Assignment 2
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Dec 6, 2023
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Assignment 2: Online Elections
Discuss the following:
1. Is it possible to conduct elections using the Internet? If so, what are the infrastructure requirements?
2. How would our understanding of encryption help in conducting an online election?
3. What is the relevance of digital signatures in online elections?
1.) It is definitely possible to conduct elections using the internet. Now a days we can do
shopping, banking etc., in online mode, so I think it is possible to conduct online elections but
there are many factors to consider before implementing online election system. Online Elections
can help to increase the voter turnout because of accessibility to vote at the comfort of the
home. I think the best way to increase the voter turnout is to conduct both online elections and
Traditional elections. I-voting, also known as remote e-voting, refers to systems which allow
people to vote in an election from any device connected to the internet (Lake, 2019). Other
benefits of I-voting include faster results, while it also saves man hours in counting, cut costs,
improve accessibility for older or disabled voters, accommodate citizens abroad and other
administrative tasks (Lake, 2019). Polling stations can be smaller, because they handle a reduced
number of voters (Lake, 2019). But I think most countries should not implement online elections
because many poor countries do not have the necessary digital infrastructure in place to conduct
them. Let’s take an example of India with a population of 1.3 billion and compare it with Estonia
with a relatively small population when compared to India. Estonia already uses the I-voting and
online election along with traditional voting from 2005 (Lake, 2019). I would say it would be a
very bad idea if India were to implement the Estonian election System because Estonia already
has a good digital infrastructure in place that is lacking in India.
One of the biggest problems
India would face while implementing the Estonian election system is high infrastructure
requirements and costs. In my experience, most Indian government websites crash whenever a
high stack of people try to login or use it. So Indian Election Committee need to use very
powerful servers and try to implement ddos protection and encryption methodologies very
perfectly as there are always huge chances of site crashing due to high use on the election day
which in not good.
2.) I believe that understanding the role of Encryption and implementing it plays a critical role in
ensuring the security of an online election. The purpose of an election is not just to select a
winner, but to convince the loser, and their supporters, that they lost (Porup, 2018). Trust in the
voting process is, therefore, an essential element to any voting system (Porup, 2018). Online
voting is more fragile than other online services, like banking, and far easier to attack (Porup,
2018). Because of this encryption is important to stop attackers from manipulating the voting
system. Having encryption makes the users trust the I-voting System and develops confidence in
the protection methods and privacy of the voting system. Encrypting the data ensures that the
vote which is cast by the voter is not modified or tampered by unauthorized person in any way
like vote not being counted or vote being counted for the wrong party. When storing all the data
in a very secured way , we will need a huge database for the votes , and major challenge
encountered here is encrypting the stored data so that no unauthorized party can read it even if
they somehow managed to get access to the data.
3.)
The relevance of digital signatures increases significantly when it comes to online elections
because Digital signature cards serve as a means of authentication, identification, and a secure
processing environment (Kofler et al.,2004). Digital signatures can be optional but recommended
in e-voting because the voter is present in person but are a must in I-voting because in I-voting,
the digital signatures are the only form of identification of the voter. Let’s take Estonia for
example, which is conducting online elections from 2005. Estonia already has considerable
digital infrastructure in place and the centerpiece when it comes to I-voting in Estonia is the
digital identity card, which has a public and private key pair used to digitally sign documents
(Lake, 2019). For a similar system like Estonia to work in a place for example like India, they
would need identification cards in place, linked to digital signatures for everyone (Lake, 2019).
References
Lake, J. (2019, April 18).
What are the risks of electronic voting and internet voting?
Comparitech.
https://www.comparitech.com/blog/information-security/electronic-voting-risks/
Porup, J. M. (2018, May 2).
Online voting is impossible to secure. So why are some governments using it?
CSO Online. https://www.csoonline.com/article/3269297/online-voting-is-impossible-to-secure-
so-why-are-some-governments-using-it.html
Kofler, Robert & Krimmer, Robert & Prosser, Alexander & Unger, Martin. (2004). The Role of Digital
Signature Cards in Electronic Voting.. Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on
System Sciences. 37. 10.1109/HICSS.2004.1265297.
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