E-voting: Innovative way for casting of Electoral Votes (Club5050)

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Introduction

As far back as the era Ephors of Sparta in 754 BC, the first public election was conducted, which made it possible for the citizens of that era to cast and vote for their candidates of choice to hold public offices. Back then the voting system was nowhere easy as the citizens had to come in person to do so.

Fast forward to recent times, the voting system gradually evolved, changed and modernized to be easy for citizens and as well free and fair as it should always be. With the introduction of technology into the modern world, every aspect of life has been affected even the voting system.

There no longer have to wait in long and unending queues just to cast their votes. We've not even talked about the high risk of physical violence that's bound to happen or the risk of the ballot boxes being stolen. A lot of risks are associated with a manual system of voting the results takes a long time to come out giving it ample room for malpractices such as announcing undeserving candidates as the winner.

It's because of these discrepancies in the manual system of voting that the electronic version of voting came up and it's currently being practised by some countries of the world such as the United States, United Arab Emirates, Australia, Belgium, Venezuela, Philippines, India and others.

Also, other countries are yet to join the trend of electronic voting (e-voting) due to a vast majority of reasons best known to the various government of the said countries. One major reason could be the underdevelopment of some countries, especially in Africa.

What is E-voting

It's an abbreviated term for an electronic voting system that uses electronic devices to cast and count votes conducted for election purposes. The concept of e-voting should not be directly linked to government elections only. It can be conducted by individuals who might request the opinions of others in selecting an option among various available ones. Such individuals can create a voting system that will allow others to select their most preferred choice. The poll with the highest percentage or number of votes cast will be selected.

E-voting uses a specially designed electronic device for it to be conducted. This device is designed to count the votes and record them almost immediately till every vote is cast. Then the data is compiled to give the final result of the total votes cast. It's important to note that these devices have full time and uninterrupted internet access to facilitate this exercise. Any attempt to do otherwise will result in a cancellation of the election and rescheduling.

A free and fair e-voting system should be able to comply with the standards of relevant regulatory bodies and should be able to deliver in terms of accuracy, security, integrity, privacy, accessibility, cost-effectiveness, swiftness, and ecological sustainability. This system of voting includes punched cards, optical scan voting systems and scrutinized voting outlets. There are two major types of e-voting that is:

• Physical supervision by appropriate and independent electoral bodies for paper-based electronic voting system
• E-voting Online is the Internet.

Electronic Voting Device

Benefits of E-voting

• It is easy to conduct

A greater percentage of the world's population has access to phone more internet. E-voting is easy to conduct because it only requires the citizens to log in to the website and cast their anonymous votes. One has to be a citizen of the country before he or she can vote and the system is designed to screen out imposters.

• The result takes a shorter time to come out

By using this system, instead of waiting days or weeks for the result to come out, it only takes a matter of 24 hours for the winner to be declared. The voting process can be tracked and before the final result arrives there is a likelihood of knowing who's going to emerge as the winner.

Disadvantages of E-voting

• The cost of maintaining the site is very high

In as much as the system of voting eases the stressful process of manual voting, the cost of maintaining the site is very high. Tech companies make a whole lot of money during these periods.

• Cyberattack

There's absolutely no technology that's not a threat. These devices and at risk of being cyber hijacked and doctored to declare their candidate of choice as the winner. This is in no way fair and it takes time for such malpractice to be tracked as these hackers can completely erase anything linking to them.

November 8, 2016, was the first electronic voting system I ever witnessed and it was between Former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. It is viewed live on CNN, Al-Jazeera, BBC News and other news channels. I watched mine on CNN. With the way it was going, there was a high chance of Donald Trump winning that election. I didn't entirely understand how it had been going until I saw it and I must say it was a lot easier for the citizens of the US to vote.

Conclusion

Both systems of voting can be made available to citizens and allow them choose their choice of voting and even though the government insists on one system of voting, good measures should be put in place to guarantee free and fair election and maintain the public confidence in them to deliver at all times.

Thank you for reading.