skewed results.

Source of image: Unknown

Anonymity is the second most important aspect of elections and is practiced in most elections. This facet means that no one can find out who the citizen voted for, and there will be no way to prove it. Therefore it is very crucial to prevent mobile phones from being carried in voting booths. Anonymity is needed to prevent people from being bribed and intimidated to vote for one or another candidate because there will be no practical method to prove whether the voter voted for the candidate or not. Therefore, on any scale, these crimes are excluded with anonymity during the elections. One of the other most important aspects of voting is accessibility because voting must be equal for all, any citizen who has the right to vote must have the right to vote without any obstacles, and have equal rights and opportunities among all. It is impossible to say with certainty which of the methods is more accessible, and therefore no one has an advantage in this matter.

The main aspects of successful and truthful voting have been presented above. But the most important and basic problem of online voting is the security of the software, the Internet, as well as the voters' trust in it. Take any government website, application, or program. If we watch it for a sufficient amount of time, then we can see the presence of many bugs and very bad code. And if we consider that the program is written for online voting, which decides the future of the country, no mistakes are allowed, which is impossible in canon. If we still can't provide airtight voting booths, then the software, whether it's in the booth itself or on your phone, is unsafe in turn. And if something exists on the Internet, then people, as always, will start looking for workarounds, hacks, and try to hack the system in all sorts of sophisticated ways, and if we consider that they can also be funded by the governments of other countries, to manipulate elections, which is quite possible, it creates a huge an abyss of vulnerabilities in the program, not even considering how the code is written. In any case, securing the system does not make sense, and even if we just imagine that it might be possible to create a system that is 100% secure, it would not be worth its funding and the same amount of money could be spent on advertising the election so that more people can vote. Let's take another problem, namely the problem of trust in new technologies. During ordinary elections, the voter takes and throws off the card in a special box and does not have to worry about the safety of his vote. And with the advent of the latest technology, how will people begin to trust it? How will people understand that their voice is in the system, and in the process will not be edited by third parties? It's like a person standing in a booth and assuring you that he will transmit your voice safe and sound. Even if they trust the government and the software, fraudsters can change the content of these votes, and no Blockchain technology will inspire more or less trust in people, and rather, because of this decision, fewer people will go to the polls.

The next problem depends on the human factor, namely on hits on fraudulent schemes, mainly phishing ones. Phishing involves the creation of a fake link, which is presented to people with the help of social engineering, namely, gaining trust. Basically, scammers use a pre-prepared script, and having entered into a trust, they redirect an inattentive person to a fake page of a company, in our case it will be an electronic voting form. It is not difficult for scammers to steal and recreate a website with the same design, and even more believable, they take a similar URL in order to mislead people. But in the case of a fraudulent website, the data from the form does not go to the server of the author of the original page, but to the terminal of the fraudster or to his prepared server. And it turns out that in this way scammers can steal a lot of important information, such as a passport photo, place of registration, and other important information that they can later sell on the darknet. And of course, anonymity, which stands above other factors, guarantees the safety of the voter and influences a huge role in the free and democratic elections. With the transition to a mobile Internet voting system, we completely lose control over the anonymity of users and two problems arise. First, not entirely obvious, people simply may not realize that their phone is under the control and supervision of other people. In the case of the Remote Access Trojan (RAT) virus, which grants remote access to your computer without revealing itself, the small decline in computer productivity is not taken into account. And that's just one virus, there are many malicious programs out there that can spy on you. Also, people may not realize that if they are connected to public Wi-Fi, their activities can be tracked through browser cookies. And of course, a person can be threatened to vote for a particular candidate by breaking into his house or by other illegal methods. Well, the most primitive reason, this system is simply unprofitable. The expected cost reduction must be justified, but the costs of attempting to reduce are miscalculated. The benefits of this system should justify its cost and risks.

Source of image: techspot.com

At this stage in the development of technology and cybernetics, online voting cannot properly ensure the accuracy, anonymity, security, and legality of elections held on the Internet. This system must be protected from any type of attacks, and methods of fraud, in order to provide more transparent and democratic as well as safe elections. The development of such a system will take a lot of money and it will not be justified in any way and will not pay off its cost, which makes it useless to develop and further consider as a way to conduct elections. Perhaps, with the advent of quantum computers, it will be possible to create conditions that will be basic for online voting, but this is already in the future.

Of course, in small organizations, where the risk of being in the hands of scammers and hackers is small, online voting is a good option in a pandemic, but when it comes to full-scale elections that decide the outcome of an entire country, this idea is best left for better times.