With the national election on the horizon, there is one potentially major flaw in the voting system around the country. While many areas still cast either paper ballots or have ballots with paper backup copies, some areas around the country are using electronic voting machines that have no paper backup whatsoever. This begs the question, can we as a country trust such automated machines in something as important as deciding on the leader of our country?

It doesn’t take a huge leap to realize that by putting the voting process in the hands of electronics entirely that the opportunity is there for irreversible damage to the democratic process. Any electronic device is at risk for tampering, either from internal sources or someone on the outside. It’s hard to believe that someone within government would go so far as to tamper with a voting machine, but with no paper copy to go back an check the output against, it becomes impossible to verify the results expect by trusting the machine. For this reason, these types of electronic devices are easy to target when it comes to conspiracy theories.

If the election is close, and comes down to a single state where the vote is extremely close, the conspiracies will fly. The state, while likely having done everything on the up and up, will come under intense scrutiny because of the electronic voting systems, and rightfully so. When this country becomes so completely reliant on technology that it’s only means of counting votes relies on a single electronic machine, it becomes far to easy to manipulate the government. The country was built on the idea that the government should be transparent. With verification procedures going by the wayside, the trust that all votes count isn’t far behind.

It isn’t such a difficult thing to have an electronic process with a manual verification if necessary. Having a paper backup of the ballots may take away from the speed of the process a little bit, yes. It also may undermine one of the reasons to use electronic options, which is to save paper. In the end, though, preserving the American belief that every vote counts is really worth those sacrifices in the end, isn’t it?

Should we trust them?


No.

no i belive that robots are gonna take over the world one day and im gonna be prepared to kill them all off
whos with me yarg...

Yes and no. All electronic devices have their faults, and bugs, and what not - but think about it this way? Is it safer to have human begins count the votes? I think not.

What's the difference? If humans count the votes there's going to be a big number of them doing it. Less chance that they'd all be in on screwing the election together. The machines are accountable to one company who controls the entire outcome. So is it safer to have common humans or wealthy CEO's?

well i really think it will be just fine to have those voting machines. i really don't think that they will be able to manipulate the results of the elections. well i just hope that they will not really manipulate it. i want to have our elections done by voting machines.

you are the greatest argumentative debater...EVER!

How to you vote then? pen and paper?

yes of course, we used pen and paper. don't you do that in your country. well that is how it has been done in my country every since until now.

i agree completely!

i'm with ya

i think its alot safer due to the comment below

this is very true.

so were do i stand? i don't cause i don't vote. yep i'm 24 yo and i have never voted... will i ever... probably not.. why? just don't believe it... do i complain about political things? no not at all...

all politicians are liars they all are going to say what they want that they think will get them the most votes.. do the ever hold up their end of the bargian... rarely.

but back to the questions... should we trust electronical voting machines and my answer is no... it'd be alot easier to change votes through an electronical means least with paper you have hard evidence to prove something if a issue were to arrise.