Voting for PRESIDENT Online?!
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2019-05-06
·
1,171 words · ~5 min read
0:00
when you stop to think about it it is amazing how much of our lives has moved
0:05
online you can work a full-time job trade hundreds of thousands of dollars
0:09
worth of stocks and even meet your soulmate all without getting out of bed
0:14
but one of the things we still can't do over the internet is vote and i'm not
0:19
talking about twitter polls but like real voting for things like the
0:23
president or mayor and coroner but why
0:27
we have a multi-trillion dollar digital economy
0:30
that's managed online so what's so difficult about running an election
0:34
without having to drag everyone out to a polling station well unsurprisingly one
0:39
big issue is security online voting is subject to the same vulnerabilities as
0:44
shopping over the internet but the concerns are actually more severe think
0:49
about what happens if an attacker steals your credit card info when you try to
0:53
buy something it's obviously not ideal
0:56
but thanks to fraud protection algorithms and redundant record keeping
1:00
such incidents can often be resolved and you can get your money back
1:04
but this is more challenging when it comes to voting not only are records
1:08
kept by election authorities usually quite a bit thinner but in close
1:12
elections even a few incidents of an attacker changing votes could alter the
1:17
results of the entire election where the outcome at least theoretically affects
1:23
everyone who voted the stakes simply aren't that high when someone's credit
1:27
card number gets stolen also reliably tying a ballot to an
1:32
individual voter undermines the secret ballot system which is used by most
1:37
democracies to help ensure that neither the government nor anyone else can
1:41
intimidate voters or seek retribution against someone for voting a certain way
1:46
although jurisdictions that allow voting by mail or absentee voting try to tackle
1:51
this issue by using two envelopes to keep the votes and the voters separate
1:55
detecting fraud in an online election may be more likely to require tying a
2:00
ballot back to an actual voter if irregularities arise in order to verify
2:05
who a specific person actually voted for so if we'd want to avoid this we'd have
2:10
to come up with some new ways to fairly keep track of votes without compromising
2:15
privacy too much but even if we do come up with such a system simply identifying
2:20
who's actually eligible to vote through a browser could be difficult
2:24
many places are currently grappling with just how much identification a potential
2:29
voter should have to show when they register to vote or cast a ballot and
2:34
moving elections online throws another wrinkle into the system
2:37
although you could ask each person for something like a national id number
2:42
before voting there still isn't much of a way that the authorities can know that
2:46
you didn't sell your vote or just allow a different person to vote in your place
2:51
biometrics have been suggested as a solution but that could prove to be very
2:55
costly but okay Linus can't someone just go into a
2:59
physical polling place and give someone else's name and fraudulently cast a vote
3:03
anyway well yes they could but studies have
3:07
shown that in-person voter fraud in developed countries is fairly uncommon
3:11
partly because it's difficult to find a bunch of people that are willing to
3:14
participate in such a scheme and get them to go to the polls to cheat the
3:18
system by comparison online it would be
3:21
a lot easier for one person running a botnet to achieve the same results which
3:26
i guess leads us perfectly to another obstacle even if you had a super secure voting
3:32
infrastructure and a population that's dedicated to upholding the integrity of
3:36
their elections there's no guarantee that individual users wouldn't have vote
3:41
altering malware on their home pcs
3:44
plenty of voters have a very limited grasp of technology and probably
3:48
wouldn't be able to tell if their computer had been made part of a botnet
3:52
or if they'd fallen victim to a phishing email that would redirect them to a site
3:56
that would submit altered votes throw in the possibility of widespread
4:01
computer errors as we've seen with electronic voting machines and these are
4:05
ones that aren't even directly connected to the internet plus government-run
4:10
servers trying to accommodate a massive amount of traffic on election day
4:14
and it isn't that surprising that most places haven't jumped on the online
4:18
voting hype train such as it is but this isn't to say
4:22
though that we will never figure out a good way to conduct elections online for
4:26
example estonia is well known for holding its elections over the internet
4:30
with its citizens using special national id cards and readers to vote from home
4:36
their government also says it keeps a close eye on proceedings to ensure
4:39
fairness but would this system work in a much larger
4:43
country a research study also indicated that estonia's system is still vulnerable to
4:48
outside attacks so the jury's kind of still out on this one
4:52
and i don't expect it to rapidly catch on in other places anytime soon
4:56
if we can figure it out online voting promises to not only save time and
5:01
improve accuracy but also encourage more people to participate in civic life
5:06
until then though i guess we'll just have to put up with standing in line on
5:09
election day to get our i voted sticker so we can walk around with a sense of
5:12
unwarranted self-importance afterwards
5:16
today's video is brought to you by the massdrop sennheiser hd6xx headphones
5:20
these are one of massdrop's all-time best sellers with over 50 000 units sold
5:25
and i don't blame a single one of you who bought them because they sound
5:29
fantastic they haven't changed the driver or sound structure compared to
5:33
the hd650s so that means a nice balanced mid-range
5:36
and natural sounding bass and the 10 foot cable has been replaced with a
5:41
detachable six foot one based on community feedback
5:45
it includes one eighth inch plug that is versatile enough for everyday use you
5:49
can plug it into pretty much anything and it comes with a quarter inch adapter
5:52
and it also includes sennheiser's long-term support so check out the link
5:57
below to join the drop and get your own pair of hd6xx headphones today we're
6:02
gonna have that linked below so thanks for watching guys like dislike
6:06
check out our other videos leave a comment with a video suggestion and
6:09
don't forget to subscribe see subscribing is just like voting don't
6:12
forget to do it and also even if you like do forget to do it anyway
6:17
you see subscribe doesn't have a deadline like voting so you can remember
6:20
at any time come back and subscribe