Debate: Electronic Voting

There are many controversial topics in this politically correct world. There are topics about morals, standards, and personal ethics. One of the newest debatable subjects however, is the one concerning this new centuries way of casting an individual’s vote, through electronic voting. Electronic voting is a way to cast a person’s ballot using an electronic voting machine that is touch screen. There are many advantages to using these machines during an election but there are also many disadvantages to using them as well. Before a person can make their own judgments on this subject it is important to understand and view both sides of the argument.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been put forth to upgrade voting systems all around the country, and most of the money going to going to paperless e-voting systems. A study by Election Data Services indicates that 50 million voters, or about 28 percent of the voting population, used such electronic voting systems in 2004. This is about twice as many more than voted electronically in the previous election (Boyle). These numbers are important to understand the experience that this new way of voting has been used. Not even half of the voters have used the machine so before our country changes the system of voting they need to know how this small percentages voting is affected and how accurate and safe it truly is.

Many people, who support the newest electronic voting machines, are people who remember the year 2000 elections. In those elections there were many problems, tons of the paper ballots had not been punched through properly, and so could not be counted. The lack of a clear cut winner made it even more controversial throughout the country. According to the Voter Technology Project six million votes could not be counted because of the errors. Many elderly people reported having had trouble putting the holes in the proper space while voting. Another problem found while voting in that particular election was the voting places made it difficult to cast a persons vote. There were also numerous rumors going around that poll workers were involved in fraudulent activities to support the candidate of their choice. All of these reports and rumors brought on the idea to start voting electronically and eliminate paper technicalities.

Supporters understand that electronic voting is not fl...

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...e the perfect solution to eliminate fraud, but I feel it is safer than the old paper ballots. It is far too easy for poll workers to manipulate paper ballots without any seed of suspicion. I also am certain that as far as most electronic devices go they will be improved by a great deal with each passing year. Paper ballots are dated and it is time to upgrade to a more secure way of doing things, most poll workers do not have the know how or desire to manipulate electronic votes. This topic is a matter of trust, do we trust humans or do we trust the machines. I prefer to trust a machine that has no personal motive and has the ability to be encrypted and secured to prevent fraud in the voting system that we rely on. The next step should bring both sides together and learn to compromise to make a system that will satisfy the needs of as many people as possible.

Electronic voting is the way of the future, nothing we do uses old paper systems. This is the digital age so to not progress the American voting system seems slightly absurd. There are stronger benefits to having the ballots on a digital medium and I believe it is important for change to occur in this aspect of our democracy.