e-Voting and Security

We are now only one week away from Election Day in the US. In most states, government officials are prepping the voting booths and checking the security of the voting facilities. Voters are narrowing down their choices. Florida is preparing for an electronic vote.

This year, 15 counties in Florida will switch their push buttons and pull down levers with a touch-screen. As mentioned by eWeek (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1682520,00.asp), the Florida race is tight, almost as tight as my home state of Pennsylvania. With the race being so tight, there is now a fear of security. What will happen if the electronic systems are hacked? What happens if Mickey Mouse is nominated in Florida? The task of preventing these things from happening is now in the hands of technology. Many organizations lack all faith in e-voting (http://www.eff.org/Activism/E-voting/).

E-Voting is not new in some countries. Australia (http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,61045,00.html) setup e-voting a few years ago. Venezuela (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1641288,00.asp) also partakes in e-voting. So, what makes America's e-voting any different?

I don't have the answers to these questions. All we can do is wait to see how secure America's electronic voting systems are. Will this be another security failure? We'll soon find out.