The PROBLEM with electronic voting | Robert Duigan

The Electoral Laws Amendment Bill seeks to make widespread changes to South Africa's electoral system. One proposed change is the introduction of an electronic voting system. However, concerns have been raised that electronic voting could be vulnerable to manipulation and electoral fraud.

David Ansara of the CRA speaks to Robert Duigan about the shortcomings of electronic voting systems.

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[carolineshepherd]

I couldn't agree more. What's more is if this is a physical server containing confidential data, what's stopping anyone from breaking in and stealing the physical server. Where are the backups stored? Keeping the data & system digitally & physically secure will be a requirement from the get go. And this kind of system is already expensive. Once our government officials get the tender approved it's going to be even more expensive, because of all the back-handers. Who will audit the code that is written, to ensure there are no bugs or design flaws? There are far too many things that could go wrong.

[glenturrell]

Thanks for this. In the hands of the ANC who knows what calamity could result?

[Westmen]

The current electoral system in South Africa is reasonably efficient and, more importantly, independently verifiable. Some of the keys to prevent fraud include voter registration with ID, voting on the day (no mail-in ballots) and counting the ballots in the voting station where they were cast (i.e. no movement of ballots to counting centres).
Votes are counted in the presence of party agents and observers. So by the time counting is complete, the results are known by both the voting officials and the observers, and can be independently verified at the Results Centre.
Electronic voting systems cannot provide this level of transparency.
Moreover, with general elections every 5 years, the high rate of hardware and software obsolescence will outweigh the benefits.

[dk.]

Dominion system, here we come. "Glitches" will be the keyword in the MSM, in the favour of we know who.